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Michael Bennett
Anyone with a basic understanding of how to use Windows and how to use Netscape can also create web pages and publish them on the Internet. Netscape’s built-in software called Page Composer provides a graphical interface for anyone to create complicated HTML files that can be uploaded to a server and published on the Internet. This brochure features the basic information for using Composer to create web pages. There’s more than one way… There are several ways to accomplish tasks in Composer. There is a drop-down menu bar at the top of the screen, there are buttons on a “button bar,” and there is the “right-click” method of opening pop-up windows. Use whichever way you feel comfortable with. Here you will see explanations for Composer’s major features followed by methods of doing them. Don’t be confused by the variety of ways to get things done. Just pick the one you want to use and use it.
There are three ways to open Composer from within the Netscape 4.x browser. 1. Main Menu – File – New – Blank Page
2. Main Menu – Communicator – Composer
3. Click on the Composer icon on the Component bar in the lower
right portion of the Netscape window
When Composer opens, you will see a main menu at the top of the window and two toolbars under it. The first toolbar is called the Composition toolbar and contains buttons for creating, opening, or saving files, for previewing files as they will look on the Internet, for editing text, for printing, and for adding links, images, and tables. The second toolbar is called the Formatting toolbar. It contains buttons and drop-down menus for performing text formatting tasks such as applying paragraph styles, fonts, and text attributes. It also has buttons for bold, italics, underlining, bulleted lists, numbered lists, tabs, and test justification.
Filenames can be a tricky matter when transferred to file servers. If you follow these guidelines, you should have no problems.
It is a good idea to create a special folder on your hard drive before
you begin working in Composer and saving files. Put all your Composer
web page files and all your graphic image files into this folder.
Doing this makes the file transfer process much easier. You will
also know where all your files are.
1. On the main menu, click File, then either Save or Save As...
If you have already previously saved the file, clicking Save will save it with the same name and overwrite the old file. If you have not yet saved it or wish to save it with a different name, use the Save As… method. 2. Use the Save button Various properties of your web page such as its title, description, and keywords can be set in the Page Properties dialog box. The title entered in Page Properties does not appear on the page itself, but in browsers. The title will appear in the title bar of the window in which the page is displayed. When a visitor to your page creates a bookmark for it in their browser, the title you enter here becomes the name of the bookmark. Also, Web search engine services use the title as the primary reference for what the page is about. A good page title is important. Use the main menu and click on Format, then click Page Colors and Properties.
This will bring up the Page Properties dialog box.
Some Web search engines display the description. It should be kept short, simple, and accurate. The Keywords and Classifications are lists of words separated by commas that describe the subject of your page. Different search engines use these to categorize your page. The Colors and Background tab gives you options for setting the colors for your text, links, and background. It also gives you the ability to use a graphic image as your background.
The Color Schemes option allows you to choose from several preset schemes in Composer. This is a quick way to get all the colors set at once. Text can be typed directly onto the Composer screen or it can be copied and pasted onto it from some other file, such as a word processed document. The size of the text can be changed using various heading formats or by selecting a particular point size from 8 to 36. You can also select any font to be used, but if a visitor to your page does not have the font you selected, they will see the text in a basic font such as Times New Roman. Links that allow a visitor to click and be routed to another web page are underlined. If you need to emphasize something, make it bold or italicize it, but do not underline it and confuse the visitor. Including horizontal lines on a web page can add visual interest and break up the page into logical sections. To add a horizontal line, use the button on the Composition toolbar.
Double-clicking a line will open a dialog box where its properties can be altered.
Graphics images in a variety of formats can be included in your web pages, but it is best to use only .gif or .jpg formats. Others are too large and take too long to load. If color is not a concern, use .gif graphics. The .jpg format allows a lot of colors or shades of gray for more detail. A graphic image file can be inserted into a Composer web page by clicking the Image button on the Composition toolbar.
The Image Properties dialog box opens.
It is best to never manually type the name of the image file you wish to load. Use the Choose File button to find it in your folder on your hard drive. Examine the Image Properties dialog box to see all the options for displaying your graphic image. How text will align next to the image or wrap around it can be formatted by buttons. If you want a border or blank space around the image, the number of pixels you desire can be set. The Alt. Text / LowRes button allows you to provide some text that will briefly appear when a visitor’s mouse pointer pauses on top of the graphic. It is generally not a good idea to use the Height and Width Dimensions options. The reason for this is that even though you may wish to reduce the size of the image that will be seen on your web page, the entire full-sized image will be loaded by the visitor’s browser. This may take a lot of time. A better alternative is to load the original large image into a graphic editing program and resize it to smaller dimensions. Save it with a slightly different filename and use that image on your page. Links are places in your web page where a visitor may click their mouse and be sent to another section of your web page or to a completely different web page. Sections of text and graphic images can be made into links. To make some text into a link, simply highlight that text and click the Link button on the Composition toolbar.
There are two basic types of links. Relative links send visitors to other web page files you have created and which are on the same server, so the entire file pathname is not necessary. Absolute links send visitors to other web page files using the entire pathname. The advantage to using relative links for links to your own web page files is that if you ever change servers you will not have to go through every file and change all the pathnames for your links. Your files will link to each other relatively no matter what server contains them. A Character Properties dialog box will open with the Link tab selected when the Link button is clicked.
If you are linking to another of your own web pages you should use the Choose File button to locate it. If any part of the “Link to” address is incorrect, it will result in what is called “a broken link” and is very frustrating to visitors. If you are linking to a completely different URL you should first go to that URL’s location in your browser, highlight the URL, and copy its address. Then back in your Composer web page file, highlight the text you wish to serve as the link, click the Link button, and paste the URL in the dialog box. Click the Apply button and the link will become active. Note that links will not work while you are viewing them in Composer until you preview the file. Previewing a Composer file will show you exactly what it will look like when it is viewed by visitors on the Internet and the links will be fully active. To preview a Composer file, click the Preview button on the Composition toolbar.
