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- Before you begin
- What is this software for?
- InContext SpiderÖ is a WindowsÖ program that helps you create pages for the World Wide Web. You
- may already know that Web pages are written in the HyperText Markup Language (HTML for short), but
- InContext Spider will help you create great Web pages whether you know how to use the HTML coding
- language or not. This upgrade also makes it easy for you to get your finished pages onto the Web for the
- world to see.
-
- About this booklet
- Since you're either already publishing on the Web or getting ready to start, we assume that InContext
- Spider is not the first Windows application you've ever used and that you know how to select text, use
- dialog boxes, scroll, and perform other common Windows operations. In addition, all the screen shots are
- from the Windows 95 version of InContext Spider. If you're new to Windows and aren't sure how it all
- works, the best advice we can give you is to check out your manual for Windows or Windows 95.
-
- This Getting Started booklet contains an installation procedure to help you get InContext Spider running
- quickly, plus a tutorial that shows you how to create Web pages. You'll see how to start and edit a new
- Web page, how to add graphics to it, how to create hypertext links, and many other things.
-
- This booklet doesn't show you everything InContext Spider can do, but you'll get a good idea of what the
- program's about. The on-line help and your printed User's Guide have more information about InContext
- Spider's other features. There's also an electronic version of the manual written in HTML, so that you can
- use your Web browser to read it. Its table of contents is called "index.htm" and you'll find it on your
- system in the directory c:\icspider\userguid. You can get updates to the User's Guide from the Customer
- Support area of our Web site, at http://www.incontext.com/support/spider/userguid/.
-
- What's new in version 1.2?
- There are two major enhancements in InContext Spider 1.2. The first is "one-button publishing." It lets
- you publish your completed pages on the Web just by clicking a button on InContext Spider's toolbar. You
- no longer have to take the time and effort to send your files to a service provider so that they can put your
- pages on their server for you. Just one click and your page is on the Web for a potential audience of
- millions.
-
- The other major enhancement is the new Document Properties command that you'll find in the Tools
- menu. This makes it much easier for you to add background images and colors to your pages, as well as
- changing the color of text and hypertext links. In addition, you can now use a color palette to select any
- color you want.
-
- Besides these changes, you should also notice that the program is faster and generally runs better than in
- previous versions.
-
- Installation
- InContext Spider's Setup program
- To install your new software:
- 1. If you purchased InContext Spider on floppy diskettes, put Disk 1 in your floppy drive. If you have the
- CD-ROM version, place the compact disc in your CD-ROM drive.
-
- 2. Select the Run command from the taskbar or from your Program Manager's File menu. The Run dialog
- box appears.
-
- 3. In the Command Line, type "x:\setup" (where "x" is the designation of your floppy or CD-ROM drive)
- and click OK. After a few moments, the InContext Spider Setup dialog box will appear.
-
- 4. Express Installation will already be selected, so click on the Next button to proceed.
-
- 5. The Setup program will ask for your name and the name of your company. Once you enter them, click
- Next and then click Next again when the program asks you to confirm the information.
-
- 6. Select the drive where you want to install InContext Spider and click Next once again.
-
- 7. You can now configure your system to use InContext Spider's one-button publishing feature, so that you
- can put your pages on the Web quickly once they're done. If you already have a service provider or a Web
- server, you can click Next to enter the necessary information. If you don't have one yet, deselect the
- checkbox in this dialog box, click on the Next button and skip to step 10 of this procedure. You'll still be
- able to configure one-button publishing later from within InContext Spider.
-
- 8. Select a Publishing Host from the list that appears and click on the Next button.
-
- 9. Enter your Host Name, User Name and Remote Directory, then click the Next button.
-
- 10. If you have a previous version of InContext Spider on your system, a message will now tell you that
- the new one will replace it. Click on the Install button to install the new version.
-
- 11. If you're installing from your floppy drive, insert the other diskettes when the Setup program asks for
- them.
-
- 12. Once it's done, the Setup program will ask you to select which Program Group you want InContext
- Spider to appear in. Select one and click on the Next button.
-
- 13. InContext Spider can work interactively with several Web browsers, so the Setup program will now
- ask which one you want to use. Select one from the list and click on the Next button. You'll still be able to
- change your browser anytime from within InContext Spider.
-
- The installation of InContext Spider is now complete. If you have problems during installation, please
- contact our Customer Support Department. We're here Monday to Friday (except holidays) from 9 a.m. to
- 5 p.m. Eastern time at 1-800-263-0127. You can e-mail us at support@incontext.ca, or you can visit the
- Customer Support area of our Web site at http://www.incontext.com.
-
- Creating a Web page
- Starting the program
- If you're running under Windows 95, you can use the Start button and taskbar at the bottom left of your
- screen to run InContext Spider. If you're a Windows 3.1x or Windows NT user, double-click on the
- InContext Spider icon in your Program Manager. InContext Spider and the browser you selected at the
- end of the installation process will both open at the same time.
-
- After a few seconds, you'll see the InContext Spider startup screen. It contains the usual Windows
- features, such as a title bar, menu bar, maximize and minimize buttons, button bars, and a pointer. File
- and Help are the only menus that appear in this screen.
-
- Selecting a template
- To start a new Web page, you always have to choose a template first. InContext Spider comes with a
- number of different templates ù corporate and personal home pages, press releases, pages with forms or
- tables, and so on. There are also three templates for pages that don't have anything in them so that you
- can start a page completely from scratch, but we'll talk about those later.
-
- For now, let's suppose your company's decided to set up a Web site and they've had the wisdom to give you
- the job of Webmaster. To start your company's first Web page:
-
- 1. Select the New command from the File menu, or click on the New icon in the button bar. The Select a
- Template dialog box that appears lists all the templates that come with InContext Spider.
