Introduction to Netscape Composer

Updated February, 00

Welcome to the Introduction to Netscape Composer. This handout is divided into five sections: Inserting Text, Inserting Hyperlinks, Inserting Images, Formatting the Page, Inserting a Table, and Creating a Second Page. Section 1: Inserting Text The first step to inserting text into a Web page is to open Netscape Composer (Start, Internet Tools, Netscape Composer). To insert text, simply begin typing like you would in any word processor. When you are ready to save, create a folder on the desktop and save your files to this folder. We will refer to this folder throughout the handout. Section 2: Inserting a Hyperlink Your Web page wont get very far if it is only a single page of text. Youll need a hyperlink (an instant connection to another Web page). Creating hyperlinks in Composer is very straightforward. Click the link icon in the button toolbar. A window will pop up asking you to enter text to display. This is just what text you want to act as the link. Once you have inserted the link text you want to use as the link, click in the Link To box. This is the address or URL of the page you want the link to go to. As an example, type http://www.wfu.edu into the box, and click OK. A link will appear in your document, and it will take visitors to your homepage to the WFU Web site. You can insert hyperlinks in documents to anything on the Web, even specific files, like images or text documents.

Section 3: Inserting Images Inserting an image into a document is almost as straightforward as inserting a link. But, first, you need an image to display. The most common way to get images for a site is to steal them. Prior to stealing an image, please remember images on the web are usually copyright protected. To use images on your personal pages requires the permission of the owner. Certain companies such as Disney take a dim view of illegal use of copyrighted images and actively pursue people who use Disney images without permission. To steal an image, open up Netscape (Start, Internet Tools, Netscape Navigator). Since Navigator uses the Wake Forest Homepage as its start page, you might as well take an image from it. To take an image (the logo at the top of the page, in this case), move your mouse over it, and right-click. A menu will pop up with a lot of different choices. Choose Save Image As and a screen will pop up asking you where you want to save the image. save this file in the web folder you created on the desktop. Do this by clicking the dropdown arrow beside the Save In box. This will bring up a list of places to save the file to. Click on Desktop and select the folder you created on the desktop. Then click Save and the image will be saved to the directory on the desktop. To add the image to your page, click the Image button. A window will pop up. To add the image you just saved, click the Choose File button, and it will open up another window that looks like the window you used to save the image. Just open up the folder you created on the Desktop in the same way, and select the file name (wfu-top4.gif in this case). Click Open and the path for the file should appear in the Image Location field. Click OK and the image will appear in your page. To change the position of the image in relation to the text, or to resize it, right-click on the image and choose Image Properties. You can choose to left-justify or right-justify, top-align, middle-align, or bottomalign, resize the image (by number of pixels), and adjust the border.

Section 4: Formatting the Page If you want your Web page to be more than simply black text and a white background, or if you want to use some of the more advanced features of Composer, youll need to know how to use the Format options. In the Format menu, there are several options, each of them deserving of its own section. Font: This tab allows you to change the font used in your page (click on any of the fonts listed), and change from fixed to variable width (). Size: This tab allows you to change the size of the font from two sizes below up to four sizes above the default font size. This is helpful when you want to make headlines, or draw attention to certain sentences. Style: This tab allows you to add various effects to the text in your document. The only two effects that arent selfexplanatory are blinking and nonbreaking. Blinking text does exactly that: blink. It is very annoying if used on anything of interest, but is a good way to make prerequisite text (like an ad you have to write into your page) illegible. Nonbreaking text scrolls right off the edge of the screen, until you turn the function off. It basically disables word wrap on a section of your document. Color: This function is self-explanatory. Heading: Choosing one of these options serves the same purpose as changing the font size. Heading 4 is the same as default-sized text. Paragraph: This tab selects how a paragraph will be set up, including a block quote. List: This tab changes how a list is displayed. It can be bulleted, numbered, as a directory, or as a menu. Align: This tab sets the alignment of the current line, either left, center, or right. Increase/Decrease Indent: These options allow you to vary the indention size. Character Properties: This tab is a format window that allows you to select all manners of options for the text. Table Properties: If you are currently working in a table, this tab allows you to modify it further. Page Properties: This tab contains most of the remaining options not included in Character Properties, including META tags, which are for more advanced users.

Section 5: Inserting a Table Unlike a table in a word processor, a table in an HTML document can be used for more than just displaying words and numbers. These tables can hold images, links (sometimes both at the same time), text, just about any element of a Web page will fit in a table. To create a table, select Insert and Table. Your only option will be Table, which brings up a menu giving you several choices. You can select the number of rows and columns (which can be changed later without having to start over), the alignment on the page, any sort of option. The border line width and cell spacing are a bit confusing for some, because they dont know how big a pixel is. For comparison, the image of the table window is 300 pixels across. You can even select an image as your table background. Inserting text and/or pictures into the table now that it has been formatted is very simple, and works exactly like inserting text or pictures into a regular document.

Section 6: Creating a Second Page Click File, New, and Blank Page . A new blank Web page will pop up in the same window. All the functions still work the same, and you now have a new page. To link these two pages together, save your page in the folder on the desktop and name it something like page2.html then close it. You will now be back at your first page, and you can link the two together with a link. Instead of using the URL of a Web page, click the Choose File button, and select page2.html as your document. Now, when you click on the link you just made, you will connect to the second page you made. To link back to the first page, just do the same thing, only selecting index.html as the file to link to. You can actually use this feature to make links to open up WAV files, JPEG images, or any files that you may have as a part of your Web page. Now that you can perform all of these tasks in Netscape Composer, you can create your own Web page. The final step in this process is to publish your pages to the web. Please see the handout Web pages at WFU for more information regarding publishing.