This demonstration shows how the Outline view provides efficient portal site navigation.
Before you begin, you should complete Exercise 2.1: Adding design elements to a portal site.
The elements that comprise a portal are arranged in a hierarchy. Elements can be parents, children, or peers of other elements. Portal Designer enforces the valid portal hierarchy by only allowing insertion of elements in the proper places in the hierarchy. For instance, labels can only contain other labels, pages, and URLs; they cannot directly contain rows, columns, or portlets. Portlets may only reside within a row or column container. Rows, columns, and hierarchies of rows and columns must reside within a page. Refer to Portal nodes and elements for information on parent, child and peer relationships within a portal site.
The hierarchies within a portal can become quite complex. The hierarchies are also specific to the version of WebSphere Portal for which you are developing. When editing a portal using Portal Designer, the Outline view displays the hierarchy of the elements. The recommended way to manipulate a complex hierarchy in Portal Designer is to use the Outline view. See Using the Outline view for details on using the Outline view with Portal Designer.
The following demonstration shows how to navigate a complex portal site using the mouse pointer within Portal Designer, then how to navigate the site using the Outline view:Now you are ready to begin Exercise 2.3: Manipulating column widths.