CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE	INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TRAINING GUIDE

Beginner's Guide to Netscape Composer 4 for Windows Users:

How to Learn More

The Netscape Help Feature
HTML Coding and Web Authoring Sources

HTML Coding
Online Web Authoring Resources
Other People's Coding

The Netscape Help Feature

Netscape Communicator has an online manual accessible from the Help menu. Choose (i.e., click):

Help - Help Contents

From the NetHelp window that appears you can choose either Contents (the default selection) or Index to find information.

With Contents selected, click Creating Web Pages (see Figure 1, below), then scroll through the "Creating Web Pages" section of the "table of contents" and follow the appropriate link to get to the topic of interest.

FIGURE 1. NetHelp Contents Window NetHelp Contents Window

If you select Index, you'll see a Look for: text box and the beginning of an alphabetical list of topics at the left side of the window. You can scroll through the topics list to find (and click on) a topic of interest or you can type a search string in the Look for" text box (as shown in Figure 2, below). When you click on a topic link, additional choices will appear on the right side of the screen. Click on the desired topic to display information about the topic.

FIGURE 2. NetHelp Index Window NetHelp Index Window

Navigate back and forth between windows of information using the green arrows at the bottom of the window. The printer icon allows you to print. Click the large blue X to exit Help.

HTML Coding and Web Authoring Sources

HTML Coding

When you create a Web page using Netscape Composer you don't have to do any HTML (HyperText Markup Language) coding. Composer does the coding for you. You can see the underlying codes by viewing your page source (either in Composer or Navigator):

View - Page Source

A page source file is shown in Figure 3 (below). Notice that the codes work in pairs; that is, there is a beginning and an ending code (or "tag") — such as <H1> to begin Heading 1 and </H1> to end it (the text in between the codes will show on the Web page itself as a first-level heading).

Note: Figure 3 shows the coding for the sample formatted page illustrated in the "Formatting Your Web Page" section of this training guide.

FIGURE 3. Page Source Coding

Online Web Authoring Resources

If you would like to delve into the realm of HTML coding and Web authoring, there are numerous online resources to help you. Some recommendations are listed below. As of this writing, the locations listed exist; however, like all sites on the Web, they could disappear at any time. To locate other on-line documentation use one of the Internet search tools available (Google, Hotbot, WebCrawler, or Yahoo for example).

Creating & Publishing a Web Page at CSUN: The Basics (an ITR training guide): http://www.csun.edu/itr/guides/webpage.html

An Introduction to HTML (by Prof. Steven Stepanek): http://www.csun.edu/~sgs/htmlintro/index.html

Introduction to HTML (by Ian Graham): http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/htmlindex.html

Webmonkey: The HTML Basics: http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/teachingtool/html.html

Webmonkey Reference: HTML Cheatsheet (list of codes): http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/reference/html_cheatsheet/index.html

Other People's Coding

Another way to learn more is to view someone else's "source code". If you see something you like on a Web page, take a look at the HTML coding that created the "look." In Netscape Navigator, choose Page Source from the View Menu.

Prepared by Gail Said Johnson, User Support Services

February 21, 2001