Microsoft Office Word 2003 Inside Out (Bpg-Inside Out)

Now that you've mastered the details of configuring Word to serve as a Web page editor that meets your needs, you're ready to look at some of the Web page creation features in Word. As mentioned, you can use the Save As dialog box to save an existing document as a Web page, or you can open a new blank or existing Web page.

To start by opening a blank Web page, display the New Document task pane (by choosing File, New), and then click the Web Page link. When you open a blank Web page, Word automatically disables features that aren't supported on the Web by the target browser(s) specified in the Browsers tab in the Web Options dialog box (as described in "Specifying Target Browser Options"). For example, underline colors aren't supported when you create Web pages. In addition, the New Blank Document icon on the Standard toolbar changes to a New Web Page icon, so that when you're working on a Web page you can quickly create a new, blank Web page by clicking the New Web Page button on the Standard toolbar.

To customize your Web pages, you can integrate a number of Word features, just as you do when you create other Word documents. The following features will come in especially handy when you're creating Web pages:

• Cascading Style Sheets A cascading style sheet (CSS) presents a Web page's formatting information in a specific place—either at the beginning of an HTML document or in a separate document—in a format that browsers can easily interpret and apply to the associated Web page or pages. When you use cascading style sheets, you can more easily control and modify text formatting on a Web site. For more information about cascading style sheets, see "Working with Cascading Style Sheets".

• Frames You can display multiple Web pages at one time by using frames, as described in Chapter 17, "Formatting Layouts Using Text Boxes, Frames, Backgrounds, and Themes." The most common way to use frames in Web pages is to present a menu bar in a side or top frame that contains hyperlinks to the site's Web pages. As users click the hyperlinks in the menu frame, the associated Web page's contents appear in the main frame.

• Graphics As you know, Web designers include graphics on Web pages to help present information in a variety of ways, including showing logos, images, design elements (such as horizontal rules and bullets), and animated graphics. For more information about Web graphics, see "Working with Web Graphics".

• Hyperlinks The Web makes heavy use of hyperlinks. You can work with text, graphical, and e-mail hyperlinks in Word. For more information about creating, editing, and removing hyperlinks in Word, see "Including Hyperlinks".

• Microsoft Script Editor The Microsoft Script Editor enables you to view and edit HTML source code for all Office documents. Using the Script Editor, you can work with HTML, XML, Web scripts (such as VBScript and JScript), and cascading style sheets (CSS). For a quick introduction to the Script Editor, see "Editing Source Code Using the Microsoft Script Editor".

• Tables When you create Web pages, you can use tables to control your page's layout. Using tables in Web pages is an extremely popular technique for page setup, and some Web site templates take advantage of tables. For more information about working with tables, see "Using Tables to Align Web Page Elements", as well as Chapter 13, "Organizing Concepts in Tables."

• Themes You can quickly add a background, text formatting, bullets, horizontal rules, and link bars (if you're working on a Web page stored on a server that has FrontPage extensions installed) to Web pages by applying themes. For more information about themes, see Chapter 17, "Formatting Layouts Using Text Boxes, Frames, Backgrounds, and Themes."

• Web Components Using the Web Tools toolbar, you can add a number of Web page components to your Web pages, including movies, background sounds, and interactive forms. For more information about adding Web page components, see "Inserting Web Page Components".

Remember, creating a Web page from a blank Web page document is the same as creating a document from a new, blank document.