Word 97 as a tool for producing simple Home Pages
by Margararet Penfold
margaret@webleicester.co.uk http://homepages.webleicester.co.uk/margaret
If you have IE5 as your browser, regularly use Word 97 for word processing and are familiar with its menu, this is perhaps the easiest way to produce home pages that, when uploaded, can be viewed successfully by other people with PCs, although Macusers may get peculiar results.
You don't even have to choose Word's webpage format at start-up. In my experience, if you are using tables you obtain better results by not using the web page option initially but saving it later as html.
You may find it easier to follow these instructions if you transfer this text from your browser into the Word text editor
To put it into Word follow the tiny chevrons to the right of Home on the tool bar of your browser
To start creating your web page just open a new document and type in it as you would normally,
Insert pictures as you would normally.
When you choose a background from the format table, use only the plain colour or the texture option from the fill submenu, (the textures generally look better than the plain colours although plain white or black can both look elegant).
Change the colour of your typing so that it doesn't shout at the background.
Choose "save as" and when the menu comes up in the 'save as type' window replace 'word document' with 'html'.
There may be a warning that some formatting may be lost but you generally find that it is all there.
Click on your saved document - and there it is, your first webpage.
Once you have your web page you can study the source code that Word has created for you. (Look in the View menu and click on source) You may find this makes learning html easier when you want to be more ambitious later.
When you have two or more web pages you will want to add hyperlinks so that you can move from one page to another. You can add hyperlinks in the word editor
Adding hyperlinks
To make it simpler when you eventually upload to a server have the webpages you want to link to (plus the pictures and background you use in them) all in the same folder.
Open one of the webpages you created in the Word editor.
Select the word or picture you want as your hyperlink and press ctrl +K.
In the dialogue box, first check the relative link box, then use the browse box to find the page you want to link to and click on it. Its name will appear in a window. Click OK.
So why bother to learn HTML at all if Word 97 makes everything so easy - because Word won't allow you to add interesting code and keep it unchanged. I made the mistake of putting this document through the Word Editor after I had added some code kindly provided by
Randy for making a metatag link . The link worked before it went into the editor but would not work when it came out of it. I spent hours trying to get it to work again. All good learning experience!
When you have made your pages then take time to look at the source coding. When you feel confident swap the colours you have for the 'safe colour' codes (See Kaz's pages which should also be in this tool kit) Make sure you do not use Upper case letters in your file names and your files should then be readable in Netscape as well as Internet Explorer. Later you will want to organise your files into nested folders. When you do that you will need to use the unix code for the parent directory which is ../ followed by the athnames that lead down to the file you are referencing. When you link to external documents you will need to use the full pathname of course starting with http but by that stage you will be a confident html user.