| • Download Mozilla Composer • Open Mozilla Composer • Examine the Toolbars • Examine the Views • | |
Mozilla Composer is an element of the browser suite known as Mozilla Suite; it includes a browser and a mail program as well as the Composer web page editor. Composer has recently become a part of the SeaMonkey browser that is supported by the Mozilla Project. Basically SeaMonkey has closed some security loopholes in the browser suite software. Composer is an easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editor that allows you to create web pages directly without using HTML. |
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| The SeaMonkey Suite is available for free download at http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ | |
| Open Composer | |
| To launch Composer from your desktop you must first open Mozilla by going to Start, Programs, SeaMonkey. | |
| You can also click on the SeaMonkey shortcut icon on your desktop. Navigator will open. |  |
| Once the Navigator screen appears, click on the Composer symbol on the far right of the status bar on the bottom of your screen. |  |
| Examine the Toolbars | |
Once you've launched Composer, examine the toolbars. From
top to bottom they are:
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| Examine the Views | |
Composer allows you to switch back and forth among several views of your page; you can toggle among these views with the tabs at the bottom of the Composer workspace. |
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| The Normal view is the view you will most commonly be working with; it shows your web page as you develop it. Below is one of my completed web pages in the Normal view. | |
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| The To HTML tags view provides a graphic display of the text along with all of the tags you applied to the text when you formatted it in the Normal view. Below is the same page illustrated above, only in the To HTML Tags view. You can edit your text and images in this view as well. | |
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You can add to or edit the HTML code in HTML Source View. This is essentially the same view you would see if you clicked on the View, Source option in your browser's main menu. Below is the same page in HTML Source View. |
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| Finally you can quickly preview your page in the Navigator browser by clicking on the Preview tab. Below is the same page as shown in the Preview view. | |
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| Although you will want to preview your pages in both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox--the two most commonly used browsers--you can get a pretty good idea of what the page will eventually look like on the Web from the Preview view. | |
| • Overview • Tour Mozilla Composer • | |
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Web Design Center |