The George Washington University
School of Engineering and Applied Science
CSci 41 -- Introduction to Computer Science

Getting Started with Netscape Composer
Michael B. Feldman - Fall 2001

This file is available online at http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~csci41/fall01/composer-brief.html

This guide provides very basic information to help you start using Netscape Composer to create, edit, and publish your own web pages. I have extracted most of this from the Netscape online reference materials. Select Reference Library from the Help menu to retrieve full reference material from Netscape's web site; select Help from the Help menu to open a (somewhat different but fairly complete) help window.

What Is Netscape Composer?

Netscape Composer is a document editor or word processor, similar to other word processors like Microsoft Word. Whereas the output from Word is a document file in Microsoft's proprietary format, the output from Composer is a file in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) which is suitable for immediate publication as a World Wide Web (WWW) page.

Creating and publishing a web page

Here are the basic steps you'll follow to create and publish a web page.
  1. Start Netscape Communicator.
  2. Choose Composer from the Communicator menu.
  3. Create a web page using basic editing tasks, such as entering text, and formatting characters and paragraphs.
  4. Put the finishing touches on your web page by adding a table or inserting an image.
  5. Create links to other places in your page, and to other web pages.

    6. Publish your web page so that others can view it.
Since you are probably familiar with the basics of using a word processor, let's assume you can do the basic page editing and quickly describe the things that are different about a web page: More details on basic editing follow this initial discussion.

What is your page's publishing address on the SEASCF server?

Use this publishing address for your "home page" file, which is always called index.html:

ftp://tangle.seas.gwu.edu/public_html/index.html

If you publish another file called, say, report.html, then the publishing address is

ftp://tangle.seas.gwu.edu/public_html/report.html

How to publish your page at SEASCF (Windows)

  1. Open the file that you want to publish.
  2. From the File menu, choose Publish, or click the Publish button in the Composition toolbar.
  3. Type the page's title.

    4. The title appears in the browser's title bar and in bookmarks created for this page.
  4. Type the page's file name as you want it to appear on the server.
  5. Type the publishing address.
  6. Type your SEASCF user ID.
  7. Type your SEASCF password.
  8. Choose Files associated with this page to include any image files your web page uses. Once an image file has been published on the server, you need not publish it again.
  9. Click OK.

How to publish your page at SEASCF (Mac OS and Unix)

  1. Open the file that you want to publish.
  2. From the File menu, choose Publish, or click the Publish button in the Composition toolbar.
  3. Type the publishing address.
  4. Type your SEASCF user ID.
  5. Type your SEASCF password.
  6. Choose Files associated with this page to include any image files your web page uses. Once an image file has been published on the server, you need not publish it again.
  7. Click Publish.

How to view your page online

In the URL space at the top of your browser window, enter your URL. Again assuming your user ID is jane, your URL at SEASCF is always

http://student.seas.gwu.edu/~jane

This will display your index.html file, and is equivalent to using

http://student.seas.gwu.edu/~jane/index.html.

How to include a link in your page

A link (also known as a hyperlink) is an active part of a document. Clicking a link can take you to Every link contains the web address for the page that the link refers to. This web address is called the page's URL (Uniform Resource Locator).

Follow these steps to create links from text or images in your page to other web pages:

  1. In the Composer window, select the text or image that you want to create a link for.
  2. From the Insert menu, choose Link, or click the Link button in the Composition toolbar.
  3. (Windows and Mac OS) To link to a file on your hard disk, click Choose File.

    4. (Unix) To link to a file on your hard disk, click Browse File.
      To link to a file on a remote computer, type the file's URL.
  4. Click OK.

Working with images

Composer allows you to work with the two kinds of images that most web browsers support: GIF files lack the higher quality of JPEG files, but they're more compact and display more quickly in web browsers.

You can get images by creating them yourself, scanning them, or buying them as part of a commercial clip art package. You can also find GIF images in the Internet's many image archives.

Note: If you intend to use images in your own web pages, make sure you get permission from the owner of the image, or use royalty-free clip art so you don't infringe on a possible copyright.

How to include an image in your page

Follow these steps to insert an image file located on your hard disk into the document you're editing:
  1. Click where you want the image to appear in your document.
  2. From the Insert menu, choose Image, or click the Image button in the Composition toolbar.
  3. (Windows and Mac OS) Click Choose File to locate the image file on your hard disk.

    4. (Unix) Click Browse to locate the image file on your hard disk.
    An image is actually a separate file that does not "live" in your Composer document; the image file can be located on your hard disk or on a remote computer.
  4. (Windows and Mac OS) Select the file and click Open.

    5. (Unix) Click OK.
  5. Choose the options you want.
  6. Click OK.
By default, Composer saves a copy of the image in the page's location on your hard disk, so that the image always appears with your document.
Important: If you move the image file from its current location on your hard disk, it will no longer appear in your document.

