The Netscape Composer
Okay, you need a webpage, and you don't think coding is for you.
You may even have thought about buying a page creator, and then decided
you didn't want to go that far.
Here's another option.
The first thing you'll need is a copy of the Netscape Internet browser program. I recommend version 4.78. The newer version (6) didn't work as well for me.
Getting the Program
You can download Netscape from various sources. It's free, and here
are a few links.
Netscape Archive
Here, you will find all the versions of Netscape, and you can download
the one you like best:
Tucows
Netscape Programs
This is http://www.tucows.com's download page for Netscape. If you
have trouble loading from this url, go to tucows and type Netscape into
their little search window. You will need the full program, with all the
features - about 22Mb. The browser alone will surf, but you need the Netscape
Composer.
Version
6.2
This one is the latest version of Netscape, which I tried and deleted.
But don't take my word for it. If you prefer to testdrive your own browser,
go for it.
Starting a New Web Page
Open Netscape.
Click File > New > Blank Page.
The Composer will open, with a clean, blank sheet of paper. It's ready for you to create your web page.
The Netscape Composer
Click in the document window, and start typing. Let's call it My Week - just to have a title.
That's a nice start. Not very impressive. Let's jazz it up just a bit.
With your cursor still on the line of type, we'll apply the Heading
1 style to it.
Click the Style window (currently, it says Normal, because the style you were using was the Normal style.) From the list of styles, choose Heading 1.
When you press the Enter key, you will be on a new line, just as in Word or in email. The style will again be Normal. Heading 1 is a style that chains back to Normal when you press the Enter key.
Type in your first line of text.
Now it's time to put a graphic into your page. There are so many ways to do this. We'll start with a very easy way.
Your image is presumably already saved somewhere on your computer's hard drive. Let's say you've saved it into the My Documents folder, which is on your desktop. If your file is somewhere else, you will have to find it yourself.
1. Open My Documents in a window.
2. Find your image.
3. Drag it into the Composer window.
At this point, you have a webpage with both text and image.
Hit enter and type some more, drag another image or two into your page.
The images are going to be sized according to their resolution. It may surprise you to see them apparently get very large, but if you have an image that is, let's say, 300 ppi, it will be about four times larger than you probably intended it to be when you put it into your webpage. The moral: Keep your images at 72ppi if you intend them for monitor display, including web pages and email.
If you don't like one of the images you've put in, click on it and press the Delete key.
Save your document into a new folder - one you have created just to hold it. If this is the first document you upload, you should probably call it index.html. When you save it, all the images you dragged into it will be saved, too.
Getting it Online
Now we need to upload it to your web site.
For this, you may already have a method you love. Here's what I recommend.
Find an FTP program. I use WS_FTP
LE. This is the Limited Edition, and it's free. It works great. Download
it.
You'll find Tutorials
for the program on their webpage, too, but it's not terribly hard to use.
You install it and open it. Then you tell it where your account is, and the files in the left window are copied to the webpage listing in the right window when you click the transfer arrow. You can transfer your entire website with this program, from Internet to your hard drive, from your hard drive to the Internet, or from one 'net site to another.
In the above figure, I have My Documents in the window on the left. I haven't yet connected to a remote site.
1. Click the Connect button.
2. You create as many of these "Session Properties" setups as you like. I have one for each of my websites. In the figure above, you see my settings for my http://doodelbug.tripod.com website. Notice that the Host Name/Address is ftp.tripod.com. Host Type is Automatic detect. My user ID is my name there. My password goes into the appropriate window, and I have clicked the Save Password box.
3. Here I have the next tab selected at the top of the Session Properties dialog box. I have typed in the folder where I want to start my session on my computer. The files I will upload are in Mom's Folder. (I'm Mom.)
4. You don't need to type in an "Initial Remote Site Folder." It will be your account's root directory. But if you prefer to start in a different folder, you could certainly enter the url for it, and you would open in that folder.
5. The only other change I've made to these settings is under the Extensions tab. Click the Options button at the bottom of the main WS_FTP window and choose the Extensions tab. I typed these extensions, one at a time, into the small window, then clicked Add. You can type these into yours. It won't hurt anything if you have a few you don't need.
6. When you click Connect, you are connected with the options you have set up for this session type. Next time you have files to upload to the same website, your account is already set up. You only need to be sure it's the one selected, and then click Connect.
7. Tripod insists that you have a main page (index.html will make a great main page).
8. Choose the file you want to upload, in the left window. Click the transfer arrow (it's between the frames, pointing from where I have my index.html file toward my tripod website window on the right.) and the file will be uploaded to your website.
Now wait -- I just had you upload a single html file, but your images aren't going to be uploaded along with it if this is all you do. The images must be uploaded, too, and they all need to stay together to maintain the links, or your html page won't know where to find its images. You'll just have empty frames where you wanted images.
If you send the images, too, the page will open and will display properly.
9. In this image, I have chosen the entire folder, where the html document AND the pictures have been saved.
10. I need to open my index.html document on my computer, add the link to my Grandchildren webpage, and then save and upload the index.html document again, if I want people to be able to link to it from my index page.
11. Take a look at my webpage to see how the index page looks, and how the links are working.
https://doodelbug.tripod.com/index.html
OK - that should be enough to get you started. Let me know where I'm not clear and I'll refine and add what we need.
See you on the class board,
Christine