Step By Step
Chap 3 - Page 1

Placing text on a page is easy. Just click the cursor where you want to type and start typing. Do not use the return (or enter) key to terminate a line of text. Use that key to terminate a paragraph. If you want to skip your text to the next line you will need to enter a line break. Click on insert and then select New Line Break. This forces the text to start printing on the next line without changing any of the text properties such as Bold, Italic, color, and size.

Let's take a look at what this looks like in the source code:

<BR> is the command for line break. If you notice the BR is enclosed in angle brackets. This tells the browser that it is a command and not just regular text to be displayed. Unlike most of the commands <BR> doesn't have a terminate. Up comes the question command terminate? Okay a quick lesson in writing html source code. Sounds terrible doesn't it ? Well it's actually very easy and there are few commands to remember. Commands in the page tell the browser top start treating text and images a certain way. Well sometimes you have to tell the browser to stop treating the content the way it does. As an example if you wanted the browser to display the sentence (The Pubmaster rules.) without any kind of alteration it would appear like this in the source code.

The Pubmaster rules.

If you wanted it to display in bold.

<B>The Pubmaster rules.</B>

I started the Bold with the letter B in brackets, typed the text as usual, and then turned the Bold off with a slash and a B in brackets. Using the editor you won't have to worry about this, but being able to write a page by hand is a great advantage. If you do type the text directly to the source be careful using any kind of punctuation or special characters other than the comma, the period, the question mark, and the exclamation mark.

The text on your page will be separated into paragraphs. To start a new paragraph just hit the Return (or Enter) key. Each paragraph has an alignment, either: left, right, or center. The alignment will apply for everything in that paragraph. If you want to change the alignment for a paragraph click your cursor ot the start of the paragraph, then click the last button on the second toolbar. A small menu with three choices will drop down, with a dot by the current alignment. The first is left alignment, them second is centered, and the third is right alignment.

First we will put a header on the page. Since we haven't done anything to the page yet it should be blank with a blinking cursor. On the second toolbar click on the font size button and select 24 or 36. This will make the following text large. Then click the bold button on, and also select a color if you want the page header to be a different color than the standard text on the page. Next choose the alignment button (last on the second toolbar) and select centered. Now type in a header (or title) for the page. If you have a long title for the page you may want to choose a smaller font size.

Next hit the return (or enter) key. This starts a new paragraph. Communicator may not reset the text properties so hit the clear properties button on the second toolbar (the A  being erased). Now press the alignment button again and choose align left (the top selection) then type the first paragraph of your page. If this is the first page of your site be sure to describe your entire site in that first paragraph. Search engines often use the first paragraph of the page to index it for searches. You can adjust the size, coloring, and alignment of the text as you see fit.

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