When you download Joust, you will receive a ZIP file (or self extracting executable) containing the following files:
index.htm | This is the main HTML page that contains most of the Joust code and sets up the frames. | |
index2.htm | This page sets up the separate window for Floating Mode. | |
index3.htm | This is the home page of the No-Frames version of your site (if you choose to have one). | |
menu.htm | This is the menu frame. | |
menucntrl.htm | This is a sample menu control page. | |
title.htm | This is a sample title page. | |
home.htm | This is a sample home page. | |
robots.htm | File used by search engines to index your site. | |
page1.htm | This is a sample page for the sample menu. | |
page2.htm | This is a sample page for the sample menu. | |
page3.htm | This is a sample page for the sample menu. | |
page4.htm | This is a sample page for the sample menu. | |
license.htm | The legal stuff. | |
readme.txt | Miscellaneous information like how to find us. | |
images | This is a directory containing all the GIF images you need to get started. |
Once you have downloaded Joust, fill in our mailing list page so that we can keep you informed of future developments (only about a dozen messages a year).
Joust is written in JavaScript (that's JavaScript, not Java). We have tried to make it easy to install and configure Joust with as little knowledge of HTML and JavaScript as possible. However, it is impossible to do this completely and there are a few things you will need to understand before you start.
Most of the JavaScript code that makes up Joust can be found in the index.htm file. Near the top of this file you will see a HTML comments section containing the Joust version and copyright notice. This is what we refer to as the "Start of Joust" marker. Approximately 850 lines below this you will see a line like this:
################## End of Joust ##################
This is what we refer to as the "End of Joust" marker. The index2.htm and menu.htm files both have similar markers. Most (but not quite all) of the JavaScript code that makes up Joust is between these markers. You should not attempt to modify anything between the start and end markers unless you know what you are doing.
Below the "End of Joust" marker in index.htm, there are two functions that you will need to modify to customise Joust to your requirements. These are initOutlineIcons and initialise and look something like this:
function initOutlineIcons(imgStore) { ... } function initialise() { ... }
Much of the following documentation explains how to understand, and modify what you see inside these functions.
Important Note: The location of the </HEAD> and <BODY> tags within index.htm and index2.htm is important. Many WYSIWYG editors (like Microsoft FrontPage and Netscape Composer) think that the structure of these files is wrong and try to move these tags. This will break Joust on Netscape browsers (MSIE seems to be more tolerant of the incorrect HTML syntax that results). Do not edit index.htm or index2.htm with one of these editors (these files do not produce anything that is visible to a user so there is no need to use a WYSIWYG editor anyway).