Copyright 2002 by Richard Seltzer
Originally published by Wiley. The rights have reverted to the author
Please post your reactions/comments/suggestions at Blogging about Books
http://www.samizdat.com/blog/?cat=10
Don't worry about graphic design. You don't need to be an artist. We'll be dealing here with basic, functional pages consisting almost entirely of text. These pages are easy to create and also easy to find with search engines.
Whenever you use complex techniques to produce fancy graphic effects, you need to weigh the certain costs of such an approach (both the design cost and the added cost of publicity that comes when pages are difficult to find) with the alleged benefits.
Once you make your own Web pages and link them together, you'll be able to submit your pages to search engines and let the world know about them in other ways. We'll cover that effort in Chapter Five. By so doing, you'll begin to understand what your company could do -- what's involved and what kinds of results you could reasonably expect. That should put you in a better position to talk to vendors and technical staff and let them know what you need and why, and to judge what you should pay for tasks related to Web page design and maintenance and publicity.
Required assignment for Chapter Three:
• Create Web pages on your PC, without using templates.
• Move your pages to your free Web space.
You also signed up at NBCi for a free Web hosting account with unlimited Web space. Go back to NBCi now, and click on "My NBCi", followed by "My Web Site".
On the Internet, expect change and be prepared for it. It is possible that the company that provides the Web space for your site may go out of business or may change its terms in ways that you find unpalatable. As we go through these exercises, always keep copies on your hard drive of every page you create. And keep them organized the same way that they appear on the Web -- in directories set aside for your Web content. Those directories should mirror the structure of your site. In other words, if you create a directory on your Web site called /photos; make sure you have a directory on your PC called \photos, with the same content. That will make it easy for you to move all your pages to a new host if that should ever become necessary. (NB -- the Web uses forward slashes / to indicate where a new directory begins, while Microsoft marches to its own drummer, using back slashes \ instead.)
As a backup for NBCi, consider Tripod, www.tripod.com, which also has lots of useful tools and help and lets you create pages on your PC, without locking you in to their templates.
From the "My Web Site" page at NBCi, click on "Upload your HTML via FTP". By "HTML" they mean the pages that you have created using the Hypertext Markup Language. Actually, you won't be using HTML directly at all. You'll be using common tools like Microsoft Word that mask the underlying complexity. "FTP" stands for "file transfer protocol". That is the common mechanism for moving files from a PC to the Web or from one server on the Web to another. After practicing creating pages for your free NBCi site, you may decide that you really want to build a permanent site on Web space provided by your ISP, or on space that you pay a small amount for each month, with your own domain name. We'll discuss those options in Chapter Four. No matter where you decide to build, you'll want to create your pages on your PC and move them to your Web hosting service using FTP. (The equivalent program for Macintosh is called "fetch.")
FTP lets you move files from your PC to the server (upload) or from the server to your PC (download). It also lets you rename files, create new directories, and delete files and directories. NBCi offers a wide variety of FTP software through their "download center." All of these programs are very similar. WS_FTP is free and easy to use -- start with it. When you are experienced, you might want to try an alternative. I prefer WS_FTP Pro, which costs about $40.
Click on "download center". Then select your system -- e.g., PC. Click on Internet, then on FTP. Then keep clicking on "Next" at the bottom of the page until you come to WS_FTP. Follow the instructions for downloading and installing.
After you've installed the program, go back to "My NBCi", and click
on "My Web Site" and "Upload your HTML via FTP" again. At the bottom of
that page, you'll see links for ten different tutorials, with simple instructions
on how to use the various flavors of FTP. Click on the one for WS_FTP_LE.
There you'll find important details about the settings you'll need to connect
to your personal Web space and move files back and forth from there:
• Profile Name: My Web Site (any name you choose)
• Host Name: ftp.nbci.com
• Host Type: Unix (standard)
• User ID: Enter your NBCi member name
• Password: Enter your NBCi password
You can enter anything you want as the "Profile name," but I'd suggest "NBCi". You may, over time, establish several different Web hosting accounts with different services. This is the nickname that you'll use to identify your FTP connection to your pages at NBCi.
These settings will take you straight to your personal space.
If the Anonymous box is checked, anyone could access your space by FTP, and add, delete, or change pages without your permission. Make sure that box is unchecked, so user ID and password are needed.
