ALAN ZISMAN ON
TECHNOLOGY
A few website-building questions
By Alan Zisman © 2018-04-21
I got an email this morning - Steve, of Adirondack Wildlife Refuge & Rehabilitation Center, wrote that he found my 'article on Netscape Composer on line, and found it very informative'. Hehad a pair of questions:
1. When creating links from images or symbols, how do I set up the the link, so that it will open into a new web page, without closing the page the link is set up on?
2. Is there anyway to insert a slideshow or video into a web page?
The Netscape Composer tutorial was one of several tutorials that I'd posted online to help people working with that - and other - free software.
I replied:
Netscape Composer is way, way out of date. It was replaced by the open
source Kompozer - though even that hasn't be updated since 2010. That
said, I continue to use Kompozer for web page creation - and I'm going
to assume that's what you're wanting advice about. (An interesting article entitled 'Whatever happened to Kompozer.net' is worth a read - note, however, that even though Kompozer is not being actively developed, it still be downloaded, installed, and used - by Windows, Mac, or Linux users).
The trick for the things you're wanting to do is that you need to edit
the actual HTML code - Kompozer doesn't let you do any of those things
in its main 'Normal' (word processor-like) interface. If you look down
at the bottom-left of the Kompozer window you'll see several tabs -
clicking on the 'Source' tab will show you the HTML code for the
currently-open page.
HTML code can seem intimidating - and I'm not going to try to teach
you to edit HTML code from scratch. Luckily, most of what you need
will simply require copying and pasting code from other sources.
For instance (replying to your questions out of order),
if I want to insert a video that is posted on YouTube, I
can view the desired video on YouTube, click on the Share button, then
on Embed... this pops up code like this (for a video clip of a jazz
group I play with):
<iframe width="560" height="315"
src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gktXpvjaTB0" frameborder="0"
allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I can highlight all that text (including the '<' and '>' characters)
and press Command+C (Control +C on a Mac) to copy it to hte clipboad.
In Kompozer's Source tab, I can paste in it - and the video will be
'embedded' at that location on the page. (To paste the keyboard
command is Control+V (Command+V on Mac)).
The trick is controlling where the embedded video will appear on the
page - that's not easily apparent in Source view. What I do is -
before click the Source tab, I type a word or two where I want the
video to appear. (I use the words 'insert here' but you could type
anything). Then I save the page and click on the Source tab. In Source
view, I use the Edit/Find command to look for 'insert here' (without
the ' characters). When I find those words, I paste the Youtube embed
code and erase 'insert here'. Saving the page again returns me to
Normal view - with a box where the video will be. (Kompozer won't
display the video).
Other video-hosting services like Vimeo offer similar embedding
features. I would really recommend you use one of them to host your
video files. If, however, you have a movie clip that you want to store
on your web server, I give instructions for how to embed it in an HTML
page on: http://www.zisman.ca/video/index.html - that (also out of
date, but still relatively usable) tutorial makes reference to nVu -
another relative to Composer/Kompozer....
Kompozer (etc) also doesn't offer a direct way to open a link to a
photo (etc) in another window - and generally, I don't bother. The
calendar page I maintain for my local accordion community
(http:squeezeboxcircle.org) for instance, has a list of events - most
with links that open in a new tab or window. It also includes images
of posters for some of the events - with 'normal' links.
I could manually edit the links associated with the poster images in
Source view - but I generally don't bother. If I wanted to, here's
what I would do - in this case, I'm going to look at the two links for
a May 26 Fiesta MéxiColombiana event on that page - I found them by
going to Source view and searching for 'Fiesta' (which I had included
in the Alt Text description of the poster image).
(You need to know that HTML code for any link starts with '<a' and
ends with '</a>' tags.... Kompozer often breaks up HTML code in odd
ways - the line breaks in the code don't affect how the actual page
appears....)
Here's the code for the image + link - which appears first in the source code:
<a
href="https://www.facebook.com/events/183536469106612/"><img
style="border: 2px solid ; width: 450px; height: 235px;"
alt="Fiesta May 26"
src="https://scontent.fyvr4-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/29541791_10156718094369523_5743238640896848621_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=ae58382297b245d66f1662e6de5b05fe&oe=5B373302"></a>
And here's the code for the simple text link:
<a
href="https://www.facebook.com/events/183536469106612/"
target="_blank">Fiesta MéxiColombiana</a>
Both include a reference to a facebook.com event page:
href="https://www.facebook.com/events/183536469106612/".
The text link follows that with target="_blank" - which is the HTML
instruction to open the link in a new tab or window.
If you add that into the code for the image's link - in between the
facebook page's address and the '>' character that follows it, it
should do what you want.
Make sense?
re. Slideshow - I haven't done this; I would suggest uploading your
slideshow to the cloud service of your choice: Google Drive, Microsoft
OneDrive, Apple iCloud, etc and set its sharing settings (on that
cloud service) so that it can be viewed publicly by anyone with the
web address - copy the HTTP address displayed (including http://) and
paste that into a link on your webpage - set to open in a new tab or
window.
I hope that helps and I haven't overwhelmed you with details!
Steve got back to me, saying: 'Thanks so much for your detailed information.... fixed both issues...'
Older blog postings....
