Each section has it's own Left Hand Menu which acts as an index of pages within that section. The Menu is a Server Side Include (see Server Side Includes) that lives in the same directory as the page it's displayed on so each change you make to the left hand menu will automatically be reflected on each page within that section. For example this page is lefthandmenus.shtml in the /sitemaintenance directory, the left hand menu is menu.htm in the same directory.

If you create a new page you must alter the relevant menu.htm file to reflect the addition. The menus use a custom style, called .menuLeft, to give it a different look from the default page style for hyperlinks so you'll need to make sure you apply the style to each link. Each link sits inside a table which uses a colour scheme relating to the section to which it links, take a look at Styles for more detail on the different coloured sections. As an example you'll see that the top 2 links in each left hand menu are in white tables, this is becuase they relate to pages in the main ESS section, the rest are in blue tables as they relate to this section, Site Maintenance and Help.

Adding a link isn't quite as straight forward as applying other text styles however it's not that tricky and can often be achieved by using copy and paste. Here's how you'd add a link to the menu :-

• Place your cursor inside the link table you wish to copy and select table>select>table
• With the table highlighted seelct edit>copy
• Decide where you want to place the new link table and then select edit>paste
• Highlight the text of your new link and alter the text to the title of your new page
• Highlight the new link again and select insert>hyperlink
• Alter the URL window to read the correct path to your new page

You should now have a link to your new page in the menu that has the same appearance as the others. If, however, the new link has lost the custom appearance (the text might appear blue and underlined or the link table may have lost it's colour) you will need to follow the steps as outlined in the next section, "Applying the menu style".

You might find that certain pages fall into sub sections of their own, for example this page is part of a collection of pages which detail how to create and edit pages. To distinguish this you can use a link table with a small arrow (see left hand menu on this page), so as you can see there are 6 pages that come under the sub section Creating / Editing pages. The above method of copying and pasting can be used to duplicate these link tables as well but make sure that the text of the link doesn't go over one line in length.

Note that the first 2 links in EVERY left hand menu are links to the ESS Home page and the Sitemap page.

For a good idea of how to layout the links in the menu take a look at the left hand menu on this page.

Having created or altered a link you might find that it doesn't look the same as the rest, it might now appear blue and underlined or maybe the table it sits in has lost it's colour or appearance.

If, for whatever reason, a link has lost its custom appearance and now appears blue and underlined you will need to edit the HTML code ever so slightly to restore the appearance as follows :-

• Highlight your new link
• Click on the HTML tab at the bottom of the Frontpage window to change the view so you can see the code
• Look for the piece of code that is highlighted, this will be the main table containing all the links. Inside this table look for the text realting to your link
• Looking at the code for the text link you will see something similar to this :-
  <a href="faq.shtml">Frequently Asked Questions</a>
  (in other words <a href="path to new page">Text displayed for new link</a>) you need to add the custom style code to this link, the code being class="menuLeft" so you combine the two into the following line of code <a href="faq.shtml" class="menuLeft">Frequently Asked Questions</a>

This should now have reinstated the custom link style and it should now have the same appearance as the others.

If, for whatever reason, a link table has lost its custom appearance, either the table now has no colour, the wrong colour or simply no custom appearance, you will need to edit the HTML code ever so slightly to restore the appearance as follows :-

• Highlight your new link table by placing your cursor inside the text and selecting table>select>table
• Click on the HTML tab at the bottom of the Frontpage window to change the view so you can see the code
• Look for the piece of code that is highlighted, this will be the main table containing all the links. Inside this table look for the text realting to your link
• Looking at the code for the link table you will see something similar to this :-
  <table width="144" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" align="center">
  <tr>
  <td class="sectBarWhite"><a href="../default.shtml" class="menuLeft">Home
  page </a> </td>
  </tr>
  </table>
  the part which relates to the link table style is highlighted in red. If the table isn't displaying the style as it should then either the class statement is missing or it's incorrect. So to reinstate the correct appearance simple add the class="required class here" statement to the td tag relating to your new link, inserting the correct class name dependant on whichc section the link takes you to as per the following list :-
  

  Section	class name
  Site Maintenance and Help section	sectBarBlue
  Multimedia section	sectBarPurple
  Software Development Section	sectBarYellow
  Operation Section	sectBarGreen
  Maintenance Section	sectBarOrange
  Documentation Section	sectBarGreyPge
  ESS Home Section (root of the site)	sectBarWhite

This should now have reinstated the custom link table style and it should now have the same appearance as the others.

To alter a link simply highlight the link and change the text accordingly. If you need to change the page to which it links simply highlight the link once again and select insert>hyperlink then alter the URL window to reflect the path to the page you want to link it to.

If the link seems to have lost it's custom appearance follow the steps in the preceding section title "Applying the menu style".

Simple highlight the text of the link and press your delete key.

The first 2 links in EVERY left hand menu are links to the TTSL Home page and the sitemap page, please do not alter this.