Claris Home Page Start-up Guide
Introduction to Web Documents	When creating a web document there are a couple of things that are different from creating a conventional word processing document. There are no pre-defined page sizes like: A4 US Letter Landscape Portrait You are not writing a "book", it's all on-line, although it is possible and very easy to print a web document. Just do Page Setup and Print. You have the option of choosing the color of the "paper". You can with printed documents too, I know, but not in the word processor. The viewers controls the fonts and the default size of the font in their web browser. The document layout may depend on the size of the browser window, unless you explicitly do something to control it. The images in your document are not contained in the same file as the text. Web documents are styled using tags. This means that all web documents are standard documents that may be edited and viewed by any web editor or browser. In a web document you can have Hyper Links. Hyper Links are clickable text or images that takes you from where you are to another part of the document, to another document or to a specific part of another document. All the above can be handled in various ways. I will describe how using the Claris Home Page web document editor.
Standard Options	There are a couple of things that I think a nice looking web document shall adhere to: The background color is white There must be an author There must be a date of last modification The document must have a Title
Getting Familiar with Claris Home Page
	The first thing you shall do is to set your preferences to ease your work and get Home Page to work in the best way. You can always get help on how thing work by using the help menu. NOTE! If you have a 2.0 that is upgraded from 1.0, the help is not upgraded. It is mainly the handling of tables, shortcuts, uploading to a server and HTML and Java Applets that are incomplete or missing. Libraries and clip art you can reach through the Images help page. In the help menu you find the following entries: Using Onscreen Help Contents ** Index ** New Features ** Shortcuts ** Troubleshooting Planning your Web Site Program Basics Text Images1 Tables ** Libraries and Clip Art ** Links Frames Forms Uploading to a Server ** HTML and Java Applets ** Special Characters ** Chapters with a trailing "**" does not fully cover the new features of a 2.0 upgraded from 1.0 or does not open at all giving an error message. 1 Claris Home Page does not display the "Left" and "Right" alignment, this must be viewed in your browser. All the above Help chapters are fully covered if you have a 2.0 installed from start.
Starting a New Document	As pointed out previously the images are not contained in the document but as separate files. This is best handled by creating a folder / catalog for the document(s). The document folder contains a sub-folder where all your images resides. In this way you can easily move the whole document from one place to another. Note! Do not reference anything outside the document top folder. If you do the document(s) are no longer possible to move without editing. If you use Libraries do not drag the image into your document, DO COPY and PASTE. The next thing is to create the new page: menu File, New Page. The new page comes up with the default gray background. The preferred background color is white. This and other attributes are set in the Document Options. Now you are ready to go on and start entering your content.
Document Basics	A web document is an on-line document to be viewed at the screen. Not all screens are in the shape of a US Letter or A4 paper. They are most often wider than tall. Resolution varies from 640 x 480 to 1024 x 1280 or higher. This means that the conditions under which the document is to read vary quite a bit. A good web document caters for more of the above prerequisites then a bad one. What is good and what is bad? Well there you've got me, there are no general rules of a good or bad layout. There are rules of what to judge how well it works from: Clear in purpose - I understand directly what I'm looking at Clear and intuitive navigation - I understand where to click and what to expect, if I click there. No surprises unless that's what's offered. Easy to read - the information is easy to comprehend and is well presented. Well this goes for any type of publication, doesn't it? All elements in the page has a purpose
Layout Control	Thinking about what was said above, the urge to use a fixed (A4 paper) layout "like in Word" is something you should abandon NOW. Windows in where you read are always aligned to the left. We read from left to right. This gives you something to start from: Your layout always start from the left side of the window. In order to control where different elements are you have the following options: Tables Alignment Indentation Lists Preformatted text
Tables	With tables you have almost full control. You can define the page layout down to the pixel. Define a table that is 473 pixels wide (default width of new window in Netscape) and your document is 473 pixels wide. The text and images are not reformatted when reseizing the window. If the window is smaller you must do horizontal scrolling. You can also set the height of a table.The use of setting the table height is limited. Table width and height can also be set relative the current window size - in percent. This results in a table that always has the same size relative the window size. Columns can also have a width and rows have a height. The column width is very useful and can (should) be used without setting any table width. The column is then adjusted by the browser when applicable. This part of the document is all in a table with two columns. The leftmost column has a width of 130 pixels.   If you don't want the table grid to show, set the Border size to 0 (zero). The border size can be higher than 1 and a higher value gives a thicker border. Press the Object Editor icon in the tool bar to set the attributes for tables and images. The Table Editor The Col Span controls how many columns a cell spans over. Useful for headings and larger images. The Row Span controls how many rows a cell spans over. Useful for images covering several rows or when you want to use a "news paper" layout.
Alignment	Alignment is used in very much the same fashion as in a word processor with regard to text. You may align the text left, right or centered. If the window is resized the alignment follows. Text that is right aligned will have fewer in lines but still be right aligned if the window is enlarged. Use the alignment buttons in the tool bar. But, text can also be aligned in relation to other objects as Images Table Cells
Image alignment	Text is aligned to images with five different options.   Top alignment starts the line of text at the top of the image Middle alignment starts the line at the middle of the image Bottom at the bottom, just as is says. Left places the image to the left of the text and the text flows to the right of the image from top to bottom. Right places the image to the right of the text and the text flows to the left of the image from top to bottom. The Left and Right image alignment are not shown in Claris Home Page. These are the once that are the nicest to use as it allows the text to cover the full length of the image. The others only gives one line aside the image and the rest below. Don't forget to check it in your browser!
Table alignment	In a table you use the ordinary text alignment buttons to control left, right and center horizontally but vertically you set the alignment in the table tool. The default in Home Page is always "Middle". This can be somewhat frustrating as I in nine times out of ten want the alignment to be "Top". The options are: Top, Middle, Bottom and Base Line. The Base Line alignment differs from the others. The function works as follow: "Text is aligned by the baseline of each character. The baseline is an imaginary line that divides the main body from the descender of a lowercase letter, such as a "g" or "j." This setting is generally used in tables where each cell contains a single line of text. When you are viewing your page in Claris Home Page, however, the text will look like it's top-aligned. Preview the page in your browser to see how it will look. " If you need more subtle handling, put the images and texts in different cells. Then you have more control BUT, you lose flexibility.
Indentation	You can use indentation to make the text and the images stand out. The indent create a space on each side in the size of a TAB in word processor. The part above is indented with a "-1" font size. Standard is "3". You can indent again in an already indented text. This type of indent is known as "Blockquote" in HTML.
Lists	NEVER do your own bulleted lists or numbered list. These are automatic in HTML. Use the "Numbered List" or "Bullet List" tools available. A list can have any of the following styles: First Second Third First Second Third First Second Third First Second Third First Second Third First Second Third You can of course nest lists in lists and combining bullets with numbers and letters. Number styles are found in the "Format Menu".
Preformatted	Pre-formatted text is not reformatted when the browser window is resized. The text also has a different font that indicates that it is formatted. Spaces and new-line does matter. This is spaced for indentation Two spaces Four spaces Six spaces Eight spaces
Last Words	Spell Checking Claris Home Page has a spelling feature. USE IT! You have the choice of both US English and UK English and the spell checking works very nice.

	Tools That I Used to Create These Pages
Claris Home Page	Adobe Super Paint	Flash It	Anti Alias PPC	Scrapbook
In which I have created this document.	Where I created the "tear-off" images and fixed some rough edges.	Used for capturing bits and pieces from the screen.	Size reduction of images. Gives a fair result. Anti- Alias takes the jaggies away.	Used for collecting screen shots and other clip-art. This is an often under rated utility.