A few website-building questions
By Alan Zisman © 2018-04-21
I got an email this morning - Steve, of Adirondack Wildlife Refuge & Rehabilitation Center, wrote that he found my 'article on Netscape Composer on line, and found it very informative'. Hehad a pair of questions:
1. When creating links from images or symbols, how do I set up the the link, so that it will open into a new web page, without closing the page the link is set up on?
2. Is there anyway to insert a slideshow or video into a web page?
The Netscape Composer tutorial was one of several tutorials that I'd posted online to help people working with that - and other - free software.
I replied:
Netscape Composer is way, way out of date. It was replaced by the open
source Kompozer - though even that hasn't be updated since 2010. That
said, I continue to use Kompozer for web page creation - and I'm going
to assume that's what you're wanting advice about. (An interesting article entitled 'Whatever happened to Kompozer.net' is worth a read - note, however, that even though Kompozer is not being actively developed, it still be downloaded, installed, and used - by Windows, Mac, or Linux users).
The trick for the things you're wanting to do is that you need to edit
the actual HTML code - Kompozer doesn't let you do any of those things
in its main 'Normal' (word processor-like) interface. If you look down
at the bottom-left of the Kompozer window you'll see several tabs -
clicking on the 'Source' tab will show you the HTML code for the
currently-open page.
HTML code can seem intimidating - and I'm not going to try to teach
you to edit HTML code from scratch. Luckily, most of what you need
will simply require copying and pasting code from other sources.
For instance (replying to your questions out of order),
if I want to insert a video that is posted on YouTube, I
can view the desired video on YouTube, click on the Share button, then
on Embed... this pops up code like this (for a video clip of a jazz
group I play with):
<iframe width="560" height="315"
src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gktXpvjaTB0" frameborder="0"
allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I can highlight all that text (including the '<' and '>' characters)
and press Command+C (Control +C on a Mac) to copy it to hte clipboad.
In Kompozer's Source tab, I can paste in it - and the video will be
'embedded' at that location on the page. (To paste the keyboard
command is Control+V (Command+V on Mac)).
The trick is controlling where the embedded video will appear on the
page - that's not easily apparent in Source view. What I do is -
before click the Source tab, I type a word or two where I want the
video to appear. (I use the words 'insert here' but you could type
anything). Then I save the page and click on the Source tab. In Source
view, I use the Edit/Find command to look for 'insert here' (without
the ' characters). When I find those words, I paste the Youtube embed
code and erase 'insert here'. Saving the page again returns me to
Normal view - with a box where the video will be. (Kompozer won't
display the video).
Other video-hosting services like Vimeo offer similar embedding
features. I would really recommend you use one of them to host your
video files. If, however, you have a movie clip that you want to store
on your web server, I give instructions for how to embed it in an HTML
page on: http://www.zisman.ca/video/index.html - that (also out of
date, but still relatively usable) tutorial makes reference to nVu -
another relative to Composer/Kompozer....
Kompozer (etc) also doesn't offer a direct way to open a link to a
photo (etc) in another window - and generally, I don't bother. The
calendar page I maintain for my local accordion community
(http:squeezeboxcircle.org) for instance, has a list of events - most
with links that open in a new tab or window. It also includes images
of posters for some of the events - with 'normal' links.
I could manually edit the links associated with the poster images in
Source view - but I generally don't bother. If I wanted to, here's
what I would do - in this case, I'm going to look at the two links for
a May 26 Fiesta MéxiColombiana event on that page - I found them by
going to Source view and searching for 'Fiesta' (which I had included
in the Alt Text description of the poster image).
(You need to know that HTML code for any link starts with '<a' and
ends with '</a>' tags.... Kompozer often breaks up HTML code in odd
ways - the line breaks in the code don't affect how the actual page
appears....)
Here's the code for the image + link - which appears first in the source code:
<a
href="https://www.facebook.com/events/183536469106612/"><img
style="border: 2px solid ; width: 450px; height: 235px;"
alt="Fiesta May 26"
src="https://scontent.fyvr4-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/29541791_10156718094369523_5743238640896848621_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=ae58382297b245d66f1662e6de5b05fe&oe=5B373302"></a>
And here's the code for the simple text link:
<a
href="https://www.facebook.com/events/183536469106612/"
target="_blank">Fiesta MéxiColombiana</a>
Both include a reference to a facebook.com event page:
href="https://www.facebook.com/events/183536469106612/".
The text link follows that with target="_blank" - which is the HTML
instruction to open the link in a new tab or window.
If you add that into the code for the image's link - in between the
facebook page's address and the '>' character that follows it, it
should do what you want.
Make sense?
re. Slideshow - I haven't done this; I would suggest uploading your
slideshow to the cloud service of your choice: Google Drive, Microsoft
OneDrive, Apple iCloud, etc and set its sharing settings (on that
cloud service) so that it can be viewed publicly by anyone with the
web address - copy the HTTP address displayed (including http://) and
paste that into a link on your webpage - set to open in a new tab or
window.
I hope that helps and I haven't overwhelmed you with details!
Steve got back to me, saying: 'Thanks so much for your detailed information.... fixed both issues...'
Older blog postings....
| About This Blog... I've been writing about computers, software, Internet and the rest of technology since 1992, including a 17 year (1995-2012) stint as 'High Tech Office' columnist for Business in Vancouver. This blog includes thoughts on technology, society, and anything else that might interest me. Comments, emailed to alan@zisman.ca are welcome - and may be published in whole or part. You can follow me on Twitter or Google + for notice of new blog postings. |
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