-
- 2. Scroll down in the dialog box until you see a couple of templates called "corporate homepage" and click
- once on the first one. You'll see a short description of what the template is about.
-
- 3. Click on the OK button. You'll see the message "Loading document" for a moment or two, and then
- InContext Spider will open an untitled company home page with information and graphics that you can
- customize.
-
- The main screen
- InContext Spider's main screen is divided in two. The Structure Editor on the left gives you a graphical
- outline of what's in your Web page (the paragraphs, headings, etc. that it contains), while the larger
- Content Editor on the right is where you type and edit the page's text, as well as viewing its graphics.
- There are also two button bars. The top one is the toolbar, and it activates many of InContext Spider's
- menu commands. The lower button bar is the element bar, and you can use it to add headings, paragraphs,
- graphics and so on to your pages.
-
- Editing text
- You do your typing in the Content Editor. There isn't much difference between typing and editing in a
- conventional word processor and doing it in InContext Spider. Paragraphs and headings can be as long as
- you want, and you can delete text using any of the mouse and keyboard combinations that you're familiar
- with from other Windows applications.
-
- The only real difference is that in InContext Spider you can only select text within one heading,
- paragraph, etc. at a time. You can't select two or more consecutive paragraphs, for example, or a heading
- and a paragraph. This means that you can't accidentally change your page in some way that violates the
- rules of hypertext documentsùthe rules that determine how Web pages look and behave in browsers.
-
- To see how text editing works in InContext Spider:
-
- 1. Delete the words "Your company name" that appear near the top and enter a name of your own instead
- (maybe something like "Paper Clips Unlimited"). If you look at the Structure Editor on the left as you
- type, you'll see that "HEADING 1" is highlighted. This tells you the text you're working on is part of a
- level-one heading in your page.
-
- 2. Now, select everything in the paragraph that begins "Lorem ipsum dolor." You'll notice that
- "PARAGRAPH" is now highlighted on the Structure side. This means the text is a paragraph in your Web
- page.
-
- 3. Using Latin to communicate with your customers isn't too effective these days, so delete the selected
- text and type something more appropriate for Paper Clips Unlimited. For example: "Thanks for coming to
- the Web site of Paper Clips Unlimited. For the past 30 years, we've been making the best paper clips
-
- 4. The paragraph following "Our Business" contains two sentences. To turn each one into a separate
- paragraph, click between the two sentences and press CTRL + ENTER on your keyboard. That's how you
- turn one paragraph into two. You can use the same keyboard combination to split headings and just about
- anything else in a Web page.
-
- 5. Click at the very end of the paragraph that begins "Note:" and ends after "ex ea commodo consequat"
- but don't select anything. (You might have to scroll down a bit to get to this paragraph.)
-
- 6. Press CTRL + ENTER again.
-
- A blank space will appear because you've just created a new paragraph, although it doesn't have any words
- yet. You can use CTRL + ENTER this way whenever you finish one paragraph, heading, list item, etc.
- and you want to start another.
-
- If you want, you can experiment with cutting, copying and pasting the text in this page, but if you've used
- other Windows applications then you probably already know how. The Cut, Copy and Paste commands
- are all in the Edit menu and they all have their own icons in the toolbar. They work the same way you're
- used to except that, as we already mentioned, you can only select text in one paragraph, heading, etc. at a
- time.
-
- Editing structureùintroduction
- A Web page can contain any number of headings, paragraphs, hypertext links, lists, and so on. In Web
- terminology, many people refer to them as "tags" or "elements." These tags or elements make up your
- document's structure, the same way that chapters, sections and subsections make up the structure of
- printed books. The Structure Editor displays your page's main elements in order.
-
- The elements also contain the text and graphics that you see in the Content Editor. The HEADING 1 and
- PARAGRAPH elements whose text you edited in the previous section contain ordinary text. Information
- about creating hypertext links and other really interesting things appears later in this booklet, but for now
- we'll keep things simple and stick with manipulating headings and paragraphs.
-
- Headings and paragraphs
- You can use the Content Editor to insert new headings and paragraphs, but if you want to delete or move
- them you'll usually need to use the Structure Editor.
-
- 1. In the Content Editor, point and click between "Introduction and Getting Started" and "Welcome". A
- bar called the insertion cursor will appear. If you look at the Structure Editor, you'll see a similar insertion
- cursor between the HEADING 2 and the first PARAGRAPH element.
-
- 2. Click on the HEADING 3 icon in the element bar. A HEADING 3 appears in the Structure Editor and a
- space appears at the corresponding place in the Content Editor.
-
- 3. Click inside the blank space in the Content Editor and type whatever you feel like saying. You've just
- created a new heading and typed its text. Also, if you look at the left side of the status bar at the bottom of
- the screen, you'll see the message "TEXT in HEADING 3." This lets you know that you are indeed typing
- a HEADING 3.
-
- 4. You'll probably want to follow your heading with a paragraph, so click beneath the text of the heading
- that you just created.
-
- 5. Click on the paragraph icon in the element bar. A new PARAGRAPH now appears in the Structure
- Editor, while a blank space appears at the corresponding place in the Content Editor.
-
- 6. Click inside the new space in the Content Editor and type your paragraph. As you type, you can see the
- message "TEXT in PARAGRAPH" in the status bar.
-
- It's that simple to create headings, paragraphs, and many other elements. If you move your mouse over
- any of the icons in the element bar, you'll be able to find out which element each one creates.
-
- It's just as easy to delete headings, paragraphs and most other elements as it is to insert them. All you do
- is point, click, and select a command.
-
- 7. In the Structure Editor, click on the HEADING 3 and the PARAGRAPH that you just created. You can
- click and drag to select them both.
-
- 8. Select the Delete command from the Edit menu, or press DELETE on your keyboard. InContext Spider
- will delete the heading, the paragraph and all of their text from your Web page.