If you want your password saved on your PC so you don't have to enter it over and over again, check the "Save Pwd" box. ("Pwd" is UNIX shorthand for "password").
If and when you open an account with another Web hosting service (whether free or paid), you will be able to use this same FTP program to exchange files there. You'll just need to set up a new "profile" with settings provided by the new service.
Note that when you connect to this server, you will be using UNIX; but WS_FTP makes it so you don't need to learn any UNIX commands to do everything that you need to do.
Plain ordinary HTML, which is what we'll be using, is a great equalizer. You can create pages on a Windows PC, a Macintosh, a UNIX workstation, or a Linux PC and move those pages to either a UNIX or a Windows NT server; and they should all work fine, and should be viewable with any browser (Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, etc.) Differences start showing up when you get involved with fancy design techniques, but we won't be venturing into that territory.
By the way, most Web hosting services strongly prefer UNIX over Windows NT. Many will charge extra or impose more stringent limits if you insist on using an NT server because of the added cost to them of having to support NT systems.
Today's Web is based on text. Yes, there are interesting audio, video, and graphics there as well, but the heart of the Web is still text. Text is what search engines index, and search engines are the primary way people find Web pages. Plain text pages can be viewed with any browser. They load very quickly. They take up a minimum of disk space. And they involve small data transfers (which could matter if you have a slow connection or are charged for traffic.)
Also, the Web is global, and plain text is easy for your foreign visitors to translate automatically for free through services like babelfish.altavista.com.
Text is also easily accessible by the blind, who use non-graphic browsers and text-to-voice conversion devices.
And text pages are easy to create and edit. You can do it yourself or you can teach other people in your company to do it. No technical skills are required.
Typically, Web-page designers focus on the user experience at a Web site. They pay close attention to the graphic look -- the color, the images, the overall look of each page. They might use advanced techniques to personalize the visitor's experience. They might use design tools that make it easy to manage their pages and that allow for pages to be created on the fly to match a visitor's profile, using a variety of standard elements. They might set up the site so new content gets highlighted on the home page every day, and old content gets moved to an archive area. They typically take pride in pushing the technology to its limits to make their pages as visually attractive and engaging as possible. In so doing, they please their bosses or clients who want their site to be wild and wonderful, visually surpassing the sites of their direct competitors.
But in so doing, they typically overlook the factor that is most important in drawing traffic to a Web site -- search engines. Many operate under the mistaken assumption that search engines just look for "metatags" -- information embedded in the code of a Web page. They think that if they include the right "key words" in their metatags, and if they pay a service to submit their home page to the major search engines, they've done all they need to.
They don't realize that most search engines ignore metatags or give the information included in them very low priority -- less than ordinary text on a page -- because metatags are so subject to abuse. Search engine companies strive to ensure that the pages on their lists of matches to queries actually contain the information that their users are looking for. And metatags are often deliberately misleading -- written by misguided Webmasters, who think that they can get more traffic by fooling search engines than by clearly and accurately representing their content.
They also don't realize that the advanced design techniques, that they take great pride in and charge top dollar for, often block search engines -- reducing the traffic to the Web site, and forcing the site owner to pay more for advertising to bring its traffic up to acceptable levels.
The site they design for you looks great. It includes everything you asked for, and presents it all very well. You feel good when showing it to your boss, your colleagues, your family. But when that beautiful site goes online, nobody comes.
It's as if you designed a beautiful poster and hung it in a closed closet. Nobody finds Web pages based on their looks. The looks of a page have nothing to do with the traffic it draws. A home page is not like the cover of a consumer magazine. It doesn't entice potential customers. People only notice the design AFTER they have come to the page. Something else is needed to get them to come in the first place. That something is content -- plain old useful, meaningful text that is well-indexed by search engines.
In fact, metatags do not matter. Search engines pay no attention to "key words" except for advertising sales. Every word on every page matters, and the more text the better. Also, search engine submission companies typically submit just your home page, and do so once, when, for maximum effect, you should submit each and every new or significantly changed page soon after you post it.
Having more content does not affect your ranking for queries that involve single generic "key" words -- like "computer" or "photography" or "database" -- which may appear on millions of Web pages, and which probably won't bring you any traffic at all. But it does matter for unexpected searches -- when people enter a series of words and phrases that match just what's on your pages. Those are searches by people who really want to find what you have. AltaVista alone receives over 200 million totally unique queries per month. In other words, many people search for rare words and phrases, instead of "key words".
