Web Page Construction

Lecture One

Using a program called a browser, you can use a mouse to point and click on the screen icons to explore the Internet, particularly the World Wide Web (WWW or the Web), an Internet subset of text, images and sounds linked together to allow users to peruse related topics. Each different location on the Web is called a web site or, more commonly, just a site. You may have heard the term home page; this is just the first page of a web site. [Capron p26]

A web site consists of one or more web pages.

The first page of a website, the home page, has a standard name which is usually decided by the Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Different web page composers have different default names for the home page. PageMill creates the first page of a new site as index.html which happily matches the default used at ANU.

To create a new web site:

To create the first page of a new site, choose Site -> New (Windows) or File -> New -> New Site (Mac OS) and specify an empty local root folder. [PageMill.Help]

• In New Site dialogue box:
  • Enter a sensible name for the Site
  • Click on Local Site Location folder icon
  • In the Select a Folder dialog box which then appears:
    • Make sure you are in an appropriate folder, or, if you are putting the web site on a disk, make sure that the dialog box references your disk (your disk should have a sensible title)
    • Click on New
    • Give this folder, which is the root folder for your web site (a folder is the same as a directory), a sensible name.
    • Click on create
  • Click on create

This creates a new page, called index.html, in the local root folder. [PageMill.Help]

• In Site box:
  • Click on index.html

To create a new web page:

To create an additional page in a site, choose File -> New Page (Windows) or File -> New -> New Page (Mac OS). [PageMill.Help]

• File -> Save Page As... a sensible name including the .html extension (even on a Mac)

Editing a new home page:

• Enter a sensible title (it will be used by web browser Bookmarks or Favourites)
• Type in a heading in the main body of the web page and format it using the buttons on the bottom of the tool bar
• Toggle to Preview using large button on far right of tool bar, then toggle back
• Insert a table
• Insert an object (eg an image) into the table

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Lecture Two

Editing a web page:

• Open your root folder, then open the web page
• Enter a sensible title (used by the Bookmarks or Favourites)
• Type a heading in the main body of the web page, select it, then format it using the buttons on the tool bar
  • Click on pop-down menu next to Paragraph
  • Click on pop-down menu next to Default Font
  • Click on arrows on either side of 0 to increase and decrease the font size
  • Use toggle buttons for Bold, Italics, Underline
• Insert a horizontal rule under your heading
• Insert a link to an external web site (type a URL in the Link To: box)
• Toggle to Preview mode and click on the link
• Create a blockquote
  • Type in a quote
  • Italicise it
  • Left indent it
  • Choose View -> Source Mode and see how PageMill has interpreted the formatting
• Insert a bulleted list
• Insert a numbered list (see page from PageMill.Help)
• Choose Edit -> Check Spelling...
• Save your page and back it up

Editing a home page:

• Open your web site, then open the file index.html
• Insert an object (eg a file)
• Enter some text
• Insert a link to a web page in same site (type a file name in the Link To: box)

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Hints:

1. If PageMill suddenly won't let you edit your page, check that you are not in Preview mode. Look at the icon on the far right of the tool bar. If it is "a globe with a red arrow wrapped around it", you are in Preview mode. Click on the icon which should change to "a piece of paper with a red pen writing on it". You are now in the correct mode for editing your web page

2. If you would like to have a picture of yourself (or your dog) scanned in so that you can use it in your Web Assignment, you may like to learn to use the Chifley Imaging Lab in the Chifley Library

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