-
- For future reference, remember that when you select multiple elements anything you do to one of them
- affects them all. For example, if you select consecutive elements in the Structure Editor and then press the
- DELETE key, everything you selected gets deleted from your document. If you ever delete something that
- you shouldn't have, you can use the Edit menu's Undo command to retrieve it.
-
- Cutting, copying and pasting
- You can cut, copy and paste headings, paragraphs and other elements. When you do, however, you change
- the structure of your Web page. As a result, you can only cut and paste elements if it doesn't violate
- HTML's rules. InContext Spider won't let you do anything that HTML doesn't allow.
-
- You can use the Structure Editor to select one element at a time, or you can select several that appear
- consecutively. To cut, copy and paste paragraphs:
-
- 1. Click on the fourth PARAGRAPH in the Structure Editor. The paragraph beginning "Duis autem vel
- eum" should now be highlighted in the Content Editor.
-
- 2. Select the Cut command from the Edit menu, or click on the Cut icon in the toolbar. InContext Spider
- deletes the selected paragraph, placing a copy of it and its text on your computer's clipboard.
-
- 3. In the Content Editor, point beneath the paragraph that begins "Note:" and click once (you might have
- to scroll down a bit to find the right paragraph). You should now see the insertion cursor.
-
- 4. Select the Paste command from the Edit menu, or click on the Paste icon in the toolbar. The paragraph
- that you cut now appears where you clicked. You've just used the Cut and Paste commands to move a
- paragraph.
- 5. Now, suppose you want to copy "Our Business" and the two paragraphs beneath it. In the Structure
- Editor, select the third PARAGRAPH and drag your mouse down to select the next two as well. Three
- paragraphs should now be highlighted, as in the illustration on the next page.
-
- 6. Select the Copy command from the Edit menu, or click on the Copy icon in the toolbar. InContext
- Spider copies the selected paragraphs and their text to your computer's clipboard.
-
- 7. In the Content Editor, point above the paragraph that says "Registering Your Software" (you might
- have to scroll down a bit more) and click once when you see the short insertion bar.
-
- 8. Select the Paste command from the Edit menu, or click on the Paste icon in the toolbar. The paragraphs
- that you copied now appear where you clicked.
-
- Formatting text
- You can use InContext Spider's Format command to change the way paragraphs and many other elements
- will look when you see your Web page in a browser. In the untitled page you've been working on, the
- paragraphs "Welcome," "Our Business," "Getting Started" and so on look different from those beneath
- them. If you click within one of those paragraphs, the message "TEXT in BOLD" will appear in the status
- bar. That's because we used the Format command to add a "BOLD" tag to the paragraph's text.
-
- To do this yourself:
-
- 1. In the Content Editor, scroll down until you see "Registering Your Software" and the two paragraphs
- following it.
-
- 2. Click at the end of the paragraph that finishes "ex ea commodo consequat" but don't select any of its
- text.
-
- 3. Press CTRL + ENTER to create a new paragraph.
-
- 4. Type something in the new paragraph. For example, "How to Contact Us" (which, by the way, is useful
- information to include on just about any business's Web site).
-
- 5. When you're done, select everything you just typed.
-
- 6. Click on the BOLD icon in the element bar. A pair of arrows now surrounds the paragraph's text to
- indicate that another tag has been applied to it, and the message "BOLD in PARAGRAPH" appears in the
- status bar.
-
- 7. You can continue surrounding the paragraph's text with other tags. For example, if you select the text
- again and click on the ITALIC icon in the element bar, a second pair of arrows will surround the
- paragraph's text. The message "ITALIC in BOLD" will appear in the status bar.
-
- You can apply many tags other than those you see in the element bar. For example, there's a BLINK tag
- that you can use to make things blink when you see your page in a browser.
-
- 8. Select the Format command from the Edit menu, or click on the Format icon in the toolbar. The Format
- Selection dialog box that appears will list all the tags you can apply to the selected text. Different tags can
- appear at different places in Web pages, so you'll find that this list changes as you move around your page.
-
- 9. Select BLINK from the list and click on the OK button. A third set of arrows will appear, indicating
- that the paragraph is now surrounded by three other tags ù a BOLD, an ITALIC, and a BLINK.
-
- Checking your spelling
- Since some of us have a tendency toward "creative" spelling, InContext Spider includes a spell checker to
- help you correct typos and spelling mistakes. As with all spell checkers, however, what it really does is
- draw your attention to words it doesn't recognize. If your document contains proper names, words that
- aren't English, or anything that's just kind of unusual, the spell checker will probably detect it even if it
- isn't actually a spelling error. It's then up to you to decide whether you want to change it or not. InContext
- Spider includes a User Dictionary that you can use to tell it not to spell check things like your name or
- specific words in other languages.
-
- To check your whole document's spelling:
-
- 1. Click inside any text in the Content Editor.
-
- 2. Select the Spelling command from the Tools menu, or click on the Spelling icon in the toolbar. The
- Spell Check dialog box appears.
-
- 3. Click on the Start button to begin the spell check. If InContext Spider finds a word it doesn't recognize,
- the Spelling dialog box will show it to you in the Problem box, while the context in which it occurs is
- shown in the Context box. Some alternative spellings will usually appear beneath the Problem box (as in
- the figure below).
-
- 4. You can either correct the errors InContext Spider finds or ignore them (if they aren't really spelling
- mistakes). To change the misspelled word to an alternative provided in the Replace With box, select the
- word you want to use and click on the Replace button. To make the same correction throughout your page,
- click on the Replace All button. If InContext Spider doesn't offer any alternatives, you can type one in the
- Replace With box and click on Replace or Replace All.
-
- If you want to ignore the error InContext Spider found, or if it isn't really an error, you can click on Ignore
- or Ignore All. Clicking Ignore tells InContext Spider to disregard that occurrence of the word, while
- Ignore All tells it to disregard the word throughout the document.
