Installing and configuring

Netscape Web Publisher is a Java applet that provides convenient client access to web server publishing. The default installation of a Netscape Enterprise 3.0 server includes the Web Publisher applet with a home page.

This chapter discusses some basic information about installing and configuring Web Publisher and describes issues specific to the version of Netscape Navigator you are using.

There are two plug-ins: one for users of Netscape Navigator version 3.01 and an optional plug-in for users of the Netscape Composer component of Netscape Communicator. If you are using version 3.01 of Netscape Navigator and want to be able to use all of the Web Publisher functions, you need the Web Publisher plug-in. If you are using Netscape Communicator, the plug-in enhances the Composer's editing and publishing capabilities to provide more seamless client access to server documents and folders.

The Web Publisher home page

The Web Publisher home page is included as part of the default Enterprise Server installation. From this page, you can launch Web Publisher, define the web publishing document directory, download the plug-ins appropriate for your system, and access online help.

To locate the Web Publisher home page, type in this URL:

This displays the Web Publisher home page, which has a Start Web Publisher button as well as useful links:one for downloading the plug-in and several for accessing the online help system. After installing the plug-in for your system, you can start up Web Publisher from this page.

When you start up Web Publisher, you need to identify which document directory you want it to use. By default, Web Publisher has the primary document directory as its scope. Yo u can change this to point at a different folder on your server by choosing one from the drop-down list or by directly typing in the folder you want to use. Whichever folder you enter becomes added to the drop-down list for your future convenience. The list can hold 10 folders. If you add additional folders, the first ones you entered are deleted from the list.

The Web Publisher console window

When you start up Web Publisher, a special Web Publisher browser window appears on your screen, as shown in Figure 2.1, that provides a Java environment for Web Publisher. This browser window must remain open in order for you to be able to run Web Publisher.

The Web Publisher console window

Configuring Web Publisher

There are two configuration files that determine how Web Publisher works. One file, editor.txt, associates file types with applications that are to be launched when you open a file for editing. The other, nswppref.txt, stores information about your Web Publisher session such as your user name, window size, user preferences,and files being edited. These files are stored locally in your system in the folder that contains your Netscape Navigator program. For example, for a Windows user it might be in C:Program FilesNetscapeNavigator.

Users of Netscape Navigator 3 need to set up their editor.txt file when they first use Web Publisher, but otherwise users do not need to modify these files. There are, however, some circumstances when you may want to make changes to these files. This section describes when and how to do this.

The editor preferences file

Netscape Web Publisher allows you to associate a particular application with a given file type. When you edit a file, Web Publisher launches its associated application, which could be MS Word, MW Excel, Netscape Navigator's HTML Editor, or some other program.

The editor.txt file identifies which programs Web Publisher should use to edit files in different formats. By default there are entries in the editor preferences file to open HTML files in the editor part of your Netscape program, but you can add as many as you need to edit each of the different file types you work with. For example, if you have MS Word documents or GIF graphic files, you can edit them in MS Word or PaintShop Pro, respectively.

Users of Netscape Navigator use their local text editor to edit the file, while users of Netscape Communicator edit the file with the Edit | Preferences | Editors menu command (which modifies the editor.txt file for you).

For Communicator users

To define editor applications, use the Edit menu to access the Editors preference. This command displays a dialog box listng your editor preferences, which initially includes entries for HTML files with the html and htm extensions.

To add other entries, follow these steps:

  1. Click the Add New button. The Set Editor Program dialog box is displayed.
  2. Enter the file extension for the given file type, either without or without the preceding period. That is, you could type doc or .doc to define an editor for word processing documents.
  3. Enter the exact line of code to launch the editor. In many cases this will simply be the full pathname for the executable program file. For example:
    C:\msoffice\winword\winword.exe
  4. In other cases, you may need to enter a command that includes arguments or options. You can use the %f symbolic name to insert the file's name into the command line, or %u to include the server URL.

  5. Click the option "Use Communicator to edit directly on the server" if you do not want to create a temporary copy of the edited file on your local system during the editing process.

For Navigator 3 users

To define editor applications, use your local text editor to modify the editor.txt file to reflect your preferred choices. This file is located in the WebPub directory under your Netscape Navigator directory. For example, in the C:Program FilesNetscapeWebPub directory.

Warning

Many Windows systems use the 8.3 MS-DOS filename convention, which cannot handle filenames longer than 8 characters or filenames that contains spaces. This means that a Windows directory such as
C:\Program Files\Netscape301\WebPub

should be defined in your editor.txt file as the following:
C:\Progra~1\Netsca~1\WebPub

The editor.txt file for a Windows NT system requires double backward slashes between parts of the pathname. A sample editor.txt file looks like this:

editor.htm=c:\\Program Files\\netscape\\program\\netscape.exe -edit
editor.html=c:\\Program Files\\netscape\\program\\netscape.exe -edit
editor.doc=c:\\msoffice\\winword\\winword.exe
editor.txt=c:\\winnt35\\notepad.exe

or with the 8.3 file notation:

editor.htm=c:\\progra~1\\netscape\\program\\netscape.exe -edit
editor.html=c:\\progra~1\\netscape\\program\\netscape.exe -edit
editor.doc=c:\\msoffice\\winword\\winword.exe
editor.txt=c:\\winnt35\\notepad.exe

A sample editor.txt file for a typical Unix system looks like this:

editor.htm=/usr/bin/xterm -e vi
editor.html=/usr/bin/xterm -e vi
editor.txt=/usr/bin/xterm -e vi

The Web Publisher preferences file

The nswppref.txt file defines your Web Publisher session. There are many program details listed in the file that define internal configurations, such as the size of applet window, and there are others that your the various Edit | Preferences menu commands define for you. Normally you do not need to make any modifications to this file.