Tip: You can drag an image from a folder on your desktop or from your Navigator browser window and drop it into your document. Composer places the image at the insertion point location. To change the image's properties, double-click the image.

Further information on editing with Composer

Starting Netscape Composer

There are several ways to open the Composer window, depending on which of the following you want to do:

Creating a new web page

To create a new web page, you can choose one of the following starting points: The last two possibilities are described in the full Netscape documentation.

Starting with a blank page

  1. From the File menu choose New, and then choose Blank Page, or choose Composer from the Communicator menu.
  2. Enter text. See "Basic editing" later in this chapter for more information.

Editing an HTML file stored on your computer

  1. (Windows and Unix) From the File menu choose Open Page.

    2. (Mac OS) From the File menu, choose Open, then choose Page in Composer.
     
  2. (Windows and Unix) Click Choose File.

    3. (Mac OS) Select the file you want to edit.
     
  3. (Windows and Mac OS) Click Open.

    4. (Unix) Click OK.
     
  4. (Windows and Unix only) Click Open again.
  5. Enter text.
      6. See "Basic editing" for more information.
  6. From the File menu, choose Save.

Basic editing

You enter and edit text in the Composer window just as you would in a word-processing program.

Using the toolbars

The toolbars contain buttons corresponding to frequently used commands. Use the Composition toolbar to work with files. Use the Formatting toolbar to apply text styles.

Entering and editing text

  1. Position the cursor over the Composer window.
  2. Click to mark an insertion point.
  3. Begin typing your text.

Displaying paragraph marks

Copying and pasting text

You can paste text into your document from almost any source. For example, you can select text on a page you are viewing in Netscape Navigator and copy it using Navigator's Copy command from the Edit menu. You can then switch to the Composer window and paste the text into the Composer window by choosing Paste from the Edit menu.
Note: Text that you copy from a web page that you're viewing in Netscape Navigator does not retain formatting information when you paste it into the Composer window. However, text that you copy and paste within the Composer window, or from one Composer document to another, does retain its formatting.

Canceling or repeating your last action or command

Note: Not all actions or commands can be undone.

Formatting text

Formatting text consists of applying fonts, sizes, styles (bold, italic, and so on), colors, alignment, and other options to text. Composer provides two types of formatting:

Formatting paragraphs

  1. Click the paragraph you want to format, or drag to select more than one paragraph.
    2. Composer will apply the chosen paragraph style to the paragraph that contains the insertion point or to all paragraphs in the selection.
  2. From the Formatting toolbar, choose a paragraph style, list style, or alignment option.
For more information about the paragraph styles that Composer provides, see "Paragraph Formats" in Composer's online help.

Formatting characters

  1. Select the word or characters that you want to format.
  2. (Windows and Unix) Choose a font, size, color, or style from the Formatting toolbar.

    3. (Mac OS) Choose a size, color, or style from the Formatting toolbar. Choose a font using the Format menu.
Tip Additional text styles (superscript, subscript, blink, and others) are available by choosing Style from the Format menu.
For more information about working with fonts and adding color, see Composer's online help.

Spell-checking your document

  1. From the Tools menu, choose Check Spelling, or click the Spelling button in the Composer window.
    2. Composer checks for spelling errors using its main dictionary, which contains the most common words. If Composer finds a word that is not in the main dictionary, it displays the word in the Spelling dialog box and gives you choices for correcting the possible misspelling.
  2. For each word that Composer displays in the Spelling dialog box, choose whether to correct it, ignore it, or add it to the dictionary.
  3. Click Stop to stop checking spelling before Composer has finished checking the entire document.
  4. Click Done to close the dialog box.

Inserting a horizontal line

You can insert one or more horizontal lines in your web page to help create visual breaks between page sections. This is especially useful if your page is a long one.
  1. Click the location in the Composer window where you want to insert the line.
  2. Click the H. Line button in the Composition toolbar, or from the Insert menu, choose Horizontal Line.
  3. (Windows only) To increase the line's height, position the cursor over the line so that the cursor changes to a double-headed arrow, and drag the line upward.
  4. To change line properties such as line height, alignment, or 3D shading, double-click the line to display the Horizontal Line Properties dialog box.

Deleting a horizontal line

  1. Click the line to select it.
  2. Press Delete.

Creating a table

See full Netscape documentation.

Browsing a page you've created

It's a good idea to browse the pages you create so that you can test the links you've created.
  1. From the File menu, choose Browse Page to display the current page in the Navigator browser.

    2. You can also click the Preview button in Composer's Composition toolbar.
  2. Save the page if you haven't already done so.
  3. If you're connected to the Internet, click the links you created to make sure they go to the locations you want.
Last modified August 12, 2001