-
- 5. After you tell the spell checker what to do about a word, it will keep checking your document. If it finds
- another word that it doesn't recognize, you can correct or ignore it as described above.
-
- You can end the spell check at any time by clicking on the Close button.
-
- To spell check only certain specific paragraphs, headings, etc. in your Web page, select them in the
- Structure Editor before you activate the Spelling command. The rest of the spell check will then proceed
- until the end of the selected elements is reached.
-
- Finding and replacing
- It's easy to find and replace text in InContext Spider. You can search for a single word, a phrase, or the
- content of an entire paragraph, heading or other element.
-
- The template we used to create your first Web page is for a company that makes widgets. Suppose you
- want to change the word "widget" to "paper clip" wherever it occurs:
-
- 1. Click at the start of your page in the Content Editor.
-
- 2. Select the Find command from the Edit menu, or click on the Find icon in the toolbar. The Find dialog
- box appears.
-
- 3. Type "widget" in the Find Text box.
-
- 4. Type "paper clip" in the Replace With box.
-
- 5. Click on the OK button.
-
- When InContext Spider finds the first place where "widget" occurs, a dialog box with four buttons will
- appear. Click the Replace button to replace "widget" with "paper clip", or click Replace All if you want to
- replace it automatically all the way through the document.
-
- If you ever search for something that turns out not to be in the page, a message will let you know that the
- search was unsuccessful.
-
- Saving your page
- As in most other Windows applications, you use the Save As command when you're saving a new Web
- page for the first time. To save the page you've been editing in the last few sections:
-
- 1. Select the Save As command from the File menu, or press CTRL + A. The Save As dialog box will
- appear.
-
- 2. Use the Drives and Folders list boxes to switch to the directory c:\icspider\data.
-
- 3. Give your document a name, such as "index.htm".
-
- 4. Click on the OK button to save your page. Once InContext Spider finishes saving, you can go on
- working.
-
- Previewing your page in a browser
- InContext Spider does its best to give you an idea of how your Web pages will look in a browser. To make
- sure you're on the right track, however, you need to examine your pages in the real thing. InContext
- Spider therefore includes a Preview feature that you can use to see your pages in the most popular
- browsers ù Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, and Mosaic. Always keep in mind, however, that your
- Web pages will look different ù sometimes significantly different ù depending on which browser you
- view them in.
-
- To preview a page:
-
- 1. Save it in InContext Spider, since some browsers only display the last saved version of a page.
-
- 2. Select the Preview command from the File menu, or click on the Preview icon in the toolbar. After a
- few seconds, your page will appear in your browser.
-
- 3. When you finish looking at your page in the browser, you can use the ALT + TAB keyboard
- combination to return to the page in InContext Spider.
-
- Starting a page from scratch
- Before we go on and start adding links and graphics, we'll take a short break to let you know about three
- templates that are completely different from the rest. They're the first three listed in the Select a Template
- dialog box when you select the New command. Unlike the other templates that come with InContext
- Spider, they don't really contain anything that you'd normally recognize as contentùno text, no graphics,
- no nothing except for very basic HTML structures.
-
- If the other templates aren't useful to you, or if you're familiar enough with HTML that you don't need to
- rely on them, you can use these empty templates to create your pages. One creates a new document based
- on HTML 2.0 (which means you can't center anything or use tables); one creates documents based on
- HTML 3.0 (which gives you access to lots of interesting things that aren't "official" yet); and the third
- uses the Netscape and Internet Explorer extensions (which means you can center text, insert background
- images and sounds, and so on). However, we don't recommend that you use the empty templates unless
- you really know your way around HTML or are willing to invest a little time experimenting with it.
-
- Adding links to your pageùintroduction
- Now that you've saved your first page and seen how it looks in a browser, you'll probably want to add a
- few links to it. The best place to begin is to show you how you can create links to other pages of your own.
- You may not have created any in InContext Spider yet except for the one in this tutorial, but for now we
- can just assume that you have. It doesn't make much difference in the procedure that you follow.
-
- Linking to your own pages
- A good rule of thumb to follow when creating a Web site is to keep all your pages in the same directory.
- This gets harder once your site becomes large, but for smaller sites it makes things much easier.
-
- In previous sections, you created a Web page that you saved as "index.htm". Let's assume you've now gone
- on and created a few other pages and you want to start linking them together. For example, at the bottom
- of the page we've been working with you'll see the questions "What is a paper clip?", "How can I get a
- paper clip?", and "What do I do with a paper clip?" You can turn each of those questions into a hypertext
- link that leads to another page with more detailed information about paper clips.
-
- 1. In the Content Editor, select the words "How can I get a paper clip?"
-
- 2. Select the Format command from the Edit menu, or click on the Format icon in the button bar. The
- Format Selection dialog box will now appear.
-
- 3. Select ANCHOR in the dialog box.
-
- 4. Click on the OK button. When the dialog box closes, you'll see that "How can I get a paper clip?" is
- now blue and underlined.
-
- 5. Press CTRL + T on your keyboard to bring up the Anchor dialog box.
-
- 6. In the Anchor Address box, type the filename of the page that you want the hypertext link to go to (for
- example, "howcan.htm").
-
- 7. Click on the OK button.
-
- You've just created a hypertext link between two pages on your site, from "index.htm" to "howcan.htm". If
- you now save your page and preview it in your browser, the words "How can I get a paper clip?" will be
- blue and may also be underlined, depending on which browser you're using. Anyone reading "index.htm"
- in a browser will now be able to click on the link and view your "howcan.htm" page.
-
- Linking to other sites
- One thing that will make your site attractive to other Web surfers is offering hypertext links to other
- places on the Web. A paper clip manufacturer might have a link to the home page of the International
- Paper Clip Manufacturers' Association, or to a page about paper clip metallurgy at an Engineering school.
