Internet Integration

ConceptDraw provides you with extended Internet Integration: you can create and use hyperlinks, send ConceptDraw Project documents via E-mail, and save them in HTML format to place them on Web-sites easily.

For the Web site (URL) links to work, you must have a Web browser installed on your computer.

Sending a Document via E-mail

ConceptDraw Project allows you to e-mail project files without quitting the program.

Open (or activate) the project you need to mail, and apply the Send command from the File menu. A new e-mail message window appears. The active document is already attached to this new message. Just enter the addressee in the specified line, and add your comments to the body of the message if necessary.

To send off the message (with the attachment ), click the adequate mail client command (as a rule, it is the Send button).

Select the Send command from the File menu to run your mailer. Create a new message and specify the addressee. To attach a file to your message, use the corresponding means of the mailer (click the Attach button and browse to select the file you need to mail). Click the Send button to send it off.

Using Hyperlinks

In ConceptDraw Project documents you can use hyperlinks to other ConceptDraw Project projects or ConceptDraw Project documents, Webs - sites, other files and programs. A hyperlink can be assigned to any object in your project.

To assign a hyperlink to an object, use the Hyperlink dialogue. There you can also specify the hyperlink type or disable it. Moreover, a hyperlink can be assigned by typing it directly in the text of an object as the URL autoparsing function allows doing so. If switched on, it enables the software to recognize a hyperlink in the text of the object and assign it automatically.

You can specify your browser and your searcher in the Preferences dialogue (the Edit menu), in the Internet bar.

ConceptDraw Project is set to URL autoparsing by default. It means that if you enter an Internet hyperlink or an e-mail address in the text assigned to an object, the application will automatically recognize and assign the hyperlink to this object when you finish editing the text.

ConceptDraw Project will look for the following combinations in the text:

"http://"
"https://"
"www."
"mailto:"
"ftp://"
"news:"
"file://"
"gopher://"
"telnet:"
"wais:"

All subsequent text up to the first space will be recognized as a hyperlink.

Thus, you can assign hyperlinks to objects quickly if you want a hyperlink to be selected in some text of an object. You can delete or reassign a hyperlink using the Hyperlink dialogue.

See in the section Dialogues - Hyperlink Dialog about the Hyperlink dialogue in more detail.

To open a hyperlink, double click the selected object. The mouse pointer should look so: .

To change the text of a hyperlink, select an object and click F2 to enter the text editing mode. After completion of editing click outside the object, the program will recognize a new hyperlink itself.

In addition to e-mail addresses and Internet sites, you can assign a hyperlink to other page of the project, to other ConceptDraw Project document, or to an arbitrary file or the program. All these hyperlinks can be created and edited in the Hyperlink dialogue.

To assign a hyperlink to an object or change the existing hyperlink:

  1. Select the required object.
  2. Open the Hyperlink option from the Format menu and select the Change command.

You can also call this command from the shortcut menu, or use a shortcut key combination:

Ctrl+Shift+E Cmd+Shift+E

The Hyperlink dialogue where you can change hyperlink parameters will appear.

You can use the following variants of actions specified by a hyperlink:

  1. No hyperlink: disables a hyperlink.

    Take note of not deleting a hyperlink in this case, so it can be activated easily again.

  2. A program or a file specify an arbitrary file or a program.

    You can specify the path manually in the input field, or select a file, having taken advantage of the Browse button. It is allowed to use a relative path, i.e., the path starting from the location of the current document. On opening such a hyperlink, ConceptDraw will launch the application used to process such files or run the target application.

  3. Internet: Link to an URL or an e-mail.

    You can type the address into the File/URL field, or use the Internet Browser button to launch the Internet search system in your Internet browser. When you find the address you need, copy it, return to ConceptDraw Project and paste the address into the File/URL field. On opening such a hyperlink, your Internet browser will be launched. It will start with the address specified. If an e-mail address has been specified, the mailer will be started.

Note: You can drag hyperlinks directly from your browser into the File/URL field of the dialog. The Internet option will be activated automatically.

Note 1: A hyperlink remains active even if the object is included info a group. This allows you to create complex objects with multiple hyperlinks.

Note 2: When you assign a hyperlink to an object, you also change the response of the object to a double click: on a double click the hyperlink will open. Therefore, in order to edit the text for such an object, select the Edit Text tool , or just select the object and press F2.

To open a hyperlink, you can use one of the following alternatives:

If you opened a link to a file in another application and then need to return to the ConceptDraw Project, you can:

You can also use the keyboard to switch between the applications:

Alt+Tab Cmd+Tab

Exporting a Project to HTML

ConceptDraw Project lets you save your drawings to HTML to place them on Web-sites easily.

To save a document in the HTML format, use the Export/HTML menu.

If you need to export only the particular objects from the page, select them before exporting.

ConceptDraw Project enables to control HTML export parameters. It can be made in the HTML Properties dialogue which appears while exporting a document.

See the section Dialogs - HTML Properties Dialog for more details about the HTML Properties dialogue.

In the Save Picture As section you can specify the picture format for your HTML file. You can choose GIF, PNG or JPEG. GIF images take up less space, so GIF is set by default. However, if a document contains many colors (over 256), JPEG is preferable.

The Objects section lets you choose which objects will be used for generating a HTML file:

In the Page Size section you can set the size of the picture for an HTML page:

The Background parameter lets you set the background color for the image. Click on this box to open the Choose Color dialog and select the required color from the palette.

The Hyperlinks section lets you set the behavior of hyperlinks in a HTML file:

If the Export of Linked Documents flag is set up, the program will also export to HTML the documents which the current document refers to. In this way it is possible to create HTML files for several documents making only one step.

The Create a Folder flag lets automatically create a folder where the files which were received as a result of export will be placed. The folder will have the same name, as the document.

In the Exported Pages section you can select what pages of the multipage document are to be exported. For multiple selecting use Ctrl (Cmd or Shift keys.

Click OK to start conversing. On its completion a list of files created will be displayed. To view the result in the Internet-browser, click the Preview button.