Also, designers typically prefer small Web pages -- no more than you can see on a single screen. They don't like the visitor to have to scroll down a page to see more content. But search engines, like AltaVista, give more weight and relevance to large pages than small ones. And people seeking real information, rather than idlely surfing, prefer one large page that they can easily search and easily print, rather than having to separately load and print multiple little pages.
Designers typically use tools that automatically generate directories inside directories inside directories, and that create long, elaborate linking patterns, where you need to go to this page to get to that one to get to that one... But some search engines give precedence to pages in the topmost directory; and some will only check the pages linked to from the home page or linkned to the page submitted to them, rather than following from link to link to link to find all the pages at a site.
Designers routinely remove old and stale and obsolete content and replace it with what's current. But, on the Web, old content is far more valuable than new content, because it has had time to become a part of the overall Web infrastructure -- included in search engines and directories, included in the bookmarks and favorites of individuals, and linked to by other Web sites. You should never remove a Web page or change its directory or its file name. Simply add text to explain what has changed and provide links to the new pages that have the latest and greatest info.
In other words, if you are responsible for marketing or for the overall business of a Web site, you should not abdicate responsibility for Web site design to professional designers. You need to know what matters to you -- which in many cases is traffic, new visitors, new prospects. And you need to know enough about the value of content on the Internet and how search engines work to set priorities and lay down clear guidelines for the designers.
You want a traffic-oriented Web design, not design for its own sake. You want to help potential customers find your pages. You could care less about winning design awards.
A typical Word document has two names -- the file name and the headline that appears in large type at the beginning of the file. The file name may be arbitrary -- it only exists for your convenience. But the headline might be clever and intriguing, as well as informative, to encourage the visitor to read on.
A Web document has a third name as well -- the "HTML title," which does not appear directly on a Web page, but rather is buried in the header information you see when you click on "View Source Code" in your browser. When you access a Web page, the HTML title appears above the tool bars in your browser in small type. Most people never notice it. But to search engines -- and hence to you as the owner of a Web site -- the HTML title is the most important part of a Web page. When you search, the words in the results list that are highlighted and linked are the words of the HTML title. And the words in the HTML title are also important in determining which pages appear near the top of a search results list. If the query words appear in the HTML title of a page, as opposed to randomly in the ordinary text, that page will go to the top of the list. Hence, the HTML title should say what's most important on the page, simply and clearly, without cleverness.
How you add HTML titles to your pages differs from one authoring tool to another, and even from one version of Word to another. But you should always include an HTML title with every page -- and a different title for every page: one that clearly describes the contents of that page. Don't write these titles in all caps, as you might with a headline. Some search engines are case sensitive, and wouldn't find your all caps page. In general, type the words the way you would expect searchers to enter them in queries -- only capitalizing those letters that are always capitalized.
Some people also like to prefix each of their HTML titles with a common word or phrase that uniquely identifies their site. Doing so will help your pages stand out as a consistent set in bookmark/favorite lists, as well as in search result lists, (e.g., Kensbikes mountain biking tips; Kensbikes fixing bicycle brakes).
You can also create links from one part of a large Web page to another part of the same page. These "internal" links ("bookmarks" in Microsoft-speak) can make it easy for visitors to navigate through large pages with lots of text (the kind of pages that search engines love). You can set them up at the top of the page, as a hyperlinked Table of Contents. Or you can use them to link from a word or phrase to the associated footnote, and back again.
Yes, you can do many more things that are fun and eye-catching. But this is all you need to know to create effective Web pages, pages that people can easily find and easily access from anywhere, with any browser. If you are tempted by flashy effects, play with the templates and automated tools provided at Angelfire, NBCi, and other free Web-hosting sites. You can have pictures galore and animation, and professional-looking effects. Get that urge out of your system where it can't hurt you, on personal pages that are totally separate from the "real" site you are now building to learn about Internet business.
If you have 97 or 2000, you may want to jump ahead. We'll point you back to the steps for the earlier version if and when they still apply.
Word 6.0, Word 7.0 and Word for Windows 95
Step One
If you have Word 6.0, Word 7.0 or Word for Windows 95, you first need to get free software from Microsoft that modifies your version of Word so that it treats HTML (Web page format) as just another format. You can create a page as you normally create a Word document, then save it as HTML.
