Creating and editing web pages can be done using a variety of tools. If you want precise control over the look of your page, you can create a page using HTML code using a simple text editor, such as Notepad. If you would like to keep your work simple, you can use a high level web page editor, such as Front Page or Netscape Composer. High level l composers eliminate the need to know web html code, but each editor has it's own pros and cons. If you are just starting out, we recommend the free Composer web page editor by Netscape.

Netscape Composer is a free and readily available web page editor. If you don't already have a version of Netscape on your computer, you can download the full version here for free. As you create your web page, make sure that all of your work is stored in one directory on your PC. Since web pages are made up of both text files and image files, keeping all work in on folder will make things easy when it comes time to upload to the web. Make sure that all link and image references are correct before you upload. For more information on web page basics, check out the tutorial at the Lycos Webmonkey site.

Other web page editors are available. Please see our notes here.

Setting Up Your Webspace On Your PC

You should create a copy of your web space on your computer (if you haven't already done so). To create a copy of your web space, follow these step:

1) Create a folder on your computer that you can use to put all of the web page files in. Something like C:\My Documents\webdocs could be good. If you need to download an existing web site to your PC, go to step 2. Otherwise, see Editing Your Web Page after this section.

2) Download all files to your webdocs folder. Do this by going to your web page in Netscape, select File > Save As and save the file to your webdocs folder on your computer. Do this for each web page in your web site. If you use Internet Explorer to download you files, select File > Save As, then set the Save as Type as Web Page, HTML Only. This will save the only the HTML. Make sure that the File name (such as index.html) is in the file name line. IE defaults to the page title for this line and you might need to change it.  If you need to save the images, you will have to right mouse over each image and do a Save Image As into your web folder (see next step). 

3) Download all images to your computer. Do this by putting your mouse over each image on your web page. Click the right mouse button, then select Save Image As Do this for each image on your page. If you have a background image, move you mouse over some blank part of the screen, click the right mouse button, and select Save Background As If the Save Background As line does not exist, then you do not have a background image.

You should now have all of your web files on your local computer. To check this, use Netscape and select File > Open Page and Choose  File  in your webdocs folder. Make sure Navigator is selected and click on Open. You should see your web page and all of its images. If not, check to make sure that you have all of the images and files in the proper folder. If needed, we can provide a floppy disk or email a zip file with your initial web pages on it.

Editing your Web Page using Netscape Composer

Open the Netscape web browser and then select File > Open Page > Choose File  Find the file that you want to edit, click on it then select Open. Now make sure that Composer is selected and click on Open.  You should now see your web page in the Composer editor. 

When you open your page for editing, you might see boxes with blue dashed lines on the page. These are the outlines of Tables. Tables are used to control the location of items on the web page. 

At this point, most of the editing functions are similar to standard word processors. You can change text by placing your cursor next to the text to be changed. Highlighting and pressing delete or backspacing will remove the text. Typing will allow text to be inserted. 

The toolbar at the top of the editor has some standard formatting functions. Although you will be able to do some basic formatting, extensive formatting is not possible. This is a limitation of the HTML code. 

To make a link, select the text or image to be linked,  click on the Link button and insert the file name that you want to link to. If the file is in your web space, then simply add that file name. If the file is on a remote system, you need to enter the http://www.someaddress.com/filename in the link to dialog box. To add an email link, use the format mailto:name@something.com

Netscape is a little fickle when it comes to positioning the cursor. To get the cursor in a particular location, you might have to position the cursor at the end of some text and use the arrow keys to move backwards or forwards.

When you are complete with your changes, you are now ready to upload your file.

Notes about other editors.

Front Page by Microsoft is a good editor, but we have found that many people will have problems with certain Front Page specific web techniques that the editor likes to insert. The publish function in Front Page will not work with The Westford Web file manager utility. Also, do not use any Front Page specific web bots unless you know how to install them in your web file space. Most Front Page web bots will not work on non-Microsoft web servers. Front Page costs about $125 from Microsoft. Front Page Express is the free, reduced version of Front Page.

Dreamweaver is an excellent web page editor. Dreamweaver creates only W3C standard web pages that work on any web server and costs about $300 from Macromedia.

Go Live is also a good tool. This editor costs about $300 and is available from Adobe.