Building Web Pages

(with Details for Netscape Composer)

These pages: Web pages are built and modified by manipulating the text and graphics on a page.  The text and graphics have an underlying structure: they are organized as a hierarchy of objects.  Understanding what the objects are and what can be done with them is the key to effectively building and maintaining web pages.

This online reference covers the basic hierarchy of web page objects and their associated styles or properties, independent of any tool or platform.  For example, a major heading, centered on a page, will look and behave the same no matter what web page tool was used to create it.  Additionally, however, these pages cover the basics of using Netscape's Composer tool to manipulate web pages, without dealing with the underlying HTML language. They were originally written to complement my Web Publishing class, intended for reference and demonstration, though they have also evolved some tutorial aspects, as well.  Come to class for a hands-on intro & a fuller discussion...

Netscape provides both a Web Browser (Navigator) and an HTML Page Building Tool (Composer) in the Netscape Communicator (version 4.x) packages. The browser is for navigating hypermedia; Composer is for creating & modifying HTML pages.  Composer is a relatively platform independent tool; I use it on UNIX, Mac and Microsoft platforms.  The detailed directions of menu selections in these pages are specific to Microsoft's Windows, however, since that is my primary teaching environment.   Mac and UNIX environments behave similarly, but access to, and the wording of, the pull-down menus is slightly different.  For someone comfortable in these other environments, with some  experimentation they should be able to navigate to the appropriate window.  As time permits, I'll incorporate more platform specific directives in future revisions, if you write to encourage me.

OK, dive in !!!

Thanks for coming by. Please email me any comments or corrections.

This material is, of course, fully protected by
US and International copyright.  Ask first!
Stewart Crawford-Hines, 1998.