- On the other hand, some people provide long lists of links to any sites that they happen to stumble across
- and enjoy.
-
- There are two ways to link to another Web site. You can create the link yourself if you know the address
- of the site you want to link to, or you can use InContext Spider's Web Manager to do it automatically as
- you browse.
-
- Creating a link yourself
- Let's assume you want the phrase "What is a paper clip?" to lead to a page all about paper clips on the
- Web site of the International Paper Clip Manufacturers' Association. Let's also assume that the
- association's site is http://www.paperclips.org. To create a link to that site:
-
- 1. In the Content Editor, select the words "What is a paper clip?"
-
- 2. Select the Format command from the Edit menu, or click on the Format icon in the button bar. The
- Format Selection dialog box will now appear.
-
- 3. Select ANCHOR in the dialog box.
-
- 4. Click on the OK button. When the dialog box closes, you'll see that "What is a paper clip?" is now blue
- and underlined.
-
- 5. Press CTRL + T on your keyboard to bring up the Anchor dialog box.
-
- 6. In the Anchor Address box, type "http://www.paperclips.org".
-
- 7. Click on the OK button.
-
- You've just created a hypertext link to the home page of the International Paper Clip Manufacturers'
- Association. If you now save your page and preview it in your browser, the words "What is a paper clip?"
- will be blue and may also be underlined, depending on which browser you're using. Anyone reading your
- page in a browser will now be able to click on the link and go to the association's site.
-
- Creating links automatically
- InContext Spider's Web Manager gives you the ability to insert several hypertext links to several sites at
- once, even if you have no idea what their Web addresses are. To see how this works:
-
- 1. Use the ALT + TAB combination to move to your browser.
-
- 2. Type "http://www.incontext.com/support/spider/demo.html" in the URL field and press the ENTER
- key. Your browser will now load a page that we put on the InContext Systems Web site specifically for
- this tutorial.
-
- 3. When your browser finishes loading the page, ALT + TAB back to your Web page in InContext Spider.
-
- 4. In the Content Editor, click just beneath "What do I do with a paper clip?" This is where your new
- hypertext links will be inserted in just a couple more steps.
-
- 5. Click on the ANCHOR icon in the element bar. InContext Spider's Web Manager now appears, listing
- all the links in the page that's currently in your browser.
-
- 6. Select a few links from the list. You can select consecutive links by shift-clicking (holding down the
- SHIFT key while you click), or you can select non-consecutive links by holding down the CTRL key as
- you click on each one.
-
- 7. Click on the OK button. InContext Spider will now ask how you want the links to appear in your
- document. You can turn them into a bulleted list, a numbered list, or a series of consecutive links (or
- anchors).
-
- 8. Select the option "as a bulleted list of anchors."
-
- InContext Spider will now add the selected links to your page. Anyone reading it in a browser will be able
- to link to a number of different places on the Web.
-
- You can use basically the same procedure to insert links from your browser's History list. The process is
- exactly the same except that when the Web Manager appears at the end of Step 2, you select the Browser
- History option from the Show box. Instead of seeing all the links on a single Web page, you'll see a list of
- all the pages you've browsed recently. You can select any pages you want to link to and then continue with
- the rest of the procedure you just learned.
-
- Linking within a page
- Besides linking to different Web pages, you can also link from one place to another within the same page.
- This is very useful for long Web pages that have a number of subsections.
-
- 1. Scroll back to the top of your page in the Content Editor and select the words "Getting Started" from
- the heading that reads "Introduction and Getting Started".
-
- 2. Select the Format command from the Edit menu, or click on the Format icon in the button bar. The
- Format Selection dialog box will now appear.
-
- 3. Select ANCHOR in the dialog box and click on the OK button. When the dialog box closes, you'll see
- that "Getting Started" is now blue.
-
- 4. Press CTRL + T on your keyboard to bring up the Anchor dialog box.
-
- 5. In the Anchor address box, type "#GETSTART". This will tell browsers that the link goes to a section
- of the same document named "GETSTART".
-
- 6. Click on the OK button.
-
- 7. Scroll down and select the words "Getting Started" after the end of the section "Our Business."
-
- 8. Select the Format command from the Edit menu, or click on the Format icon in the toolbar. The Format
- Selection dialog box will again appear.
-
- 9. Select ANCHOR in the dialog box and click on the OK button. When the dialog box closes, you'll see
- that "Getting Started" is now blue.
-
- 10. Press CTRL + T on your keyboard to bring up the Anchor dialog box again.
-
- 11. Type "GETSTART" in the Name box and click OK.
-
- You've just created a link from one part of your page to another. If you now save your page and preview it
- in your browser, the main heading "Getting Started" will be blue and may also be underlined, depending
- on which browser you're using. However, the paragraph heading that says "Getting Started" will not be
- blue because it doesn't link to anything else. It's just on the receiving end of another link.
-
- E-mail links
- Another type of link that you often see on Web pages is an e-mail link. Many Webmasters add e-mail
- links to their pages so that readers can send them feedback about their Web site. If your e-mail address is
- "webmaster@paperclips.com", you can use the following procedure to create an e-mail link:
-
- 1. Scroll down to the bottom of your page in the Content Editor and click just above the section that starts
- with the words "Your Company Name".
-
- 2. Click on the paragraph icon in the element bar to create a new paragraph.
-
- 3. Type "Send e-mail to the Webmaster."
-
- 4. Select the Format command from the Edit menu, or click on the Format icon in the toolbar. The Format
- Selection dialog box will appear.
-
- 5. Select ANCHOR in the dialog box and click on the OK button. When the dialog box closes, you'll see
- that "Send e-mail to the Webmaster" is now blue and underlined.
-
- 6. Press CTRL + T on your keyboard to bring up the Anchor dialog box.
