How to Add Elements to Your Web Page with iWeb

Snow Leopard’s iWeb application lets you design full-featured Web sites. In addition to text and images, iWeb lets you add sounds, movies, links, buttons, and more. The list of extras you can add to your Web pages with iWeb includes:

Audio: You can add a song (complete with volume control, Play/Pause button, and progress slider) to your page! Either drag an audio file from a Finder window to your page, or click the Audio button in the Media Browser to select a song from your iTunes collection. You can drag any image to the player that appears.
Photos: To add a new image box to your page, drag a photo from a Finder window to the iWeb layout section. Click the Photos button in the Media Browser to choose an image from your iPhoto library, or throw caution to the wind and drag an entire Event or album to your new page! iWeb takes care of all the details.
Movies: You can drag a movie clip from a Finder window to your page, or click the Movies button in the Media Browser to choose a movie from iMovie or your Movies folder.
Text: Choose Insert→Text or click the Text button in the toolbar.
Shapes: Click the Shape button in the toolbar to display the pop-up menu and then click the desired shape. (Don’t forget to resize it as you desire with the box handles.)
Widgets: Click this button in the Media Browser to insert a widget (a Web applet) to your page. For example, HTML Snippet allows you to type HTML code directly into place on the page, or paste HTML code that you’ve copied from another Web site. You can also insert interactive Google AdSense advertisements or a Google Map. Hundreds of other widgets are also available.

You can move a widget anywhere on a page by dragging it, and it can be resized just as a text box can.
Links: If you’re editing text and you want to insert a Web link, choose Insert→Hyperlink. You can link to another Web page or insert a link that automatically sends an e-mail message to the e-mail address you provide. You can also offer a file for downloading.

iWeb can automatically detect e-mail and Web addresses that you type in a text box, so you don’t have to use the Links menu. To enable this feature, choose iWeb→Preferences and click the Automatically Detect Email and Web Addresses check box to select it.
Button: Your Web page can include buttons that allow your visitors to e-mail you or display the number of hits (visits) your page has received. Choose Insert→Button and click an option to add or remove a specific button. (If the menu option is selected, the button appears on your page.) Blog and podcast pages can also offer RSS feeds (for automated retrieval of new entries within a Web browser), subscriptions to your podcasts, and slideshows.

With these tools, you can use the Blank page template to create your own new pages.

Most Web designers strongly recommend that you use a common theme for all the pages on a site. Of course, you can also stick your tongue out at those very Web designers and select a different theme for every page! To select a different theme for a page, open the page in iWeb and click the Theme button in the toolbar; then click the desired thumbnail from the pop-up menu. Nothing’s lost but the old look of the page, so experiment to your heart’s content.