STARTERS:
WELCOME:
This is the GICO demo site, where you can try out all of it's features in a save disabled environment. Begin with the STARTERS menu and then learn about the editor tabs with the subsequent ones.
THE EDITOR:
To load the editor click anywhere on the site, & then SHIFT - E.
username: user
password: pro or stnd
Menu sections SITE through PAGE describe their respective editor tabs, with each drop down menu containing sections covering sub tabs. By reviewing them, and having the loaded editor set to the tab page discussed, you can quickly become aquainted with most of the features found in GICO.
For each section of the menu, you should select the relative tab and subtab on the editor. You can then try out the features found
This demo is save disabled, so that any changes cannot be committed to the server, and file uploads aren't permitted. You can try out many of the GICO features here however, including the skin design options found in the pro version.
Some editions of firefox do not permit key commands. If you experience difficulty, MS Explorer is recommenned on a PC, and Safari or Camino on a Mac. GICO sites can be viewed on all browsers once edited.
LIBRARY:
The site library is opened with the lower central button. If this were a private GICO site then you could make changes to site skins & text and then utilize the site library to store them. This demo is save disabled.
SAVING YOUR SITE
By clicking the lower 'SAVE SITE' button found in the library dialog, all your site attributes and changes are stored directly to the site files, and will appear the next time someone visits your site.
BACKUPS & VERSIONS
If you wish to back up your currently formatted skin or site text to a file other than the main site, just type a name for it in the appropriate drop down menu and click the SAVE AS button.
IMPORTING
Once skins are stored they are always available for instant recall from the library via the LOAD button.
You can even import new skins from either the gogico.com web site, a third party creator, or simply a friend, by clicking the GET FROM URL button and inserting the skin's address.You may then modify the new skin if you wish, and save it to your library.
Try this with the address gogico.com/skinbin/curves for example.
Skins you create will be found at yourdomain.com/skinbin/yourskin.
VIDEO GRAPHICS:
Video which gas been uploaded to the MEDIA LIBRARY of the site can be inserted into skin items and then resized and set to loop to create stunning graphic backgrounds.
You can even utilize video found on other servers, such as this one which is located elswhere on gogico.com.
Try going to the SKIN-ITEMS subtab, and clicking on the video. Click RESIZE, and see the video at actual size with it's resizable bounding box.
SEARCH ENGINES:
GICO is the only method for creating flash based sites which are search engine friendly. Previously, site content contained withinin flash pages was invisible to search engine spiders, causing them to be ignored and unlisted.
GICO creates a page that they not only recognize, but is ideally rendered providing all site text, links, tags and titles, which you can define. You can even create pages specifically tailored to the spiders, which differs from the actual site content. This would be usefull for example, if you had large quantities of text on your site, but wanted a more concise, quickly read version for spiders to digest.
Visit this spider simulator, and enter this site's url: gocico.com/demo
Learn more about changing html attributes in the menu SITE-TAGS, or in the SITE LIBRARY section of this menu.
WHAT IS GICO?:
GICO stands for Graphic Internet Content Organizer, and that's what it is and does. It helps you organize all your internet content via a simple, easy to learn, and user friendly graphic interface.
It's the fastest way to create a media rich, beaitiful web site, and it's free!
SITE:
SAVE DISABLED:
Welcome. This site allows visitors to test out the various functions of the GICO site editor. All upload and save functions have been disabled, so no permanent changes can be made.
Click anywhere on the site, & launch the editor with SHIFT - E.
username: user
password: pro or standard
For each section of the menu, you should select the relative tab and subtab on the editor. You can then try out the features found therein.
NOTE: Some editions of firefox do not permit key commands. If you experience difficulty, MS Explorer is recommenned on a PC, and Safari or Camino on a Mac. GICO sites can however be viewed on all browsers once edited.
TAGS:
The browser title, page description, and keywords for your site can be edited here, making it more friendly to search engine spiders.These attributes are saved with the html feature in the site library. SeeLIBRARY or SEARCH ENGINES in the STARTERS menu for more about this.
TITLES There are two fields on the top line of this sub tab, one for the main title, and the other for a sub title. These appear at the top of your browser window, and are included when someone bookmarks the page.
DESCRIPTION Search engines also look for and display this description in their results. Briefly describe the nature of your site here.
KEYWORDS An important attribute of the page as far as search engines are concerned is your list of key words describing the site. Your selection of these words should be thought out extensively in order to obtain the most exposure, via the most specific description of your site's content, services, or products.
Be sure to separate your words and phrases by commas.
VIEWING Since these are attributes of the HTML page created by the html function in your site library, you must save and then refresh the browser page to view the changes.
SPIDERS To see how a search engine spider views a GICO site, click here to visit a search engine spider simulator (third party) and enter the address of this site,
MEDIA:
Your GICO site can feature all kinds of media including most image files such as jpegs, pngs, and gifs, as well as audio mp3 and video files. Once uploaded to the site, they can be inserted into the site graphic skin, or the latter played in the floating GICO media players.
