Webtopics > Web Design with Netscape
Most of the web design tools are pricey. However, there is one free tool that you can use to build web pages - Netscape Composer. Composer is a part of Netscape's browser. Composer lacks the features of tools like Dreamweaver or FrontPage, but it is easy to learn and you can build functional web pages with it. It is an ideal solution if you want your students to pick up basic web skills in a couple of hours. As the tool is free, they can download it on their home computer and work with it.
Downloading Netscape Browser
Our first step will be to download and install Netscape browser. You can download it from www.netscape.com .
Create a Folder to hold all the web site files
Next, we will create a folder to hold all our files. Copy all the images that you want to use on your site to this folder. Your images should be in the Jpeg or Gif format. Pictures (taken with digital camera or scanned images) should be stored as Jpeg. Gif is generally used for logos and illustrations.
Web pages are actually made up of instructions written in a language called HTML (hyper text mark up language). Tools like Netscape Composer help us write our pages as we would on word processing software, hiding the HTML codes from us. Netscape's term for a web page is "Composer Page".
Creating a New Page
Fig 1: A new composer page
Select "File" from the top menu and then select "New". Under "New" select "Composer Page". A blank page shows up.
There are several icons on the top. Move your mouse over each of the icons. A short description will be displayed.
Fig 2: Move your mouse over each of these icons to see a short description .
Page Title and Properties
Fig 3: Page title and properties
It is always a good idea to provide a "Page Title" to our web page. From the top menu select "Format". Select the last item on this menu "Page Title and Properties". You will get a window where you can enter a Title, the author's name and a short description.
Saving your page
Click on the "Save" icon. You will be prompted for a "File Name". You can type in "index". Usually the first page or the main page of a web site is named as "index". Composer will add the ".html" extension to your file. This extension signifies that the file is a web page.
Entering Text
You can type in this page as you would on Microsoft Word. Start typing into the page. In this example I am creating a page for Tibet . So, I will type in the title - " Tibet ". Highlight this title and click on the Text attributes box. (This box is on the top left corner. It usually has the "Body Text" selected.) Select "heading 1" from this box. This selection makes your text bolder and larger. Type "Enter" (return) and you will be placed on the next paragraph. On most web page design tools, typing the "Enter" key takes you to the next paragraph. If you just want the next line, hold the "Shift" key and type the "Enter" key.
Changing Text colour and Formatting
Fig 4: The text format menu
Highlight some text on your page. Select "Format" from the top menu. You can change the Text Size, Font and the text colour from this menu. Verdana, Helvetica or Arial are good fonts to use on a web page. These fonts are more readable on a screen.
Inserting an Image
The insert image icon is located on the top bar. Click on this icon. A new window appears asking you to provide your image location. You can use the "Choose File" button to browse to your file. There is a space for you to enter some "Alternate Text". This alternate text is useful if the user has a slow Internet connection. The alternate text will be shown if the image fails to load or takes a long time to load.
Inserting a Table
We will create a table to enter some tabular data. Click on the table icon (from the top row of icons).
Fig 5: Table properties
A new window appears asking you to choose the number of rows and columns you want for your table. Another value that is needed is the width of the table. You can provide the width as pixels or as a percentage of the page. If you provide this width as percentage value, then the user viewing the web page with see the table resize whenever he resizes his browser. Providing the width as pixel keeps the table width fixed.
Fig 6: A table. Double click on a cell to get to the cell properties.
The tables are made up of cells. You can change the properties of each cell (i.e. cell width) by double clicking within the cell. You will get a new window where you can modify some of the cell properties.
Fig 07: Cell Properties
Link
Web pages in a teaching environment are generally used as starting point to get your students to do more research on the topic. We will create a link to a search engine where students can look for more information on Tibet . Type a line of text "Search Yahoo!" Highlight the word "Yahoo!" We will link this word to Yahoo!'s site. Click on the "Link" icon. Under the "Link Location" field enter " http://www.yahoo.com ". The " http:// " part is important. The link will not work if you miss this part.
Fig 8: Linking to an external site
You can also link to other pages in your site. Let us say you have another page called history.html that talks about Tibetan history. On your main page you can type in a text "History". Highlight this text and click on the "Link" icon. This time we will click on the "Choose File" button to select the "history.html" file.
Publish
Fig 9: Publish settings
Our page is ready; all we need to do now is to publish it. You need to have a web server in order to copy the files to it. Composer provides a publish option that can copy the files from our computer to the server. You will certain settings to publish your files - your site address, the FTP address, username and your password. You can get these from your network administrator. If you using a free web hosting service (Tripod.com or Geocities.com), these details will be mailed to you once you register. You may want to check the first article in this series (Teach Jan/Feb 2003) to read more about registering to these free web-hosting sites.