-
- 7. In the Anchor Address box, type "mailto:webmaster@paperclips.com".
-
- 8. Click on the OK button.
- If you now save your page and preview it in your browser, the words "Send e-mail to the Webmaster?"
- will be blue and may also be underlined, depending on which browser you're using. Anyone reading your
- page in a browser will now be able to click on the link and send you e-mail.
-
- Inserting graphicsùintroduction
- It's easy to create high impact pages by inserting graphics in InContext Spider documents. You can use
- your own graphics that you've saved locally, or you can use graphics from other Web sites. Just be careful
- of any copyright restrictions.
-
- Inserting your own graphics
- There are hundreds of clip art graphics in your c:\icspider\images directory. Among other things, there are
- 101 backgrounds created by Russ Walsh and more than 50 horizontal rules from John Laroche. For the
- latest additions to their image galleries, visit Russ's site
- (http://www.issi.com/people/russ/backgrounds.html) or John's site (http://www.netrunner.net).
-
- Rather than checking each graphic one by one, you can load the pages in the images subdirectory into
- your browser. Backgrounds are in "backgrn1.htm," "backgrn2.htm," "backgrn3.htm," "backgrn4.htm" and
- "backgrn5.htm." Rules are in "rule1.htm" and "rule 2.htm." Numbers and letters are in "letter1.htm,"
- "letter2.htm" and "letter3.htm." In "misc1.htm", you'll find bullets, bars, and quotation marks, images of
- spiders, and more.
-
- Suppose you want to insert one of these graphics ù or any graphics that you've created yourself and saved
- locally ù into your Web page. There are two ways to do it: 1) inserting an IMAGE element; or 2) drag-
- and-drop. Drag-and-drop is usually quicker, but only if you already know exactly where the graphic has
- been saved.
-
- Inserting an IMAGE element
- 1. Scroll down to the end of the page that we've been working with throughout this tutorial.
-
- 2. In the Structure Editor, click on the HORZ LINE element. This is a horizontal line that appears when
- you view the page in a browser. Since plain horizontal lines look a little dull, we'll replace it with
- something more colorful.
-
- 3. Select the Delete command from the Edit menu, or press the DELETE key to remove the horizontal
- line from your page.
-
- 4. Click on the Image icon in the element bar. An IMAGE element will now appear in the Structure
- Editor.
-
- 5. Press CTRL + T to bring up the Image dialog box.
-
- 6. Click on the Browse button to bring up the Open dialog box, which you can use to find the graphic you
- want to insert.
-
- 7. Use the Folders box to switch to the directory c:\icspider\images.
-
- 8. Select the file "hr_wood.gif" and click on the OK button to return to the Image dialog box.
-
- 9. Click OK once again to finish inserting the graphic. The graphic you selected will now appear in your
- InContext Spider Web page.
-
- InContext Spider automatically enters the location of the graphic in the SRC box so that your browser will
- know where to find it when you preview your page. However, it inserts the file's local pathname, which
- won't work when you publish your page on the Web. For the graphic to appear once your page is on a Web
- server, you'll either have to fiddle with the directory mappings (as described in your InContext Spider
- User's Guide), or enter a "relative pathname."
-
- To enter a relative pathname:
-
- 1. Press CTRL + T to bring up the Image dialog box again.
-
- 2. Delete "file:///c|/icspider" from the Location of Image File box.
-
- 3. At the start of the text that remains, enter a pair of periods. The text should now read
- "../images/hr_wood.gif".
-
- 4. Click on the OK button.
-
- The information you just entered tells browsers where to find the graphic, but since you didn't enter a full
- pathname it will still work when your page and graphics go onto a Web server. This relative pathname
- tells the browser to back up one directory, then go into another directory called "images" and find the file
- "hr_wood.gif".
-
- Drag-and-drop
- Most of the time, the fastest way to add a graphic to your Web page is to drag-and-drop it straight into
- InContext Spider. Suppose you've just inserted a graphic using the method we just described, but you're
- not too impressed with the way it looks.
-
- 1. In the Structure Editor, click on the IMAGE element you just inserted.
-
- 2. Select the Delete command from the Edit menu, or press the DELETE key to remove the graphic from
- your page.
-
- 3. Bring up Windows Explorer or File Manager, or whichever file management utility you prefer.
-
- 4. Resize the application window so that you can see both InContext Spider and your file management
- program.
-
- 5. Use Windows Explorer, File Manager or another file management tool to locate the graphic file
- c:\icpsider\images\hr_modbl.gif.
-
- 6. Select that graphic, drag it over to InContext Spider, and release the mouse button. The graphic you
- selected will now appear in your page.
-
- InContext Spider automatically enters the location of the graphic in the SRC box so that your browser will
- know where to find it when you preview your page. However, it inserts the file's local pathname, which
- won't work when you publish your page on the Web. For the graphic to appear once your page is on a Web
- server, you'll either have to fiddle with the directory mappings (as described in your InContext Spider
- User's Guide) or enter a relative pathname as described in the previous topic.
-
- Using graphics from other Web pages
- As you travel around the Web, you'll probably see some pretty nice-looking graphics. You may even
- decide that one of them would like awfully nice in your own page. There are two ways to handle this
- situation: 1) use your browser to download the graphic; or 2) insert an IMAGE element that points to the
- graphic's location. Downloading the graphic is easy, but it works a little differently in every browser. Your
- InContext Spider User's Guide, has information about downloading graphics.
-
- So suppose you really like the "This page created using InContext Spider" graphic in the page
- http://www.incontext.com/support/spider/demo.html that you saw earlier in this tutorial. To use that
- graphic in your own page:
-
- 1. Load the page "http://www.incontext.com/support/spider/demo.html" into your browser.
-
- 2. Use your taskbar or the ALT + TAB combination to return to your page in InContext Spider.
