Creating a Web page using Netscape Composer

Download Netscape 4.7

I. Starting a new page

Netscape Composer has an editor from which you may start from scratch or use a pre-designed template. To begin, click on the File menu, pull down to New Document and over to Blank Page or choose a template or the wizard. Save the document. Your "home" page should be titled index.html and every page thereafter should have the .html suffix. Your index.html URL will be your home page. For Cameron faculty it will be http://www.cameron.edu/~yourlogin (http://www.cameron.edu/~karenh). Other pages will have the same URL adding a slash and the title of the page after your login. My Canada pictures are http://www.cameron.edu/~karenh/Canada.html

II.  Text
Type (or copy/paste) the text you want to include in your web page.  You may change font, color, size, style and justification on the composition toolbar.

Click the pull down menu on the left to change Heading settings, Variable Width font menu to change font settings (*note: Choose a common font. The font must reside in the viewer’s machine or it chooses a default font.) The next menus change font size, color, style, bullets, numbers, indentation and justification respectively. The text must be highlighted to apply settings.
 

III.  Copying clip art
 

You may copy clip art from various "free" sources on the WWW. I have provided a few locations for you under the WebTutorials and tools section. To copy a graphic, put your mouse on the graphic, right click and pull down to save image as. Direct your Save in pull down to a folder in which you are working. (Mine is generally on the desktop.) The file name will default to its created name. You can change the name without damaging the graphic, but don’t add an extension.  You should save the graphic in the same location as your HTML page.  The name of the graphic must be one word--no spaces.

IV.  Inserting clip art

 

You may add clip art that you have saved or scanned. All images must either be in GIF or JPG format. Store all the images you intend to use in the same file. To add the image, click on the Insert Image button on the right end of the top toolbar. Click on the Choose File button beside the Image location dialogue box. Choose the folder for the stored image, choose the image and click on open and insert.

V. Links

If you want to connect text or images to another location, highlight the text and/or image and click the link icon in the middle of the top toolbar. In the Enter text to display for a new link box, type the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of the link to which you want to connect. (http://www.cameron.edu) To make an email link, type mailto:name@place.ext without spaces.

VI. Anchors
An anchor is a link on the current page. To create an anchor, highlight the destination (target) text and click on the Target button located on the right side of the top toolbar. Next, highlight the text you want to link and click on the Link button. Click on the target text and OK.
 

VII. Tables Because html doesn’t allow extra spacing or tabs, you must use tables to create multiple columns. To create a table, click on the table icon in the upper right toolbar. Input the desired number of rows and the number of columns. You may also choose a width or height percentage, table color or caption in the attributes box. Choose your alignment and click on OK. The table appears odd at first. As you input text, it formats according to the length of text in each box. To add text, simply click in a box and type your desired text. If you don’t want a border, enter 0 in the line width, Cell spacing and Cell padding boxes. You may edit your table by clicking in any box and selecting Table from the Format menu. You may delete it by clicking in any box and selecting Delete Table in the Edit menu.

VIII. Horizontal Rule Lines

IX. Document Settings/backgrounds
 

To customize your colors and backgrounds, choose Page Colors and Properties in the Format menu. You can change your text colors by clicking on the color boxes. You may customize your background color using that button. If you prefer an image for your background, check the Use Image box and input the and click Choose File and choose an image you’ve downloaded (just like clip art). This option will tile an image to create a background. Avoid backgrounds that are too "busy."

X. Browse

To preview your document, you may click the Preview button. This option allows you to examine your document before it is published. The appearance will be just as it will look once it’s on the Web.

XI. Publish
Outside of Cameron:
To publish your page on the world wide web, you must have a server and know it's ftp (file transfer protocol).  Once you have the ftp, insert it in the Location to publish to field.  This procedure will publish your HTML page and all the graphics that are included in the page.
Cameron University Procedures:
Before you can publish, you must have a Public_html folder in your CUOK account. Create a special directory public_html in your home directory by typing MakePublicHtml (case sensitive) at the $: prompt. This step only has to be done once. Thereafter, when you publish, you must simply put the web page into the public_html folder by the following method:

Click on the publish icon on the right side of the middle toolbar. This dialogue box will appear and in the Other files to include window will be the names of the graphics used in your document. In the HTTP or FTP Location to publish to: window, type ftp://ftp.cameron.edu/users/username/public_html. Title your page in the Page Title box. (This is the title that will show on bookmarks and may be used by search engines.) Include .html in the file name or it will default to .htm. The Index page is the only one that has to have the "l" but it’s best to be consistent. Input your User name and password for the CUOK server. You may save this information and use the default button for future publishing. Click on OK to publish.
At this point you can go to the address through Netscape and view your published Web page! (http://www.cameron.edu/~username/filename.html)

XII. Editing

After you have published your page, you may edit it at any time. Go to the page you want to edit and choose edit page from the file menu. You may edit as desired and then publish again.