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====== Overview html ======

The //overview.html// is an optional file, which simply means the game won't crash without it, but it adds polish to your creative efforts. It appears on the notebook before you start a mission or campaign.  When you click on a mission, on the right you see an overview, which is mostly comprised of a picture and one or two lines of text. Alternatively, you could de-PBO an existing mission and use its overview file as a template.

The overview applies to:

  * single missions,
  * a campaign, and
  * individual  missions of a campaign.

The overview of a mission within a campaign is not visible until after you have played that mission. The intent of all overviews is to provide a brief idea of what the mission is about. The keyword is 'brief', because space in the notepad is at a premium.

Version numbers and mission author details should really be kept to the //ReadMe.txt// file, but many authors choose to include this information within the overview for reference.
 

======  Anatomy of the overview.html ======

<code html>
 <html><br>
 <head><title>Overview or anything you like or nothing at all</title></head><br>
 <body><br>
 < h2 align="center">YOUR WAR< /h2><br>
 < p align="center"><img src="Apicture.jpg" width="230" height="170"></p><br>
 < p>a single sentence description< /p><br>
 < p>another  sentence if you must< /p><br>
 </body><br>
 </html><br>
</code>

The three displayed elements of this html are

  * A centered title
  * A centered picture
  * One or more sentence descriptions

Alter colored content to whatever you desire.

**Centered Title**

__CAMPAIGN ONLY__ Do not use this for missions

Using this in missions has no ill effect, however the title is already displayed as part of the mission content and you are losing valuable space to repeat the same thing. h2 tags can be used to make the font bold.

**Note:** Other document sources indicate this should be a header tag "//Main//". They never discuss it in the context of campaign overviews, only 'missions'. It is completely unnecessary and will mess up picture positioning if you use it.

**Default Title**

Centered default titles occur unconditionally for all missions. They do not appear for campaign overviews.

The title of the overview (not the html <title> above, the name of the mission this overview represents) comes from one of two sources:

* The file name of the mission folder will be displayed. Eg Apples.Pbo.Cain OR
* The briefingName= contained in the //mission.sqm// of the mission folder, written as follows:

<code cpp>
 class Intel
 {
  breifingName= "One Big Pineapple";
</code>

It would be rare for you to want the mission file name to be displayed. In order to work 'correctly'

  * the briefingName= must exist
  * the briefingName= must be different to the file name.

There is a "bug" in OFP, in that if the briefing name is identical to the primary name of the mission folder the mission folder is displayed. 

**Example:** folder name apples.cain (or apples.pbo.cain)

<code cpp>
 breifingName="apples"; //results in the briefing name effectively being ignored. For this reason, you will often see
</code>

<code cpp>
 breifingName="apples "; //(a space is added to force correct display)
</code>

Or, the name of the folder containing the mission has underlines or some other device to make it different.

**Note:** File name title is also displayed as a diagnostic aid if you use cheat sequence -campaign.

**Pictures**

Many people have trouble creating a good overview picture.  Pictures must be 2^n pixels wide and 2^m pixels high (where n and m are whole numbers) keep in mind that very large pictures will not fit on the page.  Possible dimensions (width and/or height) in pixels are:

<code>
 32
 64
 128
 256
 512
 1024
</code>

Many simple HTML tags will work in the [[ofp:missions:briefing.html|briefing.html]] or //overview.html//. For an added touch of professionalism, center your text by adding the following above your main body of description.

<code html>
 < p align="center" >
</code>

A tutorial for creating mission pictures is available Overview Picture.


====== See Also ======

[[ofp:missions:briefing.html|briefing.html]]
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