(these tutorials are several years old, but still introduce the new person to the basics)

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Beginning Web Design - this page is by no means an exhaustive tutorial page on Netscape's Composer, a free web design program that comes with Netscape Communicator. You may download Netscape Communicator for free at their web site. I personally recommend, and use, Dreamweaver 8, by Macromedia, which many consider the best design program available.  And I would agree.  But DW costs money, and Netscape's Composer is free.  Composer is a good place to start for the beginner (it's where I started years ago when it was the only free web design program available on the Internet).  Composer displays a simple composition tool bar full of convenient buttons to click.  I've only covered some of the simple basics with Composer below, providing screen shots of the actual interfaces.  (Composer is limited when it comes to using more advanced functions and is not always compatible with JavaScript; in other words, it is 'buggy').  But for those wanting to get a start in web design, Composer's 'user friendliness' gets my vote as a good first tool and place to start.  The other half of web design involves making your own graphics.  I recommend the user friendly, and most commonly used graphics tool on the Internet, Paint Shop Pro.  That is a series of lessons for another day and there are plenty of tutorial sites on the Net for PSP.

Basic web pages are made up of nothing more than text, pictures, links and invisible tables used to align items. That is enough to start with. Each page you make is an individual file that you must name when you save it to your computer, just like any other word-processing document or text file.

Below is a screen shot of the Composer GUI (pronounced 'goo - ee' - Graphical User Interface, or window). Actually, only the menu, composition and formatting tool bars are showing; the design area (white area) is not (it's just a blank page anyway). You will notice that it is not unlike a wordprocessor. The screen shot below is from Netscape version 4.74. (As of Oct 2006, Netscape is now at version 8).

Naming Files: The front page of a web site should always be named index (use lower case in file names) when saving (some servers require default instead of index; maybe 5%). Web servers recognize this file name (index.html) as the front page of a web site. For example, www.dzinemaster.com is really www.dzinemaster.com/index.html or www.angelsonassignment.org is actually www.angelsonassignment.org/index.html. When first saving a page you've created you only need to type index, the program will add the .html (hypertext markup language) file extension to the end of the file name for you. Some computers will only place .htm on the end (with the 'L' missing). This is ok. Many times this is because the page was created on a machine that is running Windows 95. Windows 95 will only allow for three characters in a file extension. Dreamweaver and Frontpage Express also save pages as .htm, unless you go in and change the settings to save as .html. Composer will automatically save as html. (Warning, if you are trying to find a page with an extension of .html, and you only type in .htm in the address bar, you will not find the page, but be greeted with some kind of 404 error message.) If you want to use Frontpage Express or Frontpage instead of Composer or Dreamweaver, you have to have Microsoft Office on your computer - these are programs found in the Microsoft Office suite.

Publishing: Before publishing your web pages for everyone to see (sending your web pages to another computer [web server] connected to the Internet), you must have a web hosting account (available web space) set up (memory on a web computer as a place to store your pages and their pictures where others can access them on the Internet). There are basically three options available. You may use or activate your account that came with your ISP, sign up for free space on the Internet, or pay for a domain name (small annual fee) and a monthly fee to a commercial web host (there are many). See below:
 

Publishing: When I publish web pages I've created to my personal web site, I have to put in the FTP address (File Transfer Protocol, a small program built into Composer) of ftp.geocities.com into the Preferences folder of Composer (see picture below). Each web host on the Internet has a FAQ section (frequently asked questions) or member services area on their web site that will notify you of their FTP address (they vary a little ... for example, you only type in redrival.com with that particular Canadian web host, no ftp in the front of their address). To get to Composer's preferences, click Edit/Preferences. (I do not find a built in FTP program with Netscape 6):

The web page (.html file), along with any pictures in your web page (.jpg or .gif) must be published, or uploaded to a web server. A web server is a computer that is connected to the Internet, usually 24 hours a day. The Internet is just a interconnection (via local telephone lines, high speed data cables [backbones], microwaves and satellites) of many servers (computers) in numerous local and wide area networks around the world.

After you have designed and saved a web page to your computer, you may click the Publish button and the following window will appear (again, I do not find a built in FTP program with Netscape 6, but earlier versions of Composer do):

Remember to 'include' any picture files when uploading a web page, unless they've already been sent up previously. You may hold down the control key and select a multiple number of picture files. For example, if I'm editing a page that's already been on the Internet and contains about a dozen pictures, and I add two new pictures to this page, I only need to upload the .html file again and the two new pictures. I wouldn't want to reload the other dozen pictures again. This takes too much upload time and some web hosts have a limit on the amount of transfers you can make in a month. You can click the 'Select None' button above to de-select the existing pictures, and then holding the control key down, click the file name of the two new pictures.

More on FTP - File Transfer Protocol is a small program that will usually fit onto a floppy disk, that transfers files from one computer to another. In this case, we use FTP to transfer your web pages and their graphics to a web server that you have an account with. Until you transfer your files from your computer to a web server, how are people going to see your web site on the World Wide Web (www)? You may download the popular, and free WS_FTP program HERE (2004, no longer supported or free). An interactive tutorial for using WS_FTP is HERE. Further FTP tutorials are HERE. Here is a new one that is free (whoops, not free any more): www.internet-soft.com/download.htm

The Composer window is just like a wordprocessor. The window is blank. Type in words and insert pictures, make links (a command to call up another web file) of some of those words or pictures, and you have a web page (to view new version 6.2 click HERE).

Web pages are made up of many words. The formatting tool bar above is just like a wordprocessor with drop down arrows for selecting font types (Verdana showing), changing the font size (12 pts. showing), font color (red showing), bold, italics, left, center, and right align, indent, bulleted lists, etc.

Above this is the Composition toolbar, from the New button to the Spelling button. The most frequently used functions I've used are Publish, Preview, Link, Image and Table.

How do you make links of text and pictures? How do you align text next to or over a background picture? For more on basic web design let's go to a second page (download speed is important, so I've broken down this information into two other web pages). Go to Composer 2.