Problems installing or running Claris Home Page

An error message appears when I try to start Claris Home Page: "There is not enough memory to open Claris Home Page (XXX needed, XXX available)." (Macintosh only)

Your computer does not have enough memory to use Claris Home Page at the same time as the other applications you are running. If you have other applications running, try exiting from them (bring the other application to the front, and choose Quit from the File menu). See the documentation that came with your Macintosh computer for other ways to increase available memory.

An error message appears when I try to start Claris Home Page: "You need a Macintosh equipped with a PowerPC processor to run this application." (Macintosh only)

You have installed a copy of Claris Home Page that is optimized for the PowerPC processor chip. This copy will not work on older Macintosh computers that are not equipped with this chip. You must re-install Claris Home Page from the original program disks.

Every time I start Claris Home Page, it opens one or more files without my telling it to.

Claris Home Page automatically opens any files in the Startup Items folder (Macintosh) or Startup folder (Windows) located in the same folder as the Claris Home Page application. To disable this, remove the unwanted files from the Startup Items or Startup folder.

Problems using Claris Home Page

Onscreen Help doesn't work. (Choosing an item from the Help menu displays an error message.)

The Claris Home Page Help uses a set of help files that are installed along with the application. These files should be located in a folder named Help, in the Claris Home Page folder. If the Help folder has been moved, renamed, or deleted, or if the application has been moved to a different location, then onscreen Help will not work. Make sure the Help folder is named "Help" and that it and the application are both located in the Claris Home Page folder, or re-install the help files using your original Claris Home Page installation disks.

Images in JPEG format are drawn as gray rectangles in Claris Home Page, but appear fine in a browser. (On Windows, the same problem may sometimes occur for GIF images as well.)

Claris Home Page requires certain software to be installed in order to display JPEG files.

On the Macintosh, QuickTime application program version 2.0 or greater must be installed in the Extensions folder.

On Windows, the Accusoft imaging DLL (Accuisr5.dll) must be installed in the same directory as Claris Home Page. To install the Accusoft imaging DLL, re-install Claris Home Page from the original program disks.

An image appears stretched or squashed.

You may have accidentally resized the image, or have changed the size of the image in a drawing program. Click once on the image in Claris Home Page to select it, and then reset it to its natural size by either double-clicking on the resize handle in the lower-right corner of the image, or opening the Object Editor and clicking the Reset Size button.

An image has the wrong background color.

HTML documents generally have a gray background color. Image files may have a different background color, such as white. To make the document background color show up in your image, you need to make the image's background transparent. To do this, open the image file in Claris Home Page (by choosing Open from the File menu, or by double- clicking the image and clicking the Set button next to Transparency and Interlace in the Object Editor), select the Transparency Tool and click on the background part of the image (it should turn gray). Choose Save from the File menu.

This procedure will only work for images in GIF format. JPEG images cannot use transparency. To change the background color of a JPEG image, you must use an image editing program such as Adobe Photoshop.

In the place where one of my images should appear, Claris Home Page draws a red box and the words "Missing image" appear. (The words "Missing image" may not appear for small images.)

This happens when Claris Home Page can't locate an image file. The file may have been accidentally moved, renamed, or deleted, or your HTML file may have been moved without bringing the image file along. To correct the problem, locate the image file (or re-create it if it has been deleted), and then Command-double-click (Macintosh) or Ctrl-double- click (Windows) on the red box. Claris Home Page displays a standard file selection dialog box. Select the image file and click OK. The red box should be replaced by the desired image.

In some cases, the red box and "Missing image" label may also appear if the image file is corrupt, or if there is not enough memory for Claris Home Page to display the image. If you suspect this may be the case, verify that the image file is not corrupt (for example, by opening it in another application), and try closing other documents or giving Claris Home Page more memory.

Problems opening files not created in Claris Home Page

This section describes problems that can occur when opening an HTML file that was not created in Claris Home Page. For example, the file may have been downloaded from the Internet, written using a text editor, or created in a different HTML editing application.

When I open an HTML document that was not created in Claris Home Page, it contains mysterious fragments of red text.

If a file contains incorrect HTML code, Claris Home Page displays the incorrect codes in red. This often occurs with files created in a text editor-browser applications are relatively tolerant of HTML errors, so you might not be aware of the error until you open the file in Claris Home Page. To correct the problem, simply delete the red text.

