MS-Word --- Letter Wizard

Computer Info – December 4, 2002

This Week’s Meeting

               John Watkins will be hosting the meeting today.  He has a great Advent Calendar that he will show you how to make.  He also has a diagnostics program and the Encyclopedia Britannica CD.  And I am sure that he will have a story to start the meeting with.

Web Pages and Publishing

When determining the appearance of your web page – keep in mind that the shape of your computer screen is wider than it is tall.

Now it’s time to write the code. Remember that if you right click on a web page, click on VIEW SOURCE – you can see the code (the commands) that were written to display that page. It will usually open NOTEPAD to view the code. While you are in Notepad, you can save the document – or print it out – so that you can compare the code to what you are able to see. Some people use the program FRONT PAGE to write their web page – but since the HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) language is always changing, you will find that the program will never be up-to-date with the commands being used. Another program that can be used to help you design a web page is CuteSite Builder

( http://www.cuteftp.com/products/cutesitebuilder/index.asp )

And, of course, there is always Netscape Composer which will help you get started. But, for now we are going to talk about writing everything yourself in NOTEPAD.

HTML is slowly being replaced by XML (Extensible Markup Language) – which will create the data in XML but display it in HTML.

Frames are when you have two separate working area to your web page – each one working independently.

Let’s Look at the HTML Language

All commands are enclosed in < > -- lesser than and greater than signs. Most commands are stated once – and then followed somewhere else in the instructions with one that turns it off ---- example <HTML> </HTML>, The one that turns the command off has a forward slash in front of it.

A very simple HTML program would have the following lines.

<HTML>

<HEAD>

</HEAD>

<BODY>

</BODY>

</HTML>

<HTML>

Notice that this is the first line, which tells the browser that the following lines are written in the HTML language.

First let’s add a title to the HEAD section. Create a line between the <HEAD> and the </HEAD> and type

This line will add a title to your page which will appear in the blue bar of the window. All of the information that appears in the HEAD section is used by the search engines to help your page be recognized.

When we have this much done, save the file with the name of index.htm The first page of anybody’s web site is called index.htm -- this is how the browser knows where to starts when you have many pages on your web site. The file must be named in all lowercase – no upper case letters.

Once you have saved your file – you can open your browser, go to FILE and choose OPEN. Click on BROWSE and locate your file on your hard drive. Now you can view the results of the HTML file that you created. So far it will be a blank screen with the words My Home Page in the blue area at the top of your browser window.

Now let’s add something to the page. Create a line between the <BODY> and the </BODY> and type

Hi.

My name is Larry

My wife & I really love the Deland area

Larry

Save the file again – then go back to your browser and click on REFRESH – this will force the browser to re-read the file and your changes will be displayed. But notice that we typed our text on four lines – but it is all displayed on one line (Hi.My name is Larry.My wife & I really love the Deland area.Larry) – this doesn’t look too good. So back to writing our HTML file. If we add a after Hi – this will give us a paragraph break – which will leave a blank line between the Hi and My name is Larry. If we add a after the first occurrence of Larry – then the next word will start on the next line. Place a after the word area – this will give us a blank line before the word Larry. Save your file again – go back to your browser and click on REFRESH to see how your web page looks now.

Notice how everything starts (or is aligned) at the left. Why not center your text to make it look better. Let’s edit the HTML file again. Create a blank line before the word Hi. On this line add the following

<div align=”center”>.

Again save the file – go back to your browser and click on REFRESH to see what your change has done to your web page.

Maybe you would like to change the typeface, the size or the color of the letters. Let’s edit the HTML file again and add this after the div align statement ---

FONT face=“verdena” Size=”4” color=”red”>

You can use the basic fonts – size for font goes from 1 to 7 -- for color there are 16 colors that you can use words for – or you can get a list of colors where you have to enter their hexadecimal number. If you want to make the word bold – add a before the word and a where you wish to turn the bold off. For italics, you would change this to and . Again, save the file, go back to your browser and click on REFRESH to see the changes.

Maybe you would like to put a link on your web site – so that you and others could easily get to Larry’s website for trading stamps. Then in the Body of the HTML file, we would add this line.

This would say on the screen -- Larry’s stamp page -- and it would be written in blue and underlined and when you placed your cursor over it, the cursor would change to a hand letting you know that you could click on it. Also if you look down at the bottom on the status bar, the web address of where that link will take you shows up. Again, save the file, go back to your browser and click on REFRESH to see the changes.

Want a picture on your web page? Then add this statement in the Body of your HTML file.

You have to replace the words – address of picture on your hard drive – with the path of where the picture is located (ex. C:\WEB PAGE\HOUSE.JPG). Again save your file, go back to your browser and click on REFRESH to see the changes.

Now let’s put a background color on our web page. At the beginning of the Body of our HTML file, add this line.

<BGCOLOR=”TEAL”>

Yes, again save your file – go back to your browser and click on REFRESH to view the changes.

Here are some web sites where you can find HTML commands.

http://www.netstrider.com/tutorials/HTMLRef/

http://www.ncsu.edu/it/edu/html_trng/html_basics.html

http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/

Now you have to place the web page that you have created – out on the internet for everyone to see. For this you will need a FTP (file transfer program) program. A couple good examples are CuteFTP and WS_FTP.

Winevar – a e-mail virus

A new e-mail worm that is circulating has the potential to severely damage machines that it infects, potentially deleting all the files on a computer's hard drive while mocking the machine's owner, according to advisories released by a number of antivirus software makers

Winevar takes advantage of the known IFrame vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser and Microsoft mail clients such as Outlook and Outlook Express. This vulnerability allows attachments in HTML-format e-mail messages to be opened without user interaction.