Netscape Composer Activity (Windows)
Composing a Web Page from Scratch!
Open & Save Composer Page / CreateLinks / Formatting / Preview / SFTP to Server
Composer is the tool included in Netscape Communicator for creating web pages. It provides a simpler way for those who have no experience writing web pages to use many of the capabilities of HTML. Composer takes care of the “behind the scenes” things, allowing you to worry about what your students will see. What is the objective of the page? What do you want students to accomplish?
Before beginning this assignment, create a folder on your desktop (or folder you have created for EDMT 330) to hold all of the files necessary for your web page. Name the folder classpage(lowercase, no spaces, and short)
Before you begin working on the web page, spend a few minutes thinking about the content and questions you want students to answer, as well as collecting a few content focused links in your Bookmarks or Favoritesfolder. Locate and save an image or two in the classpage folder. Once you have those, it is time to create a simple web page from scratch with Netscape Composer.
  1. Open a blank page in Netscape Composer.
    To get to Netscape Composer (after you have downloaded and installed Netscape 7.2 on your computer), open the browser, and then go to File>New>Composer Page. This will bring up a blank page in Netscape Composer.

  1. Save the Netscape Composer page.
    Before working on your new web page, it is a good idea to save this file to the classpage folder you created for your web page(s). Go to File in the Netscape Composer toolbar and click Save or Save As.

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You will be prompted to name your web page. This name will appear on the title bar of your web page, so you will want to choose a name which describes the page content. After you have entered the title of your page, click OK.
Next, the Save As box will appear. Make sure that your web page will Save In your classpage folder. For the File Name, type index. Notice that Save as type is HTML Files. Click Save.
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  1. Add links to the web page.
    In this example, I’m adding a few "kid-friendly" web sites. First type a title for your page (change the font size and color to one of your liking using the formatting icons on the toolbar…these work the same as if you were using your word processor) Enter a few blank lines then type the names of the web pages you found or use the ones below. Press Enter after you type in each one. For example:
  2. The Michigan Electronic Library (MEL)
  3. BJ Pinchbeck's Homework Helper
  4. Merriam-Webster Dictionary & Thesaurus
To add a hyperlink:
  • Highlight the desired text.
  • Click on the Link icon (or select Insert>Link from the menu)
  • Enter the URL into the Link to window.
  • Click on OK.

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Enter the following URLs for each web site. Or navigate to the web site and copy and paste the url (copy = Ctrl+C; paste = Ctrl+V) . Or drag and drop the url to the location you wish
The Michigan Electronic Library (MEL) /
BJ Pinchbeck's
Homework Helper /
Merriam-Webster
Dictionary & Thesaurus /
  1. Change the size of the text.
    To make the text larger, go to Edit and Select All. This will highlight all of the text. Next, click the +a on the toolbar and change the font size to large.

  1. Preview your hyperlinks.
    Click Browse to test out your hyperlinks.

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The Browseicon will take you out of Netscape Composer as it loads the Composer file into Netscape Navigator. After you click the Browse button, you will be asked if you want to Save your Composer document. Click Yes. Now you can click on any of your hyperlinks to see if they work.
Note: If your new hyperlink does not work properly, you most likely did not enter the URL correctly. Return to Netscape Composer and repeat the above steps, making sure to add the correct URL. Or Navigate to the page in Navigator and copy & paste the URL.
  1. Return to Netscape Composer.
    Once you are finished previewing your web page, close the Netscape Navigator window to return to Netscape Composer. Remember, you have only previewed your web page on your own computer. In order to publish your web page to the Internet (for all to see), you will need to SFTP the entire folder to your space on the people server(more about this later).
  2. Insert an image into your web page.
    Now let’s insert an image into your web page. To insert an image into your web page, position your cursor where you would like to put the image. Then click on the Image button on the Composer toolbar.

A pop-up window called Image Properties will appear. Navigate to your folder by clicking on Choose File.
Once you have located your image, click on it, and then click Open. The image file name will appear in the box. Note you must select the Don’t use alternate text button or type in the Alternate text box. Click on OK. Your clip art should now appear in your web page.
Experiment with adding more images, more links, and changing the text appearance.
Targets allow you to link to a particular place on a page (you must create target first). Advanced users may want to try this option (see the help section).
Createan email link on the assignment page (assign.html), use the same procedure for hyperlinks. However, instead of typing the url or filename, type mailto:emailaddress (e.g. mailto:)
The last step is to publish your page bySFTP’ing the entire folder to the people.emich.edu server. You must activate your account before you can do this.
  1. Make sure all of your pages and graphics are in the same folder (classpage)
  2. Your main/home page must be named index.html
  3. SFTP the entire folder to the people.emich server.
  4. View your page
  5. If all works well, you can access your webpage using the following url (replace “your_username” with your own my.emich username): http:/people.emich.edu/your_username/classpage

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