-
- 3. In the Content Editor, click beneath the last line of text in your page.
-
- 4. Click on the Image icon in the element bar to insert a new IMAGE element.
-
- 5. Press CTRL + T to bring up the Image dialog box.
-
- 6. Click on the URLs button to bring up the Web Manager.
-
- 7. Select the Current Browser Images option from the Show list box in the Web Manager. A list of
- graphics in the current browser page will appear.
-
- 8. Select the image http://www.incontext.com/support/spider/spider.gif and click OK to return to the
- Image dialog box.
-
- 9. Click OK again to return to your page.
-
- The image won't appear in InContext Spider because it's located on the Web instead of on your local
- system, but you'll be able to see it when you view the page in a browser. If someone ever decides to move
- or delete the graphic, however, it will no longer show up in your page. If you want to make sure that the
- graphic always appears in your page, you should use your browser to download it, as described in your
- InContext Spider User's Guide.
-
- Background images and colors
- By default, most browsers will display your page against a gray background. More and more Web authors
- find that kind of dull and are using background graphics and colors in their pages. As we already
- mentioned, InContext Spider comes with lots of background images that you can add to your page. You'll
- find them in your c:\icspider\images directory.
-
- To add a background to your Web page:
-
- 1. Select the Document Properties command from the Tools menu. The Document Properties dialog box
- appears.
-
- 2. In the box labeled "Image File (SRC)", type the relative pathname "../images/russ02.gif".
-
- 3. Now, to change the background color, click in the Background Color box and select an option. White is
- usually safe.
-
- 4. Click on the OK button.
-
- If you now save and preview the page in your browser, you'll be able to see the effect. You can also use the
- Document Properties dialog box to change the color of links and other text in your page. Be careful with
- this, however, since you can't really control how other people's monitors display colors. Some people could
- end up seeing some pretty unusual effects in what you think is a really great Web page. Also, keep in
- mind that while the really popular browsers like Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer handle
- background colors, some other browsers don't.
-
- Background sounds
- You can add background sounds, .wav, .au and other types of audio files to Web pages. You can set your
- document up so that anyone viewing it will hear waves crashing on a beach, or your favorite line from
- Pulp Fiction, or anything else you want to share with the world. InContext Spider comes with a number of
- sample audio files, which you'll find in your c:\icspider\media directory. Of course, if the person reading
- your page doesn't have a computer that's wired for sound, or is using a browser that doesn't support
- background sounds, they won't be able to hear them.
-
- 1. In the Structure Editor, click between the BODY and HEADING 1.
-
- 2. Select the New Element command from the Edit menu, or click on the New Element icon in the
- toolbar. The Insert New Element dialog box will appear.
-
- 3. Select BACKGROUND SOUND from the list of elements and click on the OK button.
-
- 4. Press CTRL + T to bring up the Background Sound dialog box.
-
- 5. In the SRC box, type the pathname of the sound you want to use, or click on the Browse button to
- search for one. Sounds can be in the .wav, .au or .midi formats.
-
- 6. In the Loop box, enter the number of times you want the sound to play when someone views the page in
- a browser. You can specify a number or you can enter INFINITE, in which case the sound will keep
- playing indefinitely.
-
- 7. Click on the OK button. If you now preview your page in browser that handles background sounds,
- you'll hear your audio clip.
-
- Tablesùintroduction
- Tables are the latest design rage on the Web because they give Webmasters greater control over the way
- their pages look. Many people now use tables to put text and graphics into columns and rows, which is
- otherwise a little hard to do. Although not every browser displays tables properly, they're no problem for
- the most popular ones ù Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and most incarnations of
- Mosaic.
-
- A number of the templates that come with InContext Spider include ready-made tables that you can
- customize for your own use. In this tutorial, however, we're going to create one from scratch in the page
- you've been working on.
-
- Creating a table is a two-part process: 1) inserting the table and its components; and 2) adding text to it.
-
- Inserting a table
- 1. In the Content Editor, click just above the link that says "What is a paper clip?"
-
- 2. Select the New Element command from the Edit menu, or click on the New Element icon in the
- toolbar. The Insert New Element dialog box will appear.
-
- 3. Select TABLE from the element list and click on the OK button.
-
- 4. In the Content Editor, click inside the space that appeared when InContext Spider inserted the TABLE.
-
- 5. Once again, select the New Element command from the Edit menu, or click on the New Element icon
- in the toolbar to bring up the Insert New Element dialog box.
-
- 6. Select TR (it stands for Table Row) from the element list and click OK. A pair of arrows will now
- appear inside the table in the Content Editor.
-
- 7. Click once between the arrows.
-
- 8. Select the New Element command one more time, or click on its icon in the toolbar.
-
- 9. When the Insert New Element dialog box appears, select TD (it stands for Table Data) and click OK.
- Another pair of arrows will appear. Your page should now look like figure 37.
-
- Adding text to a table
- 1. In the Content Editor, select the hypertext link "What is a paper clip?" (and make sure you select the
- blue arrows surrounding it so that you're selecting the link as well as the words). The message "ANCHOR
- in PARAGRAPH" should appear in the status bar.
-
- 2. Select the Cut command from the Edit menu, or click on the Cut icon in the toolbar.
-
- 3. Click inside the TD you created.
-
- 4. Select the Paste command from the Edit menu, or click on the Paste icon in the toolbar. The text now
- appears in the table, as in figure 38 on the next page.
-
- 5. Select everything in the TD and the first set of black arrows that surround it. In the status bar, you
- should see the message "TD in TR".
-
- 6. Press CTRL + T to bring up the Attribute dialog box.
-
- 7. Select CENTER from the ALIGN box and click OK. This tells InContext Spider that you want to center
- your text within the TD.
