TESTING AND PUBLISHING

As you are building your website you will regularly preview your pages in a browser offline. You can select a primary and a secondary browser. Go to EDIT > PREFERENCES and choose the ‘Preview in browser’ category from the list on the left. This will ask you to choose a primary browser and a secondary browser.

It is important that you test the site across the two most popular browsers Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator but also try to test on other browsers like Opera and Safari (for Apple Macintosh) as they are getting more popular.

If possible you should test the website not only in the most up-to-date versions of the browsers’ software but also in the older versions. This will replicate the limitations of older and less well-known browsers which are still used by many people, particularly in developing countries.
Be prepared to adjust your pages so that they work in both browsers. Also test your website on both Macintosh and PC - as you will see quite major differences and may have to adjust your design and text sizing.

Viewing your pages:
So after every development step in the process of building your website FILE > PREVIEW IN BROWSER or use the F12 shortcut.

* Explorer, Navigator and other browsers are available on the internet as free downloads as are FTP programs. Try www.PCWorld.com;or www.freeware-guide.com which has over 130 links to websites that offer ‘freeware’.

Remember older browsers cannot always download pictures so provide a text alternative (Select the picture and go to the ‘Alt’ box of the Properties Inspector). Many busy people with modern computers also choose to view ‘text only’ versions of websites ... so this is another reason to give a short text alternative.

In this Guide, we have used tables to design our pages, because all browsers CAN read tables but many older ones have problems with frames and layers which are other design options.

Connection and upload