Generating Text Files For Your Web Page
When someone goes to read some part of your web page, the browser looks
for a file called "index.html" or "index.htm" in the appropriate folder
(directory). If it finds such a file, it displays it. If not, it simply
lists the files that exist in that folder (directory) and lets the user
choose. All of the text files must end in .html or .htm to be readable by
Netscape Navigator. Note also that Index.html or other variations will
not work; it must be all lower case.
So how do you create a file called "index.html"? There are a number of
ways. Following are three of the most popular ones.
- Go to the Communicator menu at the top of your Netscape web
browser and select Page Composer. This will start up
Composer. You can type a web-ready text file as you would on a
normal word processor. Composer allows you to add links by selecting
the text that you want to link and clicking on the "link" menu item.
Note that when entering a url on Composer, you must include the
http:// part.
When
you're done, save the file to the desktop (name it "index.html" if you
want it to be your main page) and transfer it to your leland account.
Go to the "Moving Files" menu item on the left to see how.
- Write the file in MS WORD. When you are ready to save, go to the File
menu. If a Save as HTML option is there, select that. If not, select
Save As. At the bottom of the dialog box, next to where it says "Save
as type:," there will be a field that says Word Document (*.doc).
Click on that field and select HTML Document. Then save the file to
the desktop (name it "index.html" if you want it to be your main page)
and transfer it to your leland account. Go to the "Moving Files" menu
item on the left to see how.
- Login to your leland account as if you were going to check email, but
then don't check email. Instead, type
cd WWW to change to your
WWW directory and then type emacs index.html You'll get a
screen that already has some formatting tags on it. Type stuff on it.
Type Control-X Control-S (sequentially) to save it and Control-X
Control-C (sequentially) to exit
emacs when you're done. You won't need to transfer the file over to
your account because it will already automatically be in the right
place! (To see a listing of files, type "ls".)
This is the most difficult option to use because you have to type your
file directly in html. (However, many argue that it is well worth
investing the time due to the greater degree of control that you
will have over your finished page. Also, creating an html document
can be easier than learning html if you use some tricks and shortcuts.
If you see a web page you like, you can click on view-source from the
browser menu and that will show you all the html that generated the
page. Then you can just copy-paste it into your own file. You can
learn a lot of html that way!)
Resources for learning html are numerous on campus and online. Meyer,
Sweet Hall, and the Tressidder LaIR all have leaflets on the subject.
The online tutorial that I use the most was created by one of last year's SME TA's: Ton Sistos. Alternatively, there is a longer tutorial here. Also, ITSS's Instructional Program offers Web-based computer training courses from CBT Systems. The URL is
http://www.stanford.edu/group/itss-customer/ip/cbt/content/courses.html.
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