You need the Internet Assistant for Word. The version for Word 6.0, 6.0a, and 6.0c is wordia.exe. The version for Word 7.0 and 7.0a and Word for Windows 95 has file name wdia204z.exe. This free software modifies your version of Word so it can handle the .HTML format of Web pages.
Today, Microsoft hides that file and the directions for download and installation at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q153/8/60.asp
If you do not find it at that location, go to AltaVista (www.altavista.com) and enter the query wdia204z.exe (for Windows 95) or wordia.exe (for Word 6.0) This search should give you a list of alternate pages where you can download that same software patch.
Save the file to a temporary directory (e.g., c:\temp). Close all applications. Click on "Start", then "Run". Click "Browse". Click on the directory in which you saved the file, then on the name of the file that you saved. That name should now appear in the "Run" window. Click "OK" and installation will start.
Step Two
Open Word and start a new document as you normally do (for instance, by clicking on the blank page icon in the tool bar.) Then click "File" and "Save" As. Create a new directory called "Web" (e.g., c:\web) and save this new (blank) file in that directory. Give this file the name test.htm and save it as file type "HTML document."
When you saving a document in HTML format, the tool bar at the top of the page changes, but you can continue to enter text just as you always did.
As a quick experiment, type your name, then save and close the document. Now open your browser. If you use the IE browser, click "File", then "Open", then "Browse", and go to the directory you just created (e.g., c:\web). Click on the file you named test.htm. If you use Netscape, click on "File", then "Open Page", then "Choose File" to do the same thing. In either case, you should see your new (very sparse page) in your browser.
Now open an existing document in Word, and save a copy of it (in your Web directory) as an HTML document. The software will automatically convert that document to Web format. "Save" and "Close" that file, and take a look at it through your browser.
Whether you start from scratch or convert existing Word documents, give all your Web files a name with .htm as the suffix (not .html). Web browsers can recognize files named with a suffix of either .htm or .html. But this version of Word is limited to file extensions that are just three characters long -- so you have to name your files .htm or you won't be able to edit them properly.
Keep in mind that you are not yet on the Internet. You are viewing your pages locally on your hard drive. No one but you can see what you created.
Step Three
To get a sense of what HTML code looks like, open one of those pages of yours with your browser again and click on "View", then "Source". In the early days of the Web, people had to enter all this code by hand, and it was slow and tedious to create even the simplest pages. Fortunately, you don't have to go through all that. Click "X" in the upper right corner to close the "View Source" window.
Step Four
From Word, open test.htm again. Take a close look at the new command
icons in your tool bar. (If you don't normally use the toolbars, click
on "View", then "Toolbars", and select "Standard" and "Formatting" and
then click on "OK".) Three of these command icons are particularly important
for you:
• the letter "i" which stands for the HTML title,
• a picture of a chain which is the command for creating hyperlinks,
and
• a picture of an open book which you use for making internal links
("bookmarks" in Microsoft-speak).
Create a new page, and save it as an HTML document named first.htm. On that new page, type just one word -- test. With your cursor, highlight the word "test". Then click on the chain icon. The word "test" will appear in the box labeled "Text to Display". In the "File or URL" box, enter test.htm Then click "OK".
The word "test" now appears in color, indicating that it is a hyperlink. Click on that link and the page you called test.htm should appear.
Next type the word "first," on the test.htm page, highlight that word with your cursor, click on the chain symbol, and enter first.htm in the "File or URL" box. Click "OK". You should now be able to click back and forth between your two pages.
Open your browser and go to either test.htm or first.htm and click back and forth.
The address you entered is a "relative" address as opposed to a full blown absolute address, such as http://www.anysite.com/testfiles/first.htm When you just provide the file name, your browser knows to look for it in the current directory (the same directory as the page that linked to it.) When you use relative addressing it is easy to check your local links while you are still in Word. It is also easy for you to move all your pages to a new Web hosting service, without changing every link (e.g., from angelfire.com to nbci.com). And if you create presentations using Web pages, instead of PowerPoint (as described in Chapter Four), you'll be able to carry your presentation around on a diskette and use any browser on any computer to show it, without changing a thing.
