Easy Web Design

EASY WEB DESIGN
Using Netscape Composer 7.2/SeaMonkey Composer
Copyright © 2011 Jerry Stratton

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU
Free Documentation License, Version 1.3, published by the Free Software Foundation. A copy of the
license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”.
http://www.hoboes.com/NetLife/WebSimple/
December 26, 2011
Why SeaMonkey? ........................................... 1 Styling with Style ......................................... 30
Why Not Netscape? .................................... 1 Borders ..................................................... 30
Preferences ..................................................... 2 Empty Tags ............................................... 31
Create a New Web Page .................................. 3 Special Features ............................................ 35
Paragraph Tags ........................................... 3 Table of Contents ...................................... 35
Character Tags ............................................ 4 Paste Without Formatting .......................... 36
Page Information ........................................ 6 Check Spelling .......................................... 36
The Tag Trail .............................................. 7 Undo/Redo ............................................... 36
Simple Stylistic Variations .......................... 7 Publishing Site Settings ............................ 37
Linking ......................................................... 10 JavaScript ..................................................... 38
Remote Pages ........................................... 10 Rolling Images .......................................... 38
Local Pages .............................................. 12 Guided Slide Show ................................... 39
Named Anchors ........................................ 13 Viewer Compatibility ................................ 42
E-Mail Addresses ...................................... 14 JavaScript Security ................................... 42
Images .......................................................... 15 Advanced Styling ......................................... 43
Format ...................................................... 15 Changing Everything on a Page ................ 43
File size .................................................... 19 Changing Everything on a Site .................. 45
Acquiring Images ..................................... 19 Style Sheet Editor ..................................... 46
Inserting images ........................................ 19 Copyright ..................................................... 47
Aligning images with text ......................... 21 More Information ......................................... 48
Sizing Images ........................................... 22 HTML & XHTML: Definitive Guide ........ 48
Keeping Images With Pages ...................... 22 Cascading Style Sheets: Definitive Guide .. 48
Tables ........................................................... 23 JavaScript: Definitive Guide ..................... 48
Displaying data in tables ........................... 23 Neon Alley and Mimsy Hacks ................... 48
Tables for page layout ............................... 25 Open Source License .................................... 49
HTML Code ................................................. 28 Gnu Free Documentation License ............. 49
Keep it all in the body ............................... 29
WHY SEAMONKEY?
SeaMonkey Composer is a powerful web page editor. It allows you to easily create web pages, and it
allows you to easily switch between different modes of editing as your needs advance. If you never
want to see any HTML tags, you can edit all of your pages in Preview. If you want to occasionally
switch to seeing only your HTML tags, you can quickly switch to HTML Source or to HTML Tag
view, make your change, and then return to the familiar Preview or Edit views.
It is also free. You can download it from http://www.seamonkey-project.org/. You’ll probably want a
fast connection.
This tutorial is designed around Netscape Composer; I have not yet updated it for SeaMonkey.
However, a cursory look indicates that the software hasn’t changed much. The screenshots that I had
to recreate because I couldn’t find the old ones are almost the same, and the basic concepts should be
similar in any web page editor.
You can always switch from one good web editor to another good editor. Almost all web page editors
(and all good web page editors) use HTML, or HyperText Markup Language. This means that you
can use one web page editor now and later decide to switch to another editor without losing any
work. It’s all HTML, and they can all read each other’s work.
Why Not Netscape?

Netscape has come a long way, but it still has some problems that might make it less useful for you.
Line Break Love Affair: Netscape’s love affair with the line break is somewhat annoying if you
don’t edit your HTML directly, and very annoying if you do. The default unit of sentences in a web
page should be paragraphs, but Netscape appears stuck in a seventies line-editing time-warp. When
you press return on your keyboard, you don’t get a new paragraph, you just break the line in the
current set of text. What looks like a paragraph to you does not look like a paragraph to web browsers
or other automated web page tools. Even when you switch a line to a paragraph using the style menu,
the line break remains stuck on the end of your paragraph like a useless appendix.
In SeaMonkey, you may be able to fix this by checking “Return in a paragraph always creates a new
paragraph”.
Insecure File Uploads: Netscape does not support secure file uploads. It uses the old FTP instead of
secure FTP or secure copy. This means that every time you upload a file to your web site, your
password is sent over the net in plain text.
Dynamic Web Code: Netscape throws out certain kinds of dynamic web code. If you use PHP or
ASP, for example, Netscape completely throws out the dynamic portions of your web site.
Indentation: Netscape does not support any automatic indentation tools. You probably don’t care
about this if you don’t edit HTML, but if you do edit your HTML directly, this makes it difficult to
maintain readable HTML. All you can use for indentation are spaces, and you need to indent every
single line individually.
PREFERENCES
In Netscape Composer’s Preferences, there is a section for “Composer”.
I recommend setting “use CSS styles instead of HTML elements and attributes”. This doesn’t affect
the editing functionality of Netscape’s editing toolbar, but it does allow you to more reliably add
much greater stylistic variation to your web pages.
“Retain original source formatting” or “Reformat HTML Source” controls whether Netscape
reformats any HTML you type in. As a beginner, you may wish to have Netscape reformat your
source; later, you may wish to change this to retain your own formatting.
CREATE A NEW WEB PAGE
Create a new web page by pulling down the “File” menu, choosing the “New” submenu, and then the
“Composer Page” item. This brings up a blank page.
You can also choose “Composer” from the “Window” menu and then use the normal “File:Open”
menu item to open an existing file. If you wish to start from a page on the web, you can view that
page using Netscape’s browser, and then choose “Edit Page” from the “File” menu. This will open
the page in Netscape Composer, where you can make whatever changes you wish and then save it to
your local hard drive.
Paragraph Tags
Netscape allows you to have “unstyled” text, text that doesn’t belong to any “paragraph-level”
formatting. It calls this “Body Text”. In general, you shouldn’t do this. All of your text should be part
of a paragraph, a heading, a list, a table, or some paragraph-level style. You should avoid the “Body
Text” feature in HTML if you are creating professional web pages.
HTML tags “mean” something about the text that they enclose. Paragraph tags do not specify line
breaks. They specify that the enclosed text is a paragraph. Different browsers will display paragraphs
in different manners. Similarly, for headlines you do not specify a large font with bold as you do in a
word processor, but simply that the text is a headline. There are a large variety of browsers available.
A cell phone might display headlines differently than a larger browser, and an audio reader will likely
display headlines in a completely different, non-visual manner.
By using tags that impart meaning to the text they enclose, browsers can more effectively display
your information to a wider variety of readers, whether those readers speak the language the text was
written in, whether they are viewing it on tiny or large displays, and whether they are viewing it at all
instead of listening to it or touching it.
The typographical command to indent some text by three spaces and use a smaller font for quoted
text means nothing to an audio reader, and if followed slavishly by a personal digital assistant could
render a document unreadable. But the tag that specifies that the text is quoted text can be rendered
appropriately according to the viewer’s needs.
Paragraphs
Set a paragraph by highlighting some text in a paragraph and choosing “paragraph” from the style
menu.
Headlines
The “Heading” styles are levels of headlines for your pages. In most visual web browsers, headlines
will be shown as bold in large text, with extra space above and below.
Click here to download full PDF material

Easy Web Design

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Easy Web Design

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Easy Web Design

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

EASY WEB DESIGN

Using Netscape Composer 7.2/SeaMonkey Composer

Copyright © 2011 Jerry Stratton

Why Not Netscape?

You might also like