This problem can also occur for files that make use of HTML extensions not supported by Claris Home Page, such as blinking text. If you open a file that contains blinking text in Claris Home Page, the tags <BLINK> and </BLINK> appear on either side of the blinking text. If you delete the BLINK tags, the text will no longer blink when it appears in a browser.

When Claris Home Page displays red HTML code in your document, this is due to the use of HTML extensions (which should not be deleted) or errors in the HTML file (which should be deleted). If you are unsure, try making a copy of the file, removing the questionable code, and viewing the resulting file in a browser application. If removing the questionable code does not change the document's appearance in a browser, then you can safely delete it.

When I double-click on an HTML file on the Windows desktop, Claris Home Page isn't opened, the browser is.

On Windows, only one application is allowed to be the default viewer for a given file extension. In this case, the browser is the default viewer for HTML files, so it is opened when you click on an HTML file. To open an HTML file in Claris Home Page, drag the file itself (not a shortcut) to the Claris Home Page icon, or start Claris Home Page directly, and choose Open from the File menu. You can also change the association of the file type-see your Windows documentation for more details.

When I open an HTML document in Claris Home Page, text doesn't wrap around the pictures.

Claris Home Page 2.0 cannot display text wrapped around pictures. You can specify text wrapping by selecting the image and choosing Left or Right alignment in the Object Editor, but the text will not actually wrap around the image in Claris Home Page. This does not affect the appearance of the text in a browser; it only affects the appearance within Claris Home Page itself. To get a better feel for how the text will appear in a browser, use the Preview in Browser command.

When I open an HTML document in Claris Home Page, some of the HTML does not display correctly (blinking text, Java applets, browser plug-ins, etc.).

HTML is a rapidly evolving standard, and is constantly being extended. Claris Home Page does not support every HTML extension that has been proposed. If your document uses an extension to HTML that is not supported by Claris Home Page, it may not appear correctly in Claris Home Page. This will usually be indicated by the appearance of the unknown HTML codes in red. This does not affect the appearance of the document in a browser; it only affects the appearance within Claris Home Page itself. To get a better feel for how the document will appear in a browser, use the Preview in Browser command.

Problems with links

When I click on a link, Claris Home Page displays the message "Sorry, Claris Home Page 2.0 can only follow links to local files."

All links in an HTML file contain a URL (Universal Resource Locator), that identifies the file or other object that the link points to. There are two types of URLs: local URLs, which point to a file on the local machine (or to a file on the same machine as the document containing the link), and external URLs, which point to a file on a machine somewhere on the Internet. Claris Home Page can only process local URLs. To test a link to an external URL, open your document in a browser.

Tip You can view the URL for a link by opening your document in Edit Page mode and double-clicking the link to open the Link Editor. The URL appears in the URL text box in the Link Editor. External links begin with a sequence of letters followed by a colon, such as http:, ftp:, or mailto:. Local links do not have this prefix.

When I click on a link, Claris Home Page displays some other error message, such as "Sorry, unable to follow the URL "...", due to a disk error: no such file (error -43)."

This message appears when a link refers to a file that does not exist or that Claris Home Page can't find. The target file may have been accidentally moved or renamed, or may have been deleted. You should update the link's URL. This can be done as follows:

  1. Open the document containing the link.

    Make sure you are in Edit Page mode (choose Edit Page from the Window menu).

  2. Select the link.
  3. Choose Link to File from the Insert menu, or click the Browse Files button in the Link Editor.
  4. Select the target file for the link.

Note A common cause for this error is incorrect use of the "Use absolute pathnames" setting in the HTML Output panel of the Preferences dialog box. This setting should normally not be enabled. For more information, see Using relative or absolute paths..

When I click on a link that points to another part of the same file (i.e. to an anchor), nothing happens. Or, when I click on a link that points to an anchor in another file, Claris Home Page takes me to the beginning of the other file, instead of taking me to the location of the anchor.

The anchor has been accidentally renamed or deleted, or the link's URL has been entered incorrectly. To correct this problem:

  1. Verify that the target anchor still exists (open the target document in Edit Page mode, and look for the anchor symbol).

    If the anchor does not exist, choose Anchor from the Insert menu to re- create it.

  2. Select the target anchor, and choose Show Object Editor from the Window menu.

    The Name text box in the Object Editor shows you the name of the anchor. If the name is incorrect, type the correct name in this box or select the name from the pop-up menu.

  3. Open the document containing the link in Edit Page mode.
  4. Double-click the link to open the Link Editor.
  5. If the anchor is local to this document, inspect the value in the URL text box. (It should end in a pound sign, followed by the name of the anchor.) Enter the correct anchor name in this box. If the anchor is located on another Web page or site, the value in the URL text box should include the page or URL followed by the pound sign (#) and the correct anchor name.

