ADDING SOME TEXT |
LESSON #2 |
So far all we have is a blank page, we need to put our ideas, thoughts and what-not on the blank canvas.
Open AOLPRESS and load your page back into it by:
FILE > OPEN >
That should get you a dialogue box like that below:
Type in the location of your index.htm file, it should be:
C:\mywebsite\index.htm
just like above if you did step number one correctly. Then click OPEN. You
should now be back on the blank page we created in step number one.
Practice finding your file and opening it a few times if it seems hard to you. From now on I will just tell you to open a file. If it is hard for you to remember print off this page and hang it up for reference.
The blank page should look similar to this:
Click inside the empty space on the page the first think I want you to type
is:
This is my headline
Just like this:
Now highlight what you just typed like this:
With that highlighted click on Format in the toolbar:
From the drop down menu move your mouse over
Heading
A little thing will pop out click on HDG 1
Look at your page and you'll see that
This is my headline
just turned into
This is my headline
Just like in a newspaper your headline should be the topic...the phrase that will jump out and get someone's attention.
Now also in that same Format > Heading dialogue you see
HDG 1
HDG 2
ETC.
The higher the number the smaller the headline. Experiment with them until you get a size that fits right on your page.
Now maybe it's just me but I think the headline should go in the center of the page. To do this we simply highlight "This is my headline" again. Then in the tool bar find the button below
With the text still highlighted click on this button. See your headline jump to the center of the page? Click anywhere on the page and the highlight goes away and the cursor is flashing right at the end of your headline. Simply hit ENTER on your keyboard and you will drop down to the next line where you can type your ideas.
As a matter of fact just go ahead and do that. Think up something you want to say and do it! If you have ever used Microsoft Word you have used this program they are very similar.
Now as you type and hit enter you will see it double spaces between the lines. If you want a single space simply hold down the CTRL key on the keyboard and hit enter.
Once you have typed what you want click
FILE > SAVE AS
and save it to your hard drive where you opened it. This will save your changes
and overwrite the original file.
Open up a web browser and use it to view your file. Everything look right? If not go back througfh this lesson again.
Out of all my years of classes and hand coding, I learned more from repeated mistakes than I ever did from a professor.
Okay that's about it for today. Next we'll get into formatting the text like italics, bold etc.
Don't forget to save your webpage...
File > Save As > Make sure location is right and then click the
button.
FAQ
Q) How do I highlight something?
Simply place your mouse cursor at the front of the text you want to highlight, depress and hold the left mouse button and drag the cursor across the text.
Q) When I try to make my text a headline it says, "The entire selection must be within one list item, heading or paragraph." Why?
To make text a heading it must be single spaced. For example you can make this a heading:
Chip
Brown
but not
Chip
Brown
In the last example I would need to backspace Brown up beside Chip, hold down my CTRL key and press enter.
Q) What is the difference in the headline and the <head> tag we learned in lesson 1?
The joy of HTML hand coding is that the same word can mean 20 different things. <head> has nothing to do with headline. <head> is used to encompass things that you don't need the visitor to see such as meta tages etc. Nothing you should concern yourself with.
Now when it comes to headlines let us look how they work in real HTML. In the box below the first line that says "This is my headline" will display as plain text. But the second "This is my headline" is enclosed in <h1> and </h1> tags. This makes it the larger bolder text of a headline
Copy the code above into our online editor at the top of the page and click view to see how it works.
Q) I tried to make a line of my text a headline but it headlined the whole paragraph what happened?
When you apply a headline to text it will headline that text and all single spaced lines above and below it. Headlines must be separated by surrounding text by double space. But there is a way to do it and we'll cover that in the next segment on formatting text.