These files are organized in your site media library, and can be accesed on this tab. By selecting one of the three icons under the drop down list (images, audio, and movies) you can view the sample files in the trial site library.
This site is save disabled, so you cannot add or delete media as you could normally. You can play the existing media however, and insert it into skin objects.
Here's a video embedded into the site skin.
FOLDERS:
This advanced feature is available to PRO users only and provides complete, additional levels of site expandability.
Folders can be added to your site with entirely new content, graphics, animation, and imagery, thereby expanding your site 100 percent with each additional folder. Simply click CREATE FOLDER to add a new blank folder.
Each folder can be set to refer to any existing folder (it's own, any other, or the 'root' folder) for its images, thereby allowing multi lingual versions for example, which still display the main site's imagery.
The default names for additional folders are "fold_1, fold_2, etc", with the option of renaming for easier reference. Simply select a folder, type in the new name (i.e.'french") in the drop down window, and click 'RENAME AS'. The name will now appear in the drop down list and refer to this folder.
PUBLISHING - each time you click the right 'SAVE' button you are storing only the specific preferences for the current folder (root or other). Therefore, changes made to a folder's content should be saved before returning to the main or 'root' site.
To import a folder's contents (skin, media & text) simply click this button.
NOTE: In order to facilitate editing of the section which links them, folders do not open automatically while the editor is in use. To open the folder, click SHIFT while selecting the section.
TEMPLATE:
This advanced feature is available to PRO users only.
Templates can be created by independent designers. If you are familiar with Flash, you can learn how to create templates yourself, either with a license to resell them or for your personal use.
Multiple templates can be stored in the media library, which can be loaded into your site at any time. They can range from simple changes to a complete overhaul of the look and feel of your site, radically altering it's look, by providing their own menus, navigation and environment.. In this way GICO is an open platform with never ending possibilities for variation and individuality.
LOADING
Select a template by using the drop down menu and then clicking LOAD. The drop down window displays the current template files available in the site's media folder. Templates can be aquired from the GICO tmedia library. When a new one has been uploaded, it will appear in the menu.
SETTINGS
Various templates have their own settings which further customize them to your specifications. Click SETTINGS to view the options presented by the template.
SKIN:
IMPORT:
This is perhaps the most exciting feature of the GICO system.
GICO allows users to IMPORT an ever growing, wide variety of ready made skins from our server. These can then be customized and either stored for later use, or saved as the main site skin. The same also applies to skins imported from other urls.
These skins are small files of an average 4k containing all the information GICO needs to render a completey different site, including animations and all.
If this weren't enough, GICO skins can also embed objects not even found on the user's server. These are in turn imported on load from other servers. This means that extra url video loops, images, and fully functional modules can ALL be included in these skins, creating unlimited possibilities.
COLORS:
GICO has an eight color site palette for easy assignment to site items. These can also be adjusted to varying degrees of transparency, providing even more diversity and allowing graphic possibilities for even the most psychedelic of sites.
Each time you edit a color in the palette, all items in your site which are linked to that color are immediately changed (except for page content text which is stored in the html of your site). This makes it easy to try out different schemes with the click of a button.
Throughout the editor you will find color assign drop down boxes such as the 'PAGE' and 'PANELS' boxes of the 'COLORS' page, or the 'OBJECT' box of the 'SKIN-GITEMS' page which allow you to assign colors to various objects and elements.
The color assign boxes on this page are:
BROWSER - Site browser color (save & reload to view)PAGE- Site background (adjustable transparency)PANELS - Editor, media players & floating menusGUIDES - Rulers & bounding boxes (click for show/hide)Clicking on a color box loads it into the color editor. Clicking the arrow buttons next to color boxes loads the currently loaded color into it.
ITEMS:
For standard users, this section simply allows the editing of titles found within a skin.
For pro users, there are a number of shapes available in each of the types found in the 'create object' drop down menu. Clicking the PICK arrows browses them once an item is created and a variety of fade tones can then be applied by clicking the TONE arrows.
Clicking on an item produces a bounding box which selects and allows you to drag, stretch and resize it .
ANIMATE
Opens the sub dialog window containing the animation settings for the selected object or text. The TIME slider designates how long the element will wait before it appears and initiates it's animation sequence. By applying various times to your elements you can create interesting, combined animated intros.
MEDIA
This opens the site library, where you can select images, MP3 or Video and swf graphics or *modules which have been uploaded to it.
Three buttons to the left of the 'create object' menu cause the object to:
appear & animate when in current sub section onlyappear throughout the current menu pageanimate at site start and remain visible *Modules are specially formatted SWF files that can perform a wide variety of site functions involving everything from animated interactive objects, to databasing, sop fronts, &blogs or chat rooms.
LAYOUT:
This option is available to pro users only.
