1. Open Netscape Communicator from the hard drive. You will
likely open up to a blank browser page or to your Home page on the Internet.
Notice that in the title bar, you should see the words "Netscape" or an
icon like this:
This indicates that you are in the Browser or Navigator section of the
group of programs that make up Netscape Communicator.
2. In the top Menu bar, pull down the FILE menu to New
and then go across to Blank Page. Notice that the words
"Composer" or its icon now
appears at the top of the window (your icons may vary, depending on the
version of Netscape). This means that you now are in the Composer
program and can create your own web pages.
You have a blank page now. At the top of the window you will see some of the tools used to create Web pages.
4. Recall that we said that you have limited ways to present the information on your web page. Composer is similar to a word processor but lacks many of the "bells and whistles" (due to the restrictions of the Internet). You may think you've set your pages up a certain way, but when viewed on the Web, the pages may look significantly different.
Text on the web pages have styles. These styles are "Normal", "Heading 1," "Heading 2," and some others. The "Heading 1" is usually used for titles. "Heading 2" is used for sub-titles. "Normal" is used for body text.
You should use these styles as they are preset and then make modifications (the modifications may not work as intended, but the original styles "should" work properly).
5. We are going to type a title and then some text. There are
two ways we could proceed:
To make a point, we'll type first and then change the style.
6. Type:
Welcome to Joe Tiger's Web Page
and press the RETURN key (use your name if you want).
7. Now type the line below
Created at DSISD on February 29, 2000 <-----(enter your school and the date here)
but don't press RETURN or ENTER just yet.
8. Click back in the first line and move your mouse pointer to
9. Press in the menu and drag down to select Heading 1
10. Now we'll center it. Pull down the FORMAT menu to Align
and choose Center. (You may also explore the
tool for an alignment shortcut.)
Notice that the only item centered is the paragraph you selected by clicking in it. You made 2 separate paragraphs when you pressed the RETURN key.
11. Now select the second paragraph (by clicking once in it) and make it Heading 4.
12. Now center it also.
13. Now click anywhere inside your name
and try to make it italics using the
button.
14. Notice that nothing probably happened. This is because some commands work on the entire paragraph (alignment) and some work only on certain characters that you've selected. These are Paragraph Format commands or Character Format commands.
15. You'll need to select (highlight) your name and then click the Italic button. Do that now.
16. Now click at the end of the last line (the date line) in your page
and press RETURN. You"ll notice that the next information
you would type will be centered. This is because the next line
"inherits the formatting" of the line you were in when you pressed RETURN.
You may not want the next line centered, so select FORMAT>Align>Left (or
use the appropriate command under
17. Now type a few lines about your class. Make it at least 3 lines long. Press RETURN twice when finished typing the three lines.
18. SAVE your page in your WebProject folder under the name Page1.html(note that you must NEVER use spaces in the file name). (PC users will get a screen asking for a "page name." For now, accept what is suggested- we'll change it later)
Web pages must end with .html so the browser knows what to do with the page. (Web pages are just text information in their "natural" state. If you do not include the .html, the computer may try to open it in a word processing program. The .html makes the file something that Netscape or Internet Explorer can read and interpret.
If you know the codes for the HTML language, you could type them in Notepad or SimpleText and they would product your web page.
You will sometimes see .htm at the end of a filename. This is because some earlier servers only allowed 3 letters after the "." but newer servers allow additional characters)