Create a new page. Save it as an HTML page named start.htm. On that page, enter a list of your favorite Web sites -- perhaps the ones you have saved in your Bookmarks (Netscape) or Favorites (IE). For each site, type the name, highlight that name with your cursor, click on the chain icon, and enter the complete URL (including http:// at the beginning). Save and close that page. Connect to the Internet (if you are not already connected). Now open your start.htm page with your browser, click on the first link in your list. You should go straight to that page (unless you made a typo). Click the Back button in your browser, and check the next link, then the next. If you find any errors, open start.htm in Word and make the necessary edits.
Now open your FTP program and connect to NBCi. On the PC (or local) side of your FTP program open your Web directory (c:\web). Move test.htm, first.htm, and start.htm to your space at NBCi.
Open your browser and enter the full address for each of these pages,
e.g.
http://members.nbci.com/jones5/start.htm
The pages you have created are now on the public Web, and anyone you give the address to can use them just as you do.
When making edits to a page and then using your browser to see it again, remember that your browser remembers (caches) the pages it has been to recently, to save time in loading them. When you return to a page, your browser might show you the version that it has saved on your hard drive instead of the newer version that is now on the Web. If you have made a change and don't see the change with your browser, click Reload (Netscape) or Refresh/icon of arrows moving in a circle (IE).
Step Five
In Word, open start.htm again, and save it as index.htm. Close the file.
Open FTP and upload index.htm to your Web space at NBCi. Open your browser
again and this time just enter your directory name, e.g.
http://members.nbci.com/jones5/
without the file name. Your page (now named index.htm) should appear.
That is your "home page" on the Web. Web servers and browsers typically
recognize files named index.htm, index.html, default.htm, and home.htm
as "home pages". If such a page exists, that's the one you go to when you
enter a Web address without an explicit file name.
Step Six
Once again, open index.htm in Word. Now click on the "i" icon. (As an alternative, click File, then Properties). Enter the words that you'd like to serve as your HTML title. Try to make these words useful.
For instance, if most of the links on your page relate to horse racing or auctions or baseball or investing, say so -- e.g., "best investing sites and other favorite links". Save, close, and upload to NBCi. Open in your browser. You should see those words in small type at the top of the screen, above the browser tool bar. Click on View, then Page Source. Near the top of the page, in the "Header" section, you should see your words sandwiched between the code <title> and </title>.
Step Seven
Open index.htm again. Now, at the bottom of the page enter your name (or your Web-pen name) and one of your email addresses. Highlight that email address with your cursor, click on the chain icon, and in the URL box enter mailto: followed by the address, e.g. mailto:seltzer@samizdat.com
Save that file, then open it as a local file in your browser, and click on the link for your email address. As a test, send yourself a message.
Step Eight
Now, we're going to experiment with creating internal links. First, add a dozen more favorite sites to your list in index.htm and make them hyperlinks. Then organize that list, inserting subheads -- e.g., games, business, etc. -- and put a list of the subheads at the top of your page.
Microsoft uses the word "bookmark" to mean internal links, or links to locations within the same page. That's confusing for people who use Netscape as a browser, and think of "bookmarks" as saved links to pages you'd like to go back to (which Microsoft calls "favorites").
To create an internal link, click once at the point in the document you would like return to easily -- in this case at a subhead. Then click on the open book icon, (or click "Edit", then "Bookmark") and type an arbitrary name (one word, consisting of letters, not numbers), and click on "Add". Then highlight the words that you want to make the link from -- the appropriate item in the list of subheads at the top of your page. Click on the chain icon, and enter the name of your "bookmark" in the line labeled "Bookmark Location in File:" Click "OK". Save the file. Click on the link you just made, and you should go straight to that subhead. Experiment some more, if you like -- making internal links to all your subheads, checking how they work in Word. Then save and upload the file and see how the new links work in your browser.
Open that file in your browser to see what it looks like now. Many features should appear as before. But the spacing in the fonts are probably different. HTML ignores spaces. If you have two carriage returns between paragraphs in Word, HTML will reduce that to one. If you put two spaces after a period or if you used a series of spaces instead of Tabs to line up words on successive lines, HTML will reduce all those spaces to one space. Tabs may or may not come out as you intended. Columns probably won't line up.
You are seeing evidence of a clash of philosophies. Microsoft proceeds on the assumption that the provider of content should have complete control over how that content should be displayed. The Web is built on the assumption that the receiver of the information should be able to control the formatting, based on the technical capabilities of the local computer (such as screen size) and also personal preferences. In this early authoring tool, Microsoft compromised, leaving some aspects of page presentation up to the discretion of the user. By Word 2000, Microsoft took complete control, generating enormous quantities of complex code that force Web browsers to present documents with all formatting in tact -- regardless of whether that formatting is of any importance to the creator of the documents.
