CREATING WEB PAGES USING NETSCAPE
Netscape has the ability to allow you to create simple web pages--it's also set up so that you can use Netscape to put your newly created page on your web server. Go to the Communicator/Page-Composer menu to open a new page. Type or import text as you might in a normal word processor. Use items such as Font, Color, and Page Colors from the Format menu to make the page look how you'd like and then save the file (save options in Netscape will automatically convert the page to HTML format option).
In making your web page, you can create hyperlinks (see ** below) by highlighting the text that will serve as the link button and then go to the Insert/Link menu (creating hyperlinks can also be done using the "Link" icon from the toolbar). Hit the Link tab and then find the the Link-to box in the middle of the dialog---that's where you place the relevant URL or file name. (To get really "fancy", you can place a small graphic on your page, highlight it, and turn it into a hyperlink--see Insert/Image menu.) Under the Format menu you can change how the text appears (font and color can be changed and even text can be created using Format/Style). Under Format/Page-Colors-and-Properties you can change the overall appearance of your page, affecting the background color or even selecting an image for the background (unlike WordPerfect and Word, which come with a variety of background types, you have to supply the image file in Netscape). The Insert/Horizontal-Line menu item (or H. Line toolbar icon) can be used to place a horizontal break line on your page (such as the line that separates the text and return link at the bottom of this page). The Insert/Image menu can be used for inserting jpg and gif image files (NOTE: be frugal in the insertion of images into web pages, otherwise it might take a significant amount of time for someone connected by modem to view your web page).
Once your proto-web page looks about like you want it, save it as HTML by selecting the File/Save-As menu and selecting HTML . It's best to give your web files the extension ".htm" or ".html" to distinguish them from regular files--Netscape will do this automatically. You will want to look at your web page in the browser before posting it on the web for everyone to see. You may discover that things get formatted a little bit differently by the browser than what you saw in the page composer--to do the preview either hit the Preview tool or go to the File/Browse-Page menu item. A helpful hint if you've got graphics on your page is to change your computer screen to 640x480 resolution and then view your page using Netscape or IE. The reason for this is that there are still many people who have low resolution monitors--this will allow you to determine if they can reasonably view your page.
Once you've got your page(s) set up like you want, you will need to ftp
them to a server where they'll be available for others to view. There are three things to
be aware of here. First, some ftp programs can't handle long file names, so you may
discover that the names have been truncated in the transfer process. Just use the Unix mv
command to restore their proper names. Second, your server should designate a certain name
as being the first page that someone sees when they type in your URL. That file name is
almost always index.html--so be sure that your main index page has that name. Third, in
ftp-ing your files, remember that HTML files should be transferred as ASCII whereas
graphics files should be transferred as binary. Actually, you can use Netscape to
transfer your web pages to your web server---just hit the Publish toolbar icon or go to
the File/Publish menu item.
If you want to print out a copy of these instructions, you may find it
useful to go to the File/Page-Setup menu of your browser and set it for printing black
text. You may also want to go to the File/Print-Preview menu to see if margins, etc. need
to be adjusted.
**Hyperlinks are markers in the
text that allow you to move through a document or to another Web document/site by a click
of your mouse. There are several simple types of hyperlinks to be aware of.--- The first
type is a link to another web site. For instance, you might want to make it so that anyone
who clicks on "USM" in your document automatically jumps to the USM home page.
The hyperlink reference in this case would be http://www.usm.edu. I have a number of these
links on my home page and on the title page of my web presentation.--- A second type of
hyperlink allows a person to jump to another file that's part of your web site. For
instance, if you have a file called "resume.html" on your web server, you could
create a link from your index by using that file name as the hyperlink reference. The
"Return to Seminar Page" at the bottom of this page does this.--- If you want
someone to be able to use their browser to send you an e-mail, you might highlight your
name as a hyperlink and make the hyperlink reference mailto:yourname@yourdomain. I have a
mailto link to my e-mail address at the bottom of my main home page and also in my seminar
presentation.--- If you want to create hyperlinks that allow a viewer to conveniently jump
from paragraph to paragraph in one file, you need to create what everyone else calls
bookmarks but which Netscape calls targets. Put the cursor at the place you want to
jump to and then go to the Insert/Target menu (or hit the Target icon in the toolbar) and
type a name for the bookmark/target. Then move to the text you want to use as the link to
that bookmark (that is, the text someone will click on to jump to the bookmark). Highlight
the text that will serve as the hyperlink and go to the Insert/Link menu (or Link icon in
the toolbar). Hit the Link tab and select the appropriate bookmark/target from the bottom
box. The turquoise (or green if you've used them), underlined ** in this document are set
up as bookmarks that allow you to jump up and down on this page.--- You can also create
hyperlinks to telnet and ftp sites by using telnet:// or ftp:// references.