Problems viewing documents in a browser

This section discusses problems that can arise when attempting to preview a Claris Home Page document in a browser application.

When I choose the Preview in Browser command, the following message appears: "Sorry, not enough memory to open the browser application. Try quitting some other applications."

There is not enough memory to open the browser application at the same time as Claris Home Page.

On the Macintosh, try reducing the amount of memory allocated to the browser (by selecting the browser's icon in the Finder operating system software and choosing Get Info from the File menu), or follow the usual steps for making more memory available: quitting other applications, turning off extensions, etc. Typically, you will need a Macintosh equipped with at least 12 megabytes of memory to run Claris Home Page and a browser application at the same time.

On a PC with Windows, some browsers will restart each time a page is previewed and a new copy of the application is opened. To free memory, close the application windows not in use.

When I choose the Preview in Browser command, the browser opens, but the file is not displayed.

The browser may not be installed correctly. Some browsers (notably, the Microsoft Explorer on Windows) can be damaged by applications that change registry entries, causing the system to incorrectly send "open file" messages to them. Re-install a fresh copy of the browser if you have this problem.

When I choose the Preview in Browser command, some other error message appears, such as "Sorry, an error occurred (-xx) while attempting to open the browser application", or "Sorry, an error occurred while attempting to send this file to the browser."

There may be a problem with the browser application you have selected as the default, or the browser application may be missing.

Choose Preferences from the Edit menu to open the Preferences dialog box. Choose Browser Preview from the pop-up menu or click the Browser Preview tab to display a new set of options. Click Set and re-select the browser.

My page doesn't look quite the same in the browser as it does in Claris Home Page (different fonts, lines are broken at different positions, etc.).

The HTML standard does not precisely define the appearance of a document. It sets broad guidelines, but individual programs (such as browsers) are free to use their own variations. Therefore, it is impossible to create an HTML file that will look exactly the same in every browser.

Claris Home Page 2.0 attempts to display HTML documents as they will appear in Netscape Navigator 2.0 (based on Navigator's default preferences settings). Certain features (such as table layout) are implemented differently in Claris Home Page than in Navigator, and minor differences in spacing are inevitable. With other browsers, or if you have altered Navigator's font preferences, there will be greater differences. Finally, your document may use advanced features not supported by the browser, such as tables, frames, or colored text.

If you plan to publish your HTML document on the Internet, it may be viewed by many different browsers on many different platforms. Therefore, you should not attempt to, or expect to, precisely control the layout and appearance of your document. Even if your HTML document is to be used locally (on an "Intranet"), users may employ different browsers or have customized font preferences and other browser settings that will affect the appearance of the document.

When I view my page in a browser, a strange character sometimes appears on blank lines.

Claris Home Page inserts a non-breaking space character (represented by the HTML code &nbsp;) on what are otherwise blank lines. This is done to work around a flaw in certain browsers, such as Netscape Navigator, which ignores blank lines. Unfortunately, other browsers sometimes incorrectly interpret this HTML code as representing a different (non-blank) character: for example, Netscape Navigator 2.0 with "Japanese encoding autodetect" enabled sometimes does this.

Links within my Web site work fine in Preview Page mode, but don't work when I click on them in a browser.

A variety of problems can cause links to function incorrectly (see Problems with links). One additional problem that can occur outside of Claris Home Page involves the Base Document URL text box in the Document Options dialog box. Claris Home Page 2.0 assumes that this field (which corresponds to the <BASE> tag in the HTML code), if not empty, contains the URL of the document in which it appears. If you enter a different URL in this text box, relative links may not work correctly. The solution is to remove the value in the Base Document URL text box, or set it to the URL of the page in question, and then use the Link Editor to re-create any malfunctioning links in that page.

Images from the Claris Home Page Clip Art library work fine when I view my pages on my local computer, but don't work when I upload my site to a Web (HTTP) server.

When uploading your site to a Web server, you need to make sure to include all files used in the site, including image files. The standard way to do this is to create an Images folder inside the folder that contains your site, and to place all image files in this folder. When you transfer the site folder to a server, the images will automatically be included.

When you insert an image from a library into your document, Claris Home Page uses the path to the original image file in the Clip Art folder. To correct the problem, you need to copy the actual image file into your site's Images folder, and replace all references in your site to the original image file with the new file.