You do not have to start with a Word document and convert it to HTML to take advantage of these formatting features (like bold, italic, and underlining). You can create a new HTML page and use the familiar command icons to add those features directly as you normally do. Just highlight the target words and click on the icon.
Justified right, centering, bullets, numbered bullets, and horizontal lines should all work the same in HTML format as they do in Word document format. I'm a big fan of horizontal lines as dividers in Web pages -- just position the cursor where you'd like the divider, then click on the dark horizontal line in the toolbar. For special symbols like ?, ?, or Greek and mathematical symbols, click on "Insert", then on "Symbol", and make your choice.
You can also change fonts and type size -- but, in this version of Word, what you choose is not necessarily what someone will see with a Web browser. For instance, a headline is another form of "Style". Highlight the target text, click "Format", then "Style". Experiment to see what your default settings give you for Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3. Save your file with samples of each of those headings in place. Then open the file with your browser. The font and the type size will probably be different. The code that this version of Word generates provides the Web basics -- that you wanted a Level 1 or 2 or 3 headline. The settings in the user's browser determines how a Level 1 or 2 or 3 headline is displayed.
With this version of Word, don't try to convert tables or footnotes or other advanced formatting features. They probably won't turn out anything like what you intended, and they may make your page unviewable. Keep everything as simple as possible, and you'll be able to make and edit Web pages very quickly and easily.
If you are sorely tempted to add a picture or two, go ahead. Save the image files (in .jpg or .gif format) in the same directory as your Web pages (c:\web). Click at the place in the Web page where you would like the picture to appear. Then click on the icon which is a picture of a mountain. In the box "Image Source:" enter the name of the image file. Click "OK". The picture should immediately appear at the place in the page that you indicated.
(When you upload the page, be sure to upload the associated images to the same directory on the Web.)
If you'd like to change the image's position or size, click again on
the image icon, then on the "Options" tab. There you can change the "Alignment
with Text:" from "Default" to "Left", "Right", or "Top". And you can experiment
entering various numbers for the "Height" and "Width", and also add a border.
If you want to do much more with graphics, this isn't the right tool for
you. You should get a book on HTML or take a course on it. Creating beautiful
pages with fancy visual effects can be an interesting hobby -- but has
little to do with using the Web for business, which is the subject of this
book.
Word for Office 97
If you have Word for Office 97, you do not have to download and install a patch. Web-page authoring is already included in your software. But while you can edit a page created with Word for Windows 95 in 97, you cannot edit one from 97 in 95.
All the functions we discussed above are available to you. But Microsoft has moved them around, and buried the more important ones, so it's not always easy to find what you want. Please follow all the steps mentioned above, following the directions below to help you find the necessary commands.
If you have Word for Office 97, either open an existing document or start a new document and save it as HTML Document, with either .htm or .html as the file extension. (This version of Word can handle four-letter extensions).
The tool bar changes, but this time only one of the three key commands has its own icon -- a chain link superimposed on a globe stands for the hyperlink command.
To assign an HTML title, click "File", then "Properties", then enter the title on the "Title:" line, and click "OK".
To create an internal link ("bookmark"), click once at the point on the document that you would like to be able to mark, then click on "Insert", then "Bookmark", enter the name (one word, consisting of letters, not numbers), and click "Add".
To create links, highlight the text that you want people to click on. Then click on the chain/globe icon, and enter the file name if the page will be in the same directory as the page you are creating, or the full URL (such as http://www.samizdat.com/start.html) if the page will be somewhere else. If you want to link to another place in the same page, in the line labeled "Named location in file" enter the name of the "Bookmark" you created, or click "Browse" and select that bookmark from the list you see. Click OK. To link to an email address, enter mailto: followed by the address.
If, like me, you don't like that "feature", you can shut it off by clicking on Tools, then Autocorrect, then under the tab for "Autoformat as You Type," remove the check mark next to "Internet and network paths with hyperlinks" under "Replace as you type," and under the tab for "Autoformat" also remove the check mark next to "Internet and network paths with hyperlinks" under "Replace".
