Using Composer
This chapter provides basic information about using Composer to create, edit, and publish your own web pages.
What's the difference between browsing and editing web pages?
You use the Navigator browser to find and view web pages on the World Wide Web. When you are browsing, you don't need to know about the components that make up a web page.
When you browse the Web, the pages you see are typically organized into separate collections of pages called web sites. Each web site consists of several pages linked together in an organized way to create a consistent presentation of the information available at that web site.
To create or edit your own web pages and place them on the Web, you use Netscape Composer. You use Composer just as easily as you would use a word processing program. The files that Composer creates are called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) files because they contain HTML formatting codes. Navigator knows how to interpret these HTML codes to display Composer files as formatted web pages containing images and links.
Creating and publishing a web page
Here are the basic steps you'll follow to create and publish a web page. You'll find details on each step throughout the rest of this chapter.
Start Netscape Communicator.
Choose Composer from the Communicator menu.
Create a web page using basic editing tasks, such as entering text, and formatting characters and paragraphs.
Put the finishing touches on your web page by adding a table or inserting an image.
Create links to other places in your page, and to other web pages.
Publish your web page so that others can view it. What can a web page contain?
A web page can include some or all of the following elements:
formatted and colored text
still or moving images such as photographs or animations
links that take you to another location in the same page or to another web page
formatted tables
horizontal rule lines
Starting Netscape Composer
There are several ways to open the Composer window, depending on which of the following you want to do:
Create a new page
Edit the page you're currently browsing
Edit an existing HTML file stored on your computer Creating a new web page
To create a new web page, you can choose one of the following starting points:
Start with a blank web page
Use a web page template, a sample page that contains common elements found on most web pages
Use the Web Page Wizard, a special page on the Netscape home site that walks you through the steps for creating a web page. Starting with a blank page
From the File menu choose New, and then choose Blank Page, or choose Composer from the Communicator menu.
Enter text. See "Basic editing" later in this chapter for more information. Creating a page using a template
Note: The Netscape templates are located on the Netscape home site. You must be connected to the Internet to access them.
From the File menu choose New, and then choose Page From Template.
To use a remote page as your template, enter the page's URL. To use a file stored on your hard disk, click Choose File. To choose from a list of custom-designed templates, click Netscape Templates. After clicking Netscape Templates, choose a template (to see a list of templates, you might have to scroll down).To work with a Netscape template, choose Edit Page from the File menu to use the template as the basis for a new web page.
Edit the text. See "Basic editing" later in this chapter for more information.
From the File menu, choose Save. Creating a page using the Page Wizard
The Page Wizard is a special page on the Netscape home site that walks you through the steps of creating a web page. When you've completed the following steps, you'll have a page that you can open in Composer for entering and editing text.
Note: The Page Wizard is located on the Netscape home site. To access it, you must be connected to the Internet.
From the File menu choose New, and then choose Page From Wizard.
Follow the instructions provided to create a page.
From the File menu, choose Edit Page.
Continue entering and editing text. See "Basic editing" later in this chapter for more information.
From the File menu, choose Save. Editing the page you are browsing
To edit the page you are browsing, you have to be able to access the page's HTML file (called the source file). If you don't have the proper access (called write access) to the server where the source file is stored, then you can only browse the web pages on that server.
Most often you'll edit pages that are stored on your own computer. However, you might be able to directly edit your own web pages stored on your Internet Service Provider's server.
Display the page you want to edit in Netscape Navigator.
From the File menu, choose Edit Page.
Enter or edit text. See "Basic editing" later in this chapter for more information.
From the File menu, choose Save. Editing an HTML file stored on your computer
(Windows and Unix) From the File menu choose Open Page. (Mac OS) From the File menu, choose Open, then choose Page in Composer.(Windows and Unix) Click Choose File. (Mac OS) Select the file you want to edit.(Windows and Mac OS) Click Open. (Unix) Click OK.(Windows and Unix only) Click Open again.
Enter text. See "Basic editing" for more information.From the File menu, choose Save. Basic editing
You enter and edit text in the Composer window just as you would in a word-processing program.
Tip For information about designing web pages, see Composer's online help.
Using the toolbars
The toolbars contain buttons corresponding to frequently used commands. Use the Composition toolbar to work with files. Use the Formatting toolbar to apply text styles.
Entering and editing text
Position the cursor over the Composer window.
Click to mark an insertion point.
Begin typing your text. Typing special symbols
To insert special symbols, such as the copyright (©) symbol, run the Windows Character Map application or the Mac OS Key Caps program.
Open your character mapping program.
Change the font to Times Roman.
Select the symbol you want.
Copy the symbol.
From the Edit menu, choose Paste in the Composer window. Selecting text
Double-click a word to select it.
Click the beginning of a line to select the entire line.
Double-click the beginning of a paragraph to select the entire paragraph. Displaying paragraph marks
From the View menu, choose Show Paragraph Marks to see where paragraph marks are located in your document. Composer also displays a short horizontal line to indicate the end of the document.
