ZxApp IT Users Guide

5.1. Images and Attachments

HTML documents do not normally contain embedded Images and Attachments.  Instead, an HTML document keeps a reference (URL) to external documents.  Your browser assembles all of the pieces on the fly as you visit a web page, so that it appears as one cohesive document. So you might be asking yourself, "How does ZxApp IT contain Images and Attachments if it uses HTML?".  ZxApp IT uses a special URL protocol to reference documents within its Document Manager.  For instance, a typical image reference (in HTML) might look like this:


      <img src="http://www.mywebsite.com/images/myimage.jpg"/>


ZxApp IT can handle an image that references an external reference with ease.  But it also allows internal references that look like this;


      <img src="dm:///myorganizer/images/myimage.jpg"/>


When you export an organizer or a particular node, ZxApp IT automatically exports the appropriate resources and updates the references, so that it produces standard HTML which can be utilized by browsers and other HTML editors.  All of this is handled automatically by ZxApp IT, so you don't need to know these details of how it works.


ZxApp IT can also handle external references to files in the local file system, using the standard "file://myimage.jpg" notation.


Files Versus Documents

To distinguish between a file in the local file system, and a file contained within Document Manager, ZxApp IT always refers to a file in Document Manager as a "Document".  A Document is slightly different than a regular file because a Document refers to all versions of a file.  For instance, if you imported a file called "myfile.txt" into Document manager, you would reference it as the "myfile.txt" document, for which there is one version.  If later you made changes to the "myfile.txt" file and imported it again, you would still only have one document.  But this document would have two versions. This gives you quite a bit of flexibility, as you can delete the latest version to roll back, or delete prior versions to save space.  So when you refer to a document without mentioning the version, you are implicitly referring to the latest file version.


When you insert images, you get a dialog box as show in Figure 5.1.1.  You will notice that there are buttons for [Select File] and [Select Document].  If you choose the [Select File] button, you will get a standard system file selection dialog box.  You can use it to insert a reference to an external file.  




Figure 5.1.1.  The Insert Image Dialog Box.



If you choose the [Select Document] button, you will get a Document Manager document selection dialog box as shown in Figure 5.1.2.  The key to utilizing the Select Document dialog is understanding that you must first import your file into the Document Manager.  If the document is not already in Document Manager, you must select the [Manage Documents] button to access the main Document Manager dialog, as shown in Figure 5.1.3, and import your file.




Figure 5.1.2.  The Select Document [from Document Manager] Dialog Box.



To import a file to Document Manager, simply drag it from Windows Explorer (or the equivalent file explorer for your operating system) and drop it on the repository you would like to put it in.  You can also drop the file into the document list box if you want to import the file into the currently selected repository.




Figure 5.1.3.  The Document Manager Dialog box.




Why is there also an option to Insert A Hyperlink?

The Insert A Hyperlink option (located in the main menu under Insert) works like one would expect a traditional HTML editor to work. It behaves slightly different than the Insert Image menu item in that it expects the user to select a preexisting portion of text, which is then used as the label.


For additional information on the Document Manager, see the section on Using the Document Manager.

 


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