When you save a page ("File", "Save as"), the second item in the drop down menu of file types is "Web page (.htm, .html)". Be sure to give your document a file name with either .htm or .html as the extension.
To create an HTML title, click on "File", then "Properties", and under the "Summary" tab enter your title on the "Title" line and click "OK".
To create an internal link, first click at the place in the text you want to mark, then click "Insert", "Bookmark", and enter the name (one word, just letters, no numbers).
To create links, highlight the text to be linked, then click on the link/globe icon. Your selected text should appear in the top line ("Text to display"). To link to a Web page, you can enter that address in the line marked "Type file or Web page name," or click on an address that you have used in the past in the list that appears, or, if you have a live connection to the Internet, click on "Web page..." That last option will launch your Web browser. Go to the page that you want to link to, minimize that browser window, and the URL of that page will automatically appear in the URL box (that's a good way to avoid typos when linking to pages with long URLs). To link to a location in the same document (bookmark), highlight the words where you want the link to start (for instance in a table of contents), click on the link icon, then "Bookmark" (on the right), then click on the name of the bookmark which you have assigned to the target location. To create a link to an email address, click on the link icon, then click on "Email Address" in the lower left corner, then either type in the address (and the software will automatically add "mailto:") or click on an address from the list of suggestions.
Follow the instructions for Step Two above, with the exception that this version of Word lets you name files with either .htm or .html as the suffix.
You can get a sense of what the code looks like right in Word (without having to use your browser). Just click on View and HTML source. You'll see at least a couple of screens full of code.
Whereas before, with a rudimentary familiarity with HTML, you could "View Source" and make some minor adjustments in the code. Now that's virtually impossible, unless you are a pro. And once you've edited a page with Word 2000, you've rendered it totally useless in Word for Office 97 or 95.
If you take a Web page that was created in Word for Windows 95 or Word for Office 97 and open and save it with Word 2000, even if you don't change a single word, the new file will be nearly twice as big as the old one, because of all the extra code that Word 2000.
In fact, if you create a new page in Word 2000, leave it blank, and save it as an HTML file, that totally empty page will take up 29 Kbytes of space with just the code that Word automatically generates.
The main purpose of this code appears to be to strictly dictate exactly how a page will appear in a Web browser. The code overrides the basic Web setup of allowing the user to choose certain aspects of the look-and-feel. Instead, you, as the creator of the page, decide the font, the type size, the style of the headings, etc.
One of the side effects of this strict regimen is that if you open a page created with another Web authoring tool or even with another version of Word in Word 2000, and if that page does not strictly conform to Word 2000's rules, you won't be able to see the page much less edit it. You will only be able to proceed if you open the page in WordPad, instead of Word, and detect and remove the offending code. Then you can go back to Word and edit the page as normal. That, however, is a daunting task, unless you are very familiar with HTML code. If at all possible, you should not attempt to use Word 2000 to edit pages that were created in earlier versions of Word or with any other Web authoring software.
Recent browsers are very "forgiving." They recognize and automatically correct for common mistakes in coding. The visitor sees just what the page creator intended, even if the page creator accidentally strayed from the strict rules of the game. Word 2000 is totally unforgiving.
Follow the instructions in Step Four above, but this time enter complete, absolute URLs instead of relative ones. Relative links don't work in Word 2000. The software gets confused between Microsoft-style back slashes \ and Web-style forward slashes / It seems to assume that your main purpose is to link together documents on your hard drive, rather than to create pages for the Web. It presumes that the files you create will continue to reside in the directory where it is now, and it automatically inserts back slashes \.
Also, with Word 2000, you have three choices for entering the URL of
the page you want to link to:
• Type the complete, absolute address, beginning with http:// in the
box labeled "Type the file or Web page name:"
• Click on an address that appears in the box under "Or select from
list:"
• On the right, click on "Web page". That will launch your browser.
Go to the page that you want to link to. Then close your browser. The URL
of the last page you touched with your browser should automatically appeared
in the box "Type the file or Web page name:"
Do Step Five as described above.
In Step Six, note that with Word 2000 you enter the HTML title by clicking on File, then Properties.
In Step Seven, creating a link to an email address, after clicking on the link icon, click on "Email address" in the left column. Then when you start typing the address, the software will automatically add "mailto:".
