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Tips and Tricks


To learn more about creating Web pages with AOLpress, you can:

If you see a page that uses formatting you don't know how to create with AOLpress, try the tricks on this page to find out how you can do the same thing.


Viewing the HTML

One way to learn more about HTML is to look at how other people create their pages. Then, you can try using the same tricks in your Web pages.

  1. Highlight the text in the space to the right.
  2. Choose ToolsShow HTML. You'll see a window with the HTML code for this page. The highlighted text will be inside some code that looks like this:
    <TD BGCOLOR="#faf6d4">
    Highlight me!
    </TD>
    
  3. The BGCOLOR attribute controls the background color of the table cell.
  4. Find the previous <TD> tag and add "BGCOLOR="#faf6d4" to that tag (so it looks like the tag for the "Highlight me!" cell).
  5. Choose FileParse. This applies the change you made to the HTML code to this page.
   Try it here:
Highlight me!


More HTML tricks

You can use the same trick to find out how we made the horizontal rule below thicker than normal. And, you can use the same trick in any page on the Web to find out what HTML was used to create effects you like.

Here's a brief list of some other effects you can create by editing the HTML tags and attributes directly:

  1. You can change the numbering style of a list. For example, this list uses Roman numerals.
  2. You can change the fonts used for text. (Just remember to use fonts that most people have on their computers.)
  3. You can make a sound file play automatically when your page is opened by adding the following tags. (Currently, the <EMBED> tag plays the sound in Netscape and the <BGSOUND> plays it in Internet Explorer.)
    <EMBED SRC="filename.wav" AUTOSTART="True" HIDDEN="True">
    <BGSOUND SRC="filename.wav"> 
    

For more information, see the chapter on HTML in the AOLpress User's Guide. In addition, the following pages give details on HTML tags supported by various browsers:


Viewing borders

Many of the special effects you see on the Web are really done through creative uses of tables.

   Try it here:
  1. Want to know why the text above stays narrow even if you make this window wide?
  2. Try FormatShow Border and notice that you can see a dashed box around the text above this table, indicating that it is also contained in a table.
  3. Put your cursor at the beginning of the text in the dashed box above.
  4. Choose TableAlterLayout.
  5. Change the Border Size to 2 and click OK. You'll see a border around the table above.
  6. Now choose ToolsShow HTML. Notice the following tags at the beginning of the table above. These tags force the table to be only 450 pixels wide.
      <COLGROUP>
        <COL ALIGN=LEFT WIDTH=450>
      </COLGROUP>



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