Along with the Field Editor, this is the part of Active PowerBook that gives you full control over the type of messages you want your visitors to leave, and how those messages will appear.

Select "Field Editor/Message Layout Manager" from the Control Panel and click Go. This takes you to the Message Layout Manager.

From here you can click on…

• Sample – this links to a sample layout of how the message will appear. This sample is at the bottom of the Message Layout Manager page. TIP - Please note that the sample is only a guide as to how the messages will look. You should always look in the main PowerBook page to check the exact appearance.

The columns in the Message Layout Manager main frame are as follows…

• Column 1 – Field number.
• Column 2 – The name of the field. You can change this to anything you like by clicking on the Field Editor link for the current field.
• Column 3 – The type of field. You can change this by clicking on the Field Editor link for the current field.
• Column 4 – Active/Inactive. By clicking on this link, you can toggle the status of the current field from active to inactive. If you set a field to Inactive, all setting are preserved, but the field does not appear in the Add A Message page or in messages left in Active PowerBook. (see column 5)
• Column 5 – Public/Private. By clicking on this link, you can toggle the status of the current field from public to private. If you set a field as Private, the field appears in the Add A Message page but does NOT appear when guests view messages in the main PowerBook page. This allows you to collect information such as email addresses but not display them in your PowerBook. TIP (for advanced users) – This feature also allows you to collect information and use it as a hyperlink to other data you collect. For example, if you collect someone’s name and web address, you can set the name to Private so that the field does not appear. BUT, you can then use the name as the hyperlink to the web address so that when a person clicks on the name, it takes them to the person’ site. You can do this for both email and web fields, and you can use text or image fields as hyperlinks.
• Column 6 – Header/Body. By clicking on this link, you select the current field to be the FIRST field in the body of the message. All fields above this field will be in the header. TIP – If you want all your message in one section (i.e. no header, just a body) then click on the Header/Body link for Field 1.
• Column 7 – Editor. This is the Field Editor for the current field. See below for full details.
• Column 8 – Up. Click here to move the current field up one in the order of appearance within the message. TIP – To set the field order in the Add A Message page, use the Add/Respond Page Layout Manager.
• Column 9 – Down. Click here to move the current field down one in the order of appearance within the message. TIP – To set the field order in the Add A Message page, use the Add/Respond Page Layout Manager.
• Column 10 – Help. This column can give some helpful hints on the current field.

There are four special fields whose names/types you can not change.

• Add Response – This is the link that appears within messages to allow guests to add responses to messages. TIP - For this to appear, you need to ensure that you have ticked "Allow guests to respond to message" in the Standard Preference Manager.
• View Responses – This link only appears within a message if at least one response to the current message has been added.
• Edit Messages – This link only appears 1) to the person who added the message, and 2) if the time is still within the time set in the "Number of hours after posting that guests can edit their messages" section of the Standard Preferences Manager. TIP - If you don’t want guests to be able to edit messages once they have been added, then set "Number of hours after posting that guests can edit their messages" in the Standard Preferences Manager to 0.
• Private Message Option – This only appears in the Add A Message page, and only appears if you have ticked "Allow private messages" in the Standard Preferences Manager.

All of the above four special fields can be moved about and edited similar to other fields except that you can’t edit their field type in the Field Editor.