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A BEE Portal webpage consists of four main parts:
- Prelude
- Head
- Body
- Application
Head and Body correspond to the <head> and <body> section of the <html> document. Prelude is a "silent part" that produces no display but programmatically prepare for the Head and Body parts. The Application part is in the main content area. You need to insert the <beept%application> tag there even if you have no applications to install, because the Application part default to giving you a TEA for entering contents.
Besides the instantiation of the Portal Object, the Prelude will also set common variables (e.g. those derived from the scheme% class and the Portal Object itself) and invoke Application Processes (the "silent" part of application functions).
As mentioned in the BEE Facilities section, each Site Application can be split into two parts: Process and Display. Process is to produce all the data items that the Head and Body parts may require. These items include all modifiables such as menu entries, settings, counter values and shopping cart information.
Since the designer has complete freedom to put the data items where he or she sees fit, the Prelude must come before the "<head>" tag (possibly before the <html> tag), to get things ready. And because the Prelude comes before <head>, it must produce no display. If a Process in Prelude has something to say, it must set a message string variable and let the Display part of the Site Function to display the message.
In the begining of the Head and Body parts, the Portal Object inserts some constructs via the <beept%head> and <beept%body> tags. These two tags should appear right after the <head> and <body> tag respectively. (The Portal Object Name is assumed to be "pt".)
In the main display area (or the owner content area), the <beept%application> tag is required. Site Applications run in this area, which should be self-contained (e.g. in a TD or not in any TABLE at all).
The above design of the Portal Object encapsulates BEE as a platform, so when the Portal Object upgrades with new facilities, all webpages will benefit without changes (like upgrading your Windows will see all programs on it runs better with more features).
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