Contents
To create an publish a web page you need at least:
What is Netscape Navigator Gold?
Netscape Navigator Gold is both a web browser and an HTML editor. As a browser, it provides all the functionality of standard Netscape. As an editor, however, it provides a tool you can use to compose documents for the web. You don't need to have an HTML editor to create Web documents, but it helps. HTML files are standard text files which may be created with any text editor, including the Windows Notepad. All common word processing programs, such as Word Perfect and Windows Write may also be used to create text files, but you must save using the Text file type. HTML can become tedious to write, however, and HTML editors greatly simplify this task.
Netscape Gold is only one of many free HTML editors which provide a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment for web document composition. As you compose you see the document as it will look from a Web browser. When you save the document, Netscape Gold will automatically generate all the HTML markup for you.
How do I publish a web page with Netscape Gold?
To compose Web documents Netscape Gold, you'll need to have and know how to use the Netscape Gold editor. If you only have the standard Netscape installed (look for the Edit button on the toolbar; if you don't see it, you don't have Netscape Gold). You can get the Netscape Gold self extracting installation file for Windows for Workgroups by entering the address ftp://ftp.siue.edu/pub/navigator/gold/windows/g16e301.exe in your web browser, saving it to an empty directory, decompressing it by running it, and then running the newly created setup.exe program file. For Windows 95, use the address ftp://ftp.siue.edu/pub/navigator/gold/windows/g32e301.exe
To publish your documents (make your web documents public and viewable from any Web browser on the Internet), they need to reside on a Web server. You can run your own web server or use our campus network web server. To use the SIUE web server, you need only an SIUE Internet Account and a file transfer (FTP) program to move your document files to a directory named "html" in your home directory on our server. Although Netscape Gold provides limited file transfer capabilities, you'll occationally need functions not available in Netscape Gold. Windows 95 and Windows for Workgroups provide an FTP program as part of the operating system. Alternatively, you can avoid the need to transfer files and run your own Web server program on your own Internet connected computer. Free, public domain web servers are available for Windows 3.1, 95, NT, and OS/2. .
You will also want a common Web browser, such as Netscape, for testing your documents.
What is HTML and how can I learn more about it?
Web pages are created using a language called Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML. HTML documents are standard ASCII text files which contain the content of your document embedded with tags which mark the beginning and ending of special format options including bold, enlarged font, and underlining. Tags also define the addresses of other linked documents and inline images. Most browsers may be used to view the HTML source of any currently displayed Web document. To view the source for this document using Netscape, select Document Source from the View menu.
HTML files may be created with any text editor including the Windows Notepad or DOS Edit utility. To learn more about HTML, see A Beginners Guide to HTML at
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html
Once you learn HTML, you'll want to refer to a style guide (see http://www.sun.com/styleguide/) to make your documents easy to use and attractive.
Although HTML is not difficult to learn and use, it can be tedious. HTML editors, such as Netscape Gold and Microsoft Internet Assistant for MS Word, greatly simply HTML composition by allowing you to compose documents using Word and save them in HTML format. Simply put, the HTML editor will write the HTML for you. As you become more proficient with Web documents, you'll find that HTML editors won't do everything you'd like them to. Until HTML editors become more functional, learning HTML is still worth the effort for those interested in serious Web page development.