If your Composer file had either not been previously saved or you had made any changes to it since it had last been saved, you will be prompted first to save it. You can also copy links directly from other web pages you view through your browser. Simply position the mouse pointer over the link, right-click, and select Copy Link Location in the drop down menu. Then position the pointer in the web page you are making in Composer, click (or right-click), and paste the link. Images can be made into links in the same way as text. Position a graphic image on your Composer page where you want it, click on it to highlight it, right-click and select Image Properties.
The Image Properties dialog box will pop-up. Select the Link tab and choose the URL for the link. Click the Apply button and the image is linked.
Some web pages are extremely long and require a visitor to scroll vertically. In cases such as these, targets can send the visitor to a particular part of the web page without scrolling. The Target button makes a target.
Wherever the cursor is positioned when the Target button is clicked
is where the target will be placed. The symbol for a target that
will be seen in Composer is When the Target button is clicked, a Target Properties dialog box will open. It asks for a name for the target and an appropriate name should be entered.
After the target is set up, links can be made to it. The usual use for targets is in menus at the top of long web pages. Each part of the menu serves as a link to a particular target further along in the file. To make a link point to a target set up the link in the normal way, except when you are prompted to enter the location of the link. The names of all of the targets you have set up in the file will appear in the list of targets. Select one and click Apply.
Tables are a great way to organize text and graphic images on a web page. A table is a structure of rows and columns that form cells. Text and graphic images can be put into those cells. Beyond rows, columns, and cells, tables can have captions above or below the table and solid borders or invisible borders. The background of a table can be the same as the background of the page or it can have its own separate background color. Even individual cells in a table can have individual backgrounds. A table is created when the Table button is clicked on the Component toolbar.
The New Table Properties dialog box will appear where you can select many features about the table. Here is a list of the various settings you can select.
Entering Information in a Table If no information is entered into a table cell, it is a blank cell. A blank cell’s borders do not show up and the table background doesn’t appear behind it. In the example below, a table is shown which has 2 rows and 3 columns. The first row has its first and third cells blank. Here is the table as seen in Composer.
And here it is as seen in the Netscape browser.
After creating a table and entering data, you might need to change its appearance by customizing the table in some way. There are two ways to open a Table Properties dialog box for an existing table. First start by making sure that the edit cursor is somewhere within the table you want to format. Then you may: 1. Click on the Format button in the main menu, then choose Table Properties.
2. Right-click to open the pop-up menu and choose table properties.
The Table Properties dialog box is very similar to the New Table Properties dialog box that opens when you first create a table.
The Row tab allows for specific changes that will apply only to a single row of cells. The alignments can be set and a row can have its own background.
The Cell tab gives these same options, but has other additions. A cell can be made to span more than one row and/or more than one column. To do this, the cells in the positions that will be spanned by another cell must first be deleted. Then the span of the other cell can be adjusted to take up that space. Here is an example of a cell that spans three columns.
And here is an example of a cell spanning two rows.
Options shown by the Cell tab.
Tables, rows, and cells cannot be deleted or inserted using the normal Edit options from the main menu in Composer. There are special Table options in both the Edit and Insert menu choices. Another way to edit table sections is to position the cursor inside the section to be edited and right-click to open a pop-up menu that gives both the Delete and Insert options for the entire table, a row, a column, or just one cell. Web Pages with Learning Village Warning! Do not use blank spaces in any of your filenames. Learning Village does not recognize any characters after a blank space. Your links to files with blanks in their names will not work. The easiest way to use Learning Village to host a multi-page web site
is to first create a main page using the template method. Put a link
in this template-created page that will send visitors to your main pages.
By doing this, if you ever wish to move the files from LV to some other
server it will be very simple and require no changes in relative links
between your pages.
How to put a link on Learning Village to go to pages you create 1. Log-in to Learning Village and select the "modify home page body" option. 2. You probably haven't used all of the optional sections, so pick one to use for your link. Delete the title of whichever section you chose. 3. In the text part of the section you chose, enter this:
Note: there is one blank space between the “<a “ and “href=…” part of the above code. Word wrap makes it look as if you should press Enter, but don’t. This is the HTML code to force a blank line and center a link. You will have to change school to the specific letters for your school (example: Lexington High School's abbreviation for Learning Village is lhs). You will also have to change username to your specific Learning Village username. Change the text part from "Click here to enter my Web Siite" to whatever you want to say to let people know that it is a link to the rest of your web site. 4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and Save. How to Upload Files to Learning Village 1. On your "Design the Home Page for:" screen, select "modify file repository" at the top of the screen. 2. On the new screen that opens, scroll down until you see five blank lines with a Browse button following them. 3. Click on the first Browse button and use the file window to go to wherever you have your web site files on your hard drive. Select a file and click Open. 4. Click on the second Browse button and repeat this process. Continue this until you have filled all five Browse lines with files; then click Save. 5. Repeat this process until you have transferred all your web
site files. Don't forget to transfer the graphic files, too!
Preview your LV page, click on the link to your index page, and check
out your web site at LV. Everything should be working fine.
Changing and Updating Files on Learning Village Files that are sent to your LV repository with the same name as files that are already there will be given random, all caps filenames. If you wish to update a file in your LV repository, the old file must
first be deleted, then the newer updated file can be sent and will work
fine.
Web Pages with Other Servers You can transfer the files you create with Composer to any ISP host.
It is suggested that you use a FTP program to do this. Usually the
ISP host has instructions on how to do this as well as a free FTP program
for you to use.
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on the Composition toolbar.
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This symbol will not be seen when viewed with a browser or during a Preview.
