Quick Tour of the Netscape HTML Editor

I don't generally use HTML editors; I prefer to code as I create text. However, many people prefer not to become involved in the minutiae of HTML coding. This quick tour, done with screen captures, tracks my progress the first time (honest!) I ever used the Netscape editor. I converted a small Microsoft Word file to HTML using the Netscape Navigator Gold built-in editor, learning as I went. I found many of its features intuitively easy and a few (like the list feature) fairly puzzling. The Netscape editor uses common tools that will be easily comprehensible by anyone who has worked with Microsoft Word.

Download it and play around with it if you don't already have it: it may be all the editor you'll ever need.

Use your browser's "back" button to return from each of these image files.

  1. A small file in Microsoft Word.

  2. The file saved as a text file and called up in Editor mode of Netscape Navigator Gold.

  3. The file after I have used the "enter" key to put in paragraph breaks.

  4. Creating an H1 Headline. I painted the headline (MY USEFUL DOCUMENT) with my cursor, then selected "Heading 1" from the box on the toolbar; you can see the selection in the window. It's very similar to the Font listing in Microsoft Word. Note also that the font size has changed to +3 in the window above.

  5. I used the font size feature in the toolbar to change the size of the subhead ("Here is an example of a subhead."). Note that "Normal" displays in the box where the "Header 1" choice displayed in the previous example.

  6. Several formatting changes are apparent in the text "A Bulleted List." Boldface and italics were chosen by depressing the two As on the toolbar above; the color was changed using a dialog box that appears when the color cube icon is selected.

  7. Next we will create links. The link dialog box appeared when text was selected and the link icon (the one with a little chain) was selected from the toolbar. My selected text, "first item," is repeated in the dialog box. It offers a prompt for the link; I used the homepage of the University of Pennsylvania Library as an example.

  8. The linked text in the document. Clicking on "first item" will now take you to the Penn Library.

  9. To add an image, click on the "image" icon on the toolbar -- the following dialog box appears. I have used the holiday image from earlier examples, and have chosen left alignment with a 10 pixel white space. Note the warning in the dialog box: the image will not display properly until viewed in browser mode.

  10. The image in editor mode.

  11. The image in browser mode.

  12. To select the table feature, click on the "grid" icon on the toolbar, which yields this dialog box.

  13. The table grid generated by the table dialog box. Type information in one of the blocks, then use the forward cursor key to get to the next box.

  14. The completed table.

  15. The My Useful Document page itself.

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