Amending and Editing a Webpage

This is the best way to begin learninig web design - amend an existing page.

Download a page from your site, and open it in the web editor you are using

First save the page with another name, so you don't spoil anything important. Use the 'Save As' command in your editor - e.g. save index.htm as test.htm

1. Edit text
2. Change text colour and background colour in one or more cells
3. Change font size and type
4. Change and test a link
5. Insert rows or columns in a table
6. Insert text in another cell of a table
7. Delete text, image, links
8. Insert a new image
9. Insert a new link

Each time you change something. check what you have done by testing it in your normal browser
(often you press F12 to do this)

This is a brief checklist - when you can do all these, try to make a whole new page !! (See 'Easy New Page')

A Difficulty

Now it becomes difficult to write about this, because you are probably all using different web editors. Each of these has it's own tutorial and help system - use them !
How to choose an Editor - this is summarised in the Downloads section. They fall into 2 main groups:-

• WYSIWYG editors ("what you see is what you get") such as Mozilla Composer, Dreamweaver, and others. These tend to be easier to use but some are much more expensive. Mozilla Composer is FREE - it is part of the Mozilla browser system
• Text Editors, which are usually free, but they are much less user-friendly

I will write briefly about these in the columns below:-

WYSIWYG

This is relatively easy to use, and there are 'wizards' to carry out many of the routine tasks for you.

Use "Preview in Browser" as often as you can at the start, and work through the checklist using your editor's help pages

Tables do not work equally well in all editors - the 'uprights' seem to have a mind of their own !

Text Editors

If you want to use a text editor, I think it would be easy to learn if I do one or both of the following for you

1. make all internal tables with solid lines - you can later switch them easily to border = 0
2. put code numbers in each cell of each table, so that you can find them easily in the code, and also remove them easily

I think you will be able to work easily then until you 'get your bearings' with the code (Use "Preview in Browser" frequently !)

Work through the checklist using your editor's help pages.