-
- 8. Click at the end of the hypertext link (after the blue arrow that points to the left) and press CTRL +
- ENTER to create a new TD.
-
- You can now repeat the procedure with the text "How can I get a paper clip?" and "What do I do with a
- paper clip?" When you're done, select the three paragraphs with question mark graphics and delete them
- from the Structure Editor. Your page should now look like the one below. If you save your document and
- preview it, you'll see what a table looks like in your browser.
-
- For future reference, the following InContext Spider templates have tables in them:
-
- Company homepage front cover 1
- Company homepage front cover 2
- Event announcement
- Homepage front cover 1
- Magazine story layout 1
- Magazine story layout 2
- Personal homepage front cover 2
- Resume 2
-
- You can also find more information about tables by visiting the Netscape Table Sampler site at
- http://home.mcom.com/assist/net_sites/table_sample.html, or the HTML3 Table Page at
- http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/html3/tables.html.
-
- Bits and bytes
- You've now completed the tutorial on creating a Web page in InContext Spider, but we thought we'd add
- some information about a few other things that you'll probably want to do sooner or later.
-
- Changing your browser
- You've already seen that InContext Spider works interactively with the Spider Mosaic browser to help you
- create links and download Web pages. But you can do the same things using the Netscape Navigator,
- Microsoft Internet Explorer, and NCSA Mosaic browsers as well. To choose the browser that you want to
- use:
-
- 1. With a page open in InContext Spider, select the Configure command from the File menu. A submenu
- containing several options appears.
-
- 2. Select the Browser option from the submenu. A list of browsers that work with InContext Spider now
- appears.
-
- 3. Select the browser that you want to use.
-
- The next time you run InContext Spider, the browser you selected will start up at the same time.
-
- Opening pages created in other programs
- If you're already an experienced Web author, you might be wondering how to open your existing Web
- pages in InContext Spider. Most of the time, it's no problem to open Web pages created in other programs.
- You can even download pages from someone else's Web server and edit them. The only time you're likely
- to have problems opening pages created in other Web page editors is if they have serious errors in their
- HTML markup.
-
- Your own pages
- 1. Select the Open command from the File menu, or click on the Open icon in the toolbar. The Open
- dialog box will appear.
-
- 2. Use the Drives and Directories boxes to find the document you want to open.
-
- 3. Once you're in the right drive and directory, select the document you want to edit.
-
- 4. Click on the OK button to open the document.
-
- InContext Spider will now display the message "Loading document" and a Cancel button that you can
- click if you change your mind.
-
- Pages with HTML errors
- When you open a document, InContext Spider automatically checks its HTML coding to make sure it's
- correct. You can't create incorrect HTML structures with InContext Spider, but if you've been working
- with other programs then you could have accidentally created minor problems.
-
- InContext Spider automatically corrects many common HTML coding errors. However, if it sees
- something that it just can't figure out then it will tell you that it's found errors and ask if you want to fix
- them. If you click No, InContext Spider will do its best to finish opening the page. If you click Yes,
- InContext Spider will list the problems in a separate window. There'll be one message for each error.
-
- If you click on one of these messages, InContext Spider will scroll to the related error so that you can fix
- it. You can save the message list by selecting the error window's Save command.
-
- If the errors are unusual or numerous enough, there's a chance that InContext Spider won't be able to open
- the page. This shouldn't happen often, but if it does you should probably contact our Customer Support
- department by e-mail at "support@incontext.com" or by phone (if you're in North America) at
- 800-263-0127.
-
- Downloading pages
- Besides opening and editing your own Web pages, InContext Spider gives you the ability to download
- other people's pages. This way, if you ever come across a page that really impresses you or that does
- something especially clever, you can download it and use it as a template for your own creations. To
- download a page from any Web site:
-
- 1. Open the page in your Web browser.
-
- 2. Press ALT + TAB or use your taskbar to return to InContext Spider.
-
- 3. Select the Download command and the Current option from the File menu, or click on the Download
- Page icon in the element bar.
-
- After a few seconds, InContext Spider will load an untitled Web page with all the text and hypertext links
- that are in the original. However, any graphics that the page uses do not get downloaded onto your local
- system ù only the SRC references that point to them do.
-
- You can now do anything you want to this new Web document ù save it, add new paragraphs and
- graphics, delete things, move things around, or anything else.
-
- Just like when you open a Web page of your own, InContext Spider automatically checks downloaded files
- for HTML errors. If it finds any, it will display them in the same type of window described in the previous
- section.
-
- Publishing your pages on the Web
- Once you finish creating pages, your final step on the road to becoming a Webmaster is to get them onto
- the Web. InContext Spider 1.2 includes a new feature called "one-button publishing" that makes it easy
- for you to put individual pages or an entire Web site onto the Web very quickly so that cybernauts
- throughout the world can see it. For details about one-button publishing, please see your InContext Spider
- User's Guide.
-
- Contacting us
- If you ever need to get in touch with us, there are a number of ways to do it. If you need technical support
- for InContext Spider, you can try the Customer Support area of our Web site at
- http://www.incontext.com/support. If the solution to your troubles isn't there, you can call us toll-free
- within North America at 800-263-0127, or you can send e-mail to support@incontext.com. Telephone
- support is available Monday to Friday (except holidays) between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern time.
-
- For general information about creating cool Web pages you should definitely get into the habit of visiting
- The Spider's Web, an on-line magazine that we publish on our Web site at
- http://www.incontext.com/spidweb. The Spider's Web comes out on the 1st and 15th of every month and
- includes site critiques, design columns, and news and features stories of interest to the Web community.
- We published the first issue on February 1, 1996, and within a couple of weeks it was a Microsoft
- Network Pick of the Week.
-
- If you have a comment or suggestion about this Getting Started booklet or any of the rest of the InContext
- Spider documentation, you can e-mail us at documentation@incontext.com.
-
-
-