Copying and pasting text
You can paste text into your document from almost any source. For example, you can select text on a page you are viewing in Netscape Navigator and copy it using Navigator's Copy command from the Edit menu. You can then switch to the Composer window and paste the text into the Composer window by choosing Paste from the Edit menu.
Note: Text that you copy from a web page that you're viewing in Netscape Navigator does not retain formatting information when you paste it into the Composer window. However, text that you copy and paste within the Composer window, or from one Composer document to another, does retain its formatting. Canceling or repeating your last action or command
From the Edit menu, choose Undo to cancel your last action or command.
From the Edit menu, choose Redo to perform the most recent action or command again.
Formatting text consists of applying fonts, sizes, styles (bold, italic, and so on), colors, alignment, and other options to text. Composer provides two types of formatting:
For more information about the paragraph styles that Composer provides,
see "Paragraph Formats" in Composer's online help.
You can insert one or more horizontal lines in your web page to help create visual breaks between page sections. This is especially useful if your page is a long one.
Tables let you present information such as financial data or a calendar of events in a grid of columns and rows. You can also use one or more tables on a page whenever you want to have greater control over the layout of your text and images. For example, you could create a table that's the size of the entire page, and then add text and insert images into the table's columns and rows.
Follow these steps to select a table:
Follow these steps to delete a table:
Follow these steps to add a row, column, or cell:
Follow these steps to delete a row, column, or cell:
After you've created a table, you can change the table, row, or cell properties at any time.
(Unix) From the Format menu, choose Object Properties.Choose the settings you want.
Click OK when you are done.
Composer allows you to work with the two kinds of images that most web browsers support:
GIF files lack the higher quality of JPEG files, but they're more compact
and display more quickly in web browsers.
You can get images by creating them yourself, scanning them, or buying them as part of a commercial clip art package. You can also find GIF images in the Internet's many image archives. See "Saving an image" in Chapter 3, "Using Navigator," for information on saving web page images on your hard disk.
Follow these steps to insert an image file located on your hard disk into the document you're editing:
An image is actually a separate file that does not "live" in your Composer document; the image file can be located on your hard disk or on a remote computer.(Windows and Mac OS) Select the file and click Open. (Unix) Click OK.Choose the options you want.
Click OK. By default, Composer saves a copy of the image in the page's location on your hard disk, so that the image always appears with your document.
Important If you move the image file from its current location on your hard disk, it will no longer appear in your document.
Tip You can drag an image from a folder on your desktop or from your Navigator browser window and drop it into your document. Composer places the image at the insertion point location. To change the image's properties, double-click the image. (Windows) If you paste or drag a BMP (Windows bitmap) image into your document, Composer converts it to JPEG format. You can convert to other formats, such as the popular GIF format, by using the appropriate plug-in. Resizing an image (Windows only)
Position the pointer over the image's highlighted border so that the pointer changes to a double-arrow shape.
Drag the border to resize the image. Moving an image to a new location (Windows only)
Drag the image and drop it at the new location. Creating a link
A link (also known as a hyperlink) is an active part of a document. Clicking a link can take you to:
another part of the same web page
other web pages on your hard disk or on a remote computer Every link contains the web address for the page that the link refers to. This web address is called the page's URL (Uniform Resource Locator). See "What's a URL?" in Chapter 3, "Using Navigator," or refer to Composer's online help for more information about URLs.
Follow these steps to create links from text or images in your page to other web pages:
In the Composer window, select the text or image that you want to create a link for.
From the Insert menu, choose Link, or click the Link button in the Composition toolbar.
(Windows and Mac OS) To link to a file on your hard disk, click Choose File. (Unix) To link to a file on your hard disk, click Browse File.
To link to a file on a remote computer, type the file's URL.Click OK.
in the Formatting toolbar before typing
the new text.
It's a good idea to browse the pages you create so that you can test the links you've created.
Once you have finished creating your web page and have tested the links,
you can publish your page on a web server computer. If your page exists
only on your local hard disk, you can browse your page, but no one else
can. When you publish your page on a server, you copy your page to a computer
that lets others see your page.
A web server is a computer that runs all the time and waits for web
client programs like Netscape Navigator to connect to it and request a
copy of a specific web page. When the web server receives a request for
a page, it sends a copy of the page to the Navigator browser that made
the request.
Ideally, you can publish your web pages on the server owned by the same organization or Internet Service Provider that gives you access to the Internet. Ask your system administrator or Internet Service Provider about publishing your web pages on their server.
Filenames use different conventions and restrictions depending on the
operating system (Windows, Mac OS, or Unix). Since a server computer may
run a different operating system than yours, you'll want to name your files
so that they can be used on the server computer. For example, if you're
copying your files from a Mac OS computer to a Windows 3.1 computer, you'll
need to name your files using filenames that are no longer than eight characters,
followed by a three-character extension, for example: report.htm or resume.htm.
Don't use spaces or other special symbols; use only lowercase letters and
numbers.
You can specify the settings Composer uses for publishing your pages, so that you don't have to enter them each time you want to publish a page.
Tell others the URL for your web page so that they can view it. If you
send them an email message that contains the URL, Messenger automatically
converts the URL into a link that they can click to go to your page.