Besides the site skin, it's menu style and section title, further site attributes can be adjusted here.
BORDER
Your site can have a variety of borders within the browser, or none at all. First choose a color, adjust it's transparency slider, and then by clicking FRAME and EDGE select various styles and line weights.
LOADER
Each time your GICO site neads to load an image, MP3, or video, it displays the loader dial. This graphic can be sized, moved, and colored or made transparent accordsing to your specificartions.
THUMBS
Your image galleries have a number of options as to how they display the thumbnails for visitors to choose from. You can make them horizontal or vertical if scrolling style, and adjust the size, spacing, and background color or transparency.
MENU:
LIST:
When planning your site, the first and most important step is deciding apon a structure for your menus and sub sections. This branching, or 'site tree' will define the way in which people navigate and find what they are looking for in your site. Use this tab to create, and update your site structure.
CREATING
Adding and subtracting entire sections and sub sections is a small matter of typing into the fields provided. Once you create a new section or subsection, it is ready to fill with text, images, graphics and media.
MOVING
Should you need to rearrange your menus, you can either copy and paste html formatted text from each section to another via the PAGE-TEXT tab, or you can copy an entire list from a menu and paste it elswhere via the sub tab page in the sub arrows of MENU-LIST.
KIND:
Pro users can choose the style and look of the site menu here, from it's basic format, to it's font, size, and colors attributes.
MENU TYPE
GICO provides some default choices for this feature, including row or stacked, while additional types are available for download on either the gogico.com web site or third party creators
FONTS
The menu uses the basic fonts found on most computers in use today and are therefore universal, meaning they require no extra download time for the site visitor. One of them should compliment any additional fonts you decide to incorporate via skins or your own media additions.
These can also be made bold or italic as you see fit.
COLORS
Using various combinations of the four color options and the transparency sliders on BASE and PAGE, you can create a variety of looks for each menu type.
TITLE:
The title displays the section currently selected from the menu . This is another tab, available to pro users only, where you can make changes to it's attributes.
You can leave the default setting of standard web fonts found on all computers, or choose ANIMATE to utilize the GICO fonts which can feature animated effects set to varying time intervals, as well as a transparency option.
Either setting can be set to left, center, or right with the arrow buttons, and you can choose to have the entire title shown - section and subsection - or simply the particular subsection viewed.
PAGE:
TEXT:
This is where you can edit the text content found within sections of your site. When you select this tab the text box becomes active allowing you to perform all word processing functions found within standard text editor programs. You can resize, color, align, and change attributes such as leading, bold, italics, etc.
In the standard version the text box becomes highlighted, while in the pro version, you can change the size and location of the text boxes for each section. If text becomes longer than the sizre of the box can accomodate, then scrolling is activated automatically ,giving added economy of space to your design.
The lower four buttons appear in both standard and pro versions and allow you to copy all the formatted text from a section, and paste it to another, including links, colo, etc. zz
You can REVERT the text to the version found when opening the section, while changes are kept when you leave a section for another. No changes are final until you perform a SAVE SITE in the site library. Clicking OPTION - Z will perform incremental undos.
SIZING
By clicking BORDER, pro users can set the default and first section's text block to the currently viewed size and position. Any text which hasn't had a particular size or position setting will now appear in this position. You can apply the default setting to any other section by clicking APPLY, and click SHIFT-APPLY to make all text blocks in the site conform to the current by default.
LINK:
Clicking the following buttons (counterclockwise) will create a link in the currently viewed section.
YOUTUBE Fill in the code string found at the end of a youtube movie address, and an icon appears which calls a pop up window containing that movie.
FOLDERS See 'site/folders' in the main section for information about this feature. Site sub folders can then have sections either directly open these new site sections via autoload, or by a link button.
MP3 Select the MP3 file (see media pro/uploads in the main section) via the drop down menu, and choose either autoload or the default play button.
MOVIE You can select SWF, Quicktime, and Windows Media Player files via the drop down menu.(see media pro/uploads in the main section) that will then open in external browser windows, either automatically on section load (via autolink) or at the click of the appropriate icon found at the bottom of content text.
EMAIL This produces a clickable email icon under the content text once an email address has been typed into the 'LINK' field. The autoload feature automatically opens the viewers mail program with the included address in the send field.
Here's a video link:
IMAGES:
Graphic images can be placed within the skin, but each section can also feature it's own gallery of enlargeable thumbnails, as well as a single, page specific image.
This trial site is save disabled, and does not permit the uploading of images. Otherwise, you could add a thumbed image here by clicking THUMB , or a page image by clicking SINGLE.
To replace or delete an image you would hold SHIFT while clicking on it a so it appears in the editor. Then click either CHANGE or TRASH as desired.
Below is an example of a thumbnail gallery, while to the right is a section image. By going to SKIN-LAYOUT in the editor, you can see that there are many options for how your thumbs appear, including size, spacing, and stacked or in a row.