About the Internet
:
About Navigator :
Netscape Navigator enables you to access the wealth of information and
network applications on corporate intranets and the Internet. You can easily
access information from a variety of sources, from the latest Web sites
to legacy corporate databases.
About Composer :
Netscape Composer integrates powerful What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG)
document creation capabilities into Netscape Communicator's already rich
set of World Wide Web features. In addition to electronic mail, threaded
discussion group, and file transfer features included in Communicator,
Composer makes composing for the Web, email, or newsgroups a simple cut-and-paste,
drag-and-drop process. The document creation capabilities in Composer are
designed to provide both experienced and beginning content creators with
a simple yet powerful solution for editing and publishing online documents.
WYSIWYG editing allows first-time users to create dynamic online documents
easily and publish them to local file systems and remote servers with ease.
Work in a WYSIWYG environment. You can see the results of paragraph and font tags applied as you type. Add, remove and modify text. Click on any part of a downloaded Web page and immediately work with text and images. Drag-and-drop hyperlinks and images from the bookmark, mail, news, or browse windows, to a document in the editor. You can also drag an HTML or image file from the Windows File Manager (Explorer in Windows 95) and drop it in an edit window. Publish your documents on the Internet. Use available features to create pages that focus a reader's attention where you want. Include objects in your pages. You can insert tables, images, horizontal lines, and hyperlinks in the Web documents you create.
To view Web pages :
Click highlighted words (coloured or underlined) in a page to bring
another page of related information to your screen. Click Back and Forward
toolbar buttons to go back (or forward) to a page you have
previously seen. To display the content you seek, you'll need connections
to those pages. Well-crafted pages provide built-in connections to other
pages. These connections are presented as highlighted word, picture, or
menu links. Each link contains Internet location information that serves
as an address of the web site. When you click with the mouse cursor over
a highlighted word, picture, or menu link, you bring another page of information
to your screen. The entire network of pages can be potentially interlinked,
one pointing to another.
To move back and forth between two pages :
1. Click any highlighted words to view a new page.
2. Click the toolbar's Back button (left arrow) or, from the Go menu,
select Back.
3. Repeat step 1 and notice the changes in the location field (which
shows the page's network location), the Netscape company logo (which animates
during a page transfer), the status message area (which
shows a link's location or a transfer's progress), and the progress bar
(which illustrates a transfer's progress).
What is a URL
:
Uniform Resource Locators or URLs are street addresses for bits
of information on the Internet. Most of the time, you can avoid trying
to figure out your own URLs by simply navigating to the information you
want to point to with your browser, and then copying and pasting the long
string of "stuff" into your link. But it's often useful to understand what
a URL is all about, and why it has to be so long and complex. Also, when
you begin publishing your own information on the Web, you'll want to know
something about URLs so that you can tell people how to find your Web page.
To identify page locations :
To understand how a single page is kept distinct in a world of electronic
pages, you should recognize its URL, short for Uniform Resource Locator.
Every page has a unique URL. Not only does each page have a unique URL,
but also each image and frame on a page. You can access a page, an image,
or an individual frame by supplying its URL. A URL is text used for identifying
and addressing an item in a computer network. In short, a URL provides
location information and Navigator displays a URL in the location field.
Most often you don't need to know a page's URL because the location information
is included as part of a highlighted link; Navigator already knows the
URL when you click highlighted text, click a toolbar button, or select
a menu item.
To enter a URL :
Type the URL directly into the location text field. Alternatively,
you can choose Open Page from the File menu and type the URL in the resulting
dialog box. By entering a page's URL, Navigator can bring you the specified
page just as if you had clicked a link.
Viewing the Navigator Window
:
This section describes what you see in the main Navigator window. Most
of the navigational tools and text fields are visible, though some View
menu items let you hide features in order to give more screen space to
a page's content.
Windows and frames :
You can open multiple Navigator windows to view multiple pages of information.
The window title bar shows the title of the currently loaded page. You'll
also find that some pages are designed to be a patchwork
of pages. These patchwork pages contain rectangular frames; each
frame presents its own page information.
Colors and underlining :
Colors or underlining highlight words on a page that link to new pages.
Clicking the highlighted text initiates the page transfer.
On black-and-white monitors, underlining highlights links. When you select
text in a field, the selection is highlighted (by default,
in a different color than the colors used for links).
Using Links to Pages
:
A link is a connection from one page to another. You find a link by
looking for one or more words highlighted with colour, underlining, or
both in the content area of a page. Images and icons with colored borders
also serve as links. A link within a page that contains frames can be a
connection that displays one or more new pages within frames, or an entirely
new top-level page replacing all frames.
To use a link :
1) Point the mouse cursor over a link. The URL location of the link
appears in the status message area at the bottom-left of the window.
2) Click once on the highlighted text, image, or icon. This transfers
page content from a server location to your location.
3) After you click a link, the Netscape company logo animates to show
you that the transfer of the page to your computer is in progress.
4) Examine the status message area and progress bar at the bottom of
the window to receive feedback about the progress of a transfer.
To set a page's background :
You can set the background to white, grey, or a custom color of your
choosing. You can also determine if your choice of background should always
be used or if the background transmitted with a page should override your
choice.
1) From the Edit menu, choose Preferences.
2) Click the Colors category.
3) Click the Background color box to select a color for background
display. White is the default color for a background.
Creating a New Web Page
To quickly create a new web
page :
From the File menu, choose New and then choose Blank Page Or, click
the Composer button (pencil button) on the Component bar. A Composer window
opens containing a blank page. The original browse window remains open
behind the Composer window.
To create a web page using a
template or with Netscape's Page wizard :
From the File menu, choose New and then choose Page From Template.
A dialog box appears where you can select a remote or local file to use
as a template, or one of the template files available from the Netscape
Template Web site. Once you've selected a template, choose Edit Page from
the File menu to use the template as the basis for a new document.
From the File menu, choose New and then choose Page From Wizard. A Navigator
window opens containing the Page wizard. The wizard is a special page on
the Netscape home site that walks you through the steps for creating a
Web page. When you've completed the steps, you'll have a page that you
can open in Composer and continue building on as your skills improve.