Chapter 4 - HTML Tools

Overview:

There are four specialized commands in the Insert menu used to insert Images, Tables, Frames and Anchors. There is also the general 'Insert Tag' command that can be used to insert any tag. In the format menu there are even more commands: Bold, Italic, Underline, Center, Headers, Format Text, Line Break and Paragraph.

Insert Image

To insert an image into a document, select 'Image' from the insert menu or press the matching toolbar button. This brings up a dialog where you can specify the parameters for your image. Here is a brief description of all options. Src: Image file. LowSrc: Low-resolution image file. Alternative Text: Text displayed instead of image, if the image for some reason cannot be displayed. Name: Name used to refer to image. UseMap: Client-Side image-map to use. Align: Alignment of image. Supress: Indicates whether or not to use ToolTips with the image. IsMap: Indicates that the image is a Server-Side image-map. Width and Height: Override the size of the image. VSpace and HSpace: Vertical and Horizontal distance between image and surrounding contents. Border: Border width in pixels.

Insert Table

To insert a table into a document, select 'Table' from the Insert menu or press the matching toolbar button. The dialog contains lots of controls, which let you control almost any parameter of the table. Here is a brief description of each of them. Columns and Rows: How many Columns and Rows the table contains. Border: Width of table border. Cellpadding: Distance between border and contents of cell. Height and Width: Size of table in pixels or percentage of parent item. HSpace and VSpace: Horizontal and Vertical distance between border and surrounding contents. Align: Alignment of table. BGColor: Background color. Press the button with three dots to choose a color. Caption: Header of table. Align: Alignment of caption. Use Clipboard Data: Inserts data from the clipboard in the table cells. Overrides Columns and Rows parameters.

Insert Frames

To insert frames into a document, select 'Frames' from the Insert menu or press the matching toolbar button. The dialog contains controls, which let you customize the appearance of your frames. Here is a description of each of them. No Cols and No Rows: Number of columns and rows of frames to insert. Edit Col and Edit Row: Specifies, which frame the current width and Height attributes, works on. Width and Height: Width and Height of active frame. Frameborder: Indicates if the frame has a visible border. Border Width: Width of border in pixels. Border Color: Color of border.

Insert Anchor

To insert an anchor or link into a document, select 'Anchor' from the Insert menu, press the matching toolbar button or press Ctrl + L. The dialog contains controls to customize your anchor or Link. Here is brief description of them. Bookmark: Not available in this release, but will let you choose a link from your Netscape or Explorer bookmarks in the future. Project File: Select a file from your current project. Path: Path to the document, which the link references. Caption: Text in the link. Your current selection will appear as the default. Name: Name of Anchor. Target: Destination window, can be one of the predefined values or a window name.

Insert Tag

In addition to these for specialized dialogs, MSS HTML Editor contains the general Insert Tag dialog, which can be used to insert any tag. To bring it up select 'Tag' from the Insert menu, press the matching toolbar button or press Ctrl + T. The dialog contains different controls depending on which tag you choose. You choose a tag by selecting it from the Tree Control to the left. If the tag has any arguments they popup to the right. To insert the tag, press the 'Insert' button. To insert an end-tag, press the 'Close Tag' button. To "apply" a tag to the current selection, press the 'Around' button.

Format Commands

In the Format menu there are commands used to format text. You have Bold, Italic, Center etc… All these commands works on the current selection by default. (They can be used with marks as well.) The 'Format Text' command brings up a standard Windows font dialog. The only thing worth mentioning about it is how the size is calculated. HTML doesn't use the same measurement as windows, therefore the program simply divides the point-size by ten to get the HTML size of the font.

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