For internal links in Step Eight, click on the spot on the text that you want to mark (return to), then click "Insert" and "Bookmark" and give the mark a name. Then to make a link to that spot, highlight the text you want linked, click on the chain icon, then click on "Bookmark" in the right column. The name you gave the bookmark should appear on the list of choices. Click on it. Then click OK and OK again.
If you want to insert a picture, beware. The logical procedure (Insert, then picture, then from File, and select the file name) succeeds in putting a picture into the document on your hard drive. But the picture will not appear on your page once you upload it to the Web -- even if you upload the image to the same directory.
Word 2000 automatically creates a new directory for you. If you name your file test.html, it creates a directory named test_files and automatically puts all the images associated with that page in that new directory, automatically naming those images in numerical order. To make the images appear in your Web pages as you intended, you will have to create a directory on your Web site with that same name (e.g. /test_files) and upload all the image files from the equivalent directory on your hard drive. If you are making many Web pages, that becomes very complicated very quickly. It also means that when you are using the same image on many different pages, you have to upload many different copies of that same image to different directories on your Web server. In addition, it means that the names of your images are simply numbers, with no meaning, making them virtually impossible to find with search engines.
As an alternative (if you really must include pictures on your pages),
in Word, click View, then HTML Source, then click Edit and Find and enter
the words that are nearest to the place in your page where you'd like the
picture to appear. At that point type: <img scr="http://www.domainname.com/filename.gif">
For instance, <img scr="http://members.nbci.com/jones5/frog.gif">
using the absolute Web address for where you are going to upload that
file, rather than the relative address (just the file name). But that's
an awful lot of work to accomplish something that was very simple with
the earlier versions of Word.
On the positive side, if you love all the fancy formatting features that are built into Word, you'll love the kinds of Web pages you can create with Word 2000. Even footnotes convert easily and automatically, all appearing at the end of the page, automatically generating links from the footnoted point in the text to the footnote itself and then back again to that same point in the text.
Once installed, launch the program, then in the toolbar click on "Communicator", then "Composer". That opens a blank page. Simply type your text.
Some commands have different names and are tucked away in different places, as noted in the following paragraphs, but everything you need to do to follow the steps listed above for Word, you can do with Netscape Composer.
To add a hyperlink, highlight the associated text, and click on "Link" in the Toolbar. Then type the file name (for relative addressing, when the page you are connecting to will reside in the same directory as this page), or the complete URL.
To make a headline, highlight the target text, and click on "Format", "Heading", and the number you wish. (1 is largest).
To give the page an HTML title, click on "File", then "Publish". Enter the file name, and the HTML title. In the box "HTTP or FTP location to publish to" enter http://members.nbci.com Then click OK. You'll get an error message that the Web server doesn't accept uploads in this way. That doesn't matter. You have given the file a HTML title.
To create an internal link. Click at the place in the document that you would like to connect to, and click on "Target" in the toolbar. Enter a name for this "target" (equivalent of Microsoft's "bookmark"). Highlight the text that you would like to link to this spot, and click on "Link", and select the target name from the list. Click "OK".
You can pick the type size and either leave the type style as "variable width" (the default, meant to help the text appear best on a wide variety of machines with different size screens), or pick a specific font.
For bold, italic, or underlining, highlight the text you want to change, and click on the various capital A's in the toolbar.
For bullets and numbered bullets, highlight the text and click on the corresponding icons.
The default for text alignment is flush left. Highlight the text you want to change, click on the alignment icon (far right on the bottom) and your other choices (centered and flush right) will appear for you to click on.
To add a picture, click to indicate where in the page you would like it, then click on "Image" in the tool bar and either enter the file name (relative addressing) or the complete URL of the image file (where it will be after you upload it). You have a variety of choices for how you want your image to appear.
To see the code that this program has created, click "View", then "Page Source". You'll note that the file is very small, with very little code -- comparable to what you get with the early versions of Word, and very different from the monstrosities generated by Word 2000.
Click "File" and "Save As", and save this page in your Web directory (c:\web). Then use FTP to upload this file and any associated images to your Web server (at members.nbci.com). Launch your browser and go to that page to check it.
As a last resort, email me at seltzer@samizdat.com. My response time will depend on the volume of the questions, but I'll make every effort to get back to you.
Please post your comments at our blog, http://www.samizdat.com/blog/?cat=10
This site is Published by B&R Samizdat Express, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. (617) 469-2269. seltzer@samizdat.com
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