There is one situation in which you might need to manually change to this file. This occurs when an unexpected file is listed in the Publish All Edited Files dialog box. This might happen when a user manually unlock an "in edit" file through the Properties page or when a Navigator 3 user attempts to cancel an editing operation by clicking Cancel on any but the first the local file access dialog box.

Generally executing the Publish command takes the file out of the "in edit" state and restores to the server. For version controlled files, however, this results in an additional version being incremented in your version history. If you wish to avoid this, you can manually modify your Web Publisher preferences file to remove the "in edit" flag from this file.

To do this, use your local text editor to edit the file. The file will have one or more lines at the end that read like this:

EDITED: http://yourServer/TempDir/myFile.html

These entries indicate which files are still being edited, that is, they have not yet been published back to the server. If you need to manually release a file from the "in edit" state, you simply delete the offending line. Save the file and return to the Web Publisher applet to see that the file no longer appears as an edited file.

User access requirements

In order to use Web Publisher, you must be defined as a valid user with basic read or read-write permissions for a Netscape Enterprise 3.0 server. See your server administrator if you have any questions about your user privileges.

The default access control for a Netscape Enterprise 3.0 server is to permit any defined user to have write privileges to the server's files. Your server administrator can adjust this for a specific server. You can also adjust this for individual files and folders that you own by using Web Publisher's access control function. See Chapter 7, "Access control," for more information.

For Communicator and Composer users

This section applies only to Web Publisher users who are using Netscape Communicator and its Composer component.

Enabling Java

Netscape Web Publisher requires that you have Java enabled in your browser in order for the applet to run. To enable Java in the Netscape Navigator component of Netscape Communicator, do the following:

  1. From the Edit menu, choose Preferences.
  2. Select the Advanced set of preferences.
  3. Click Enable Java.

Installing the Composer plug-in

With the Composer plug-in, you can seamlessly edit and publish files on remote web servers. This is an optional plug-in that adds special web publishing capabilities to the editing and publishing functions. It also adds the Web Publisher Lock and Unlock menu commands to the Tools menu, which allows Composer users to lock and unlock remote files. In this way, you can perform web server publishing directly from the Communicator software on your local desktop.

The instructions listed here for installing the Composer plug-in assume that your Netscape Communicator installation is in the default directory. For example, on a typical Windows system, the default document directory would be:

C:\Program Files\Netscape\Navigator

If you are using a different directory, be sure to adjust the paths as you install the plug-in.

To install the Composer plug-in, go to the Web Publisher home page, as described in "The Web Publisher home page," and follow the instructions there to download the plug-in. When you have installed the plug-in, you must restart Communicator to use the web publishing features in Composer.

Java security certificates

Netscape Web Publisher is a signed applet that requires Netscape Communicator users to grant access through a Java Security certificate. The first time you attempt a Web Publisher operation that accesses local files, a window is displayed that provides details of the local file access operation and requests that you grant or deny access to the applet.

If you check the box to "Remember this decision each time I start Communicator," the Java security checking is handled afterwards in the background for you.

Page services menu command

If you are browsing a server document in the Navigator component of Netscape Commmunicator, you can quickly access the file's web publishing information in the Web Publisher Services page by using the page services menu command.

To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Open a server document in the Netscape Navigator browser window.
  2. From the View menu, choose the page services command.

The Web Publisher Services form is displayed, providing the Properties page for the document you are browsing. You can use any of these web publishing features:

For Navigator 3 users

This section applies only to Web Publisher users who are using version 3.01 of Netscape Navigator

Enabling Java

Netscape Web Publisher requires that you have Java enabled in your browser in order for the applet to run. To enable Java in Netscape Navigator 3.01, do the following:

  1. From the Options menu, choose Network Preferences.
  2. Select the Languages tab.
  3. Click Enable Java.

Installing the Web Publisher plug-in

To preserve the security of your machine's files in pre-Communicator versions of Netscape Navigator, unauthenticated Java applets cannot access local files. In order to use the Web Publisher features that involve accessing local files, you need to install plug-in software that provides additional security procedures to allow local file access under special circumstances. Once you've installed the plug-in, Web Publisher prompts you to confirm your actions when you read and write files on your local drive. This includes editing files because they are temporarily stored on your local system while you are editing them.

You can use most of the functions of Web Publisher, such as copy and move files, without the plug-in, but the publishing and version control functions are disabled.

The instructions listed here for installing the plug-in assume that your installation is in the default directory. For example, on a typical Windows system, the default document directory would be:

C:\Program Files\Netscape\

Navigator

If you are using a different directory for Netscape Navigator, be sure to adjust the paths as you install the plug-in.

To install the plug-in, go to the Web Publisher home page, as described in "The Web Publisher home page," and follow the instructions there to download the plug-in. When you have installed the plug-in, you must restart Navigator to use Web Publisher with all its features enabled by the plug-in.

You can check if the plug-in has been installed by going to the Help menu in your Netscape Navigator browser window and choose the About Plug-ins command. The plug-in should be listed there, as shown in Figure 2.1.

The Web Publisher plug-in installed

Local file access checks

Because Web Publisher is a Java applet, it does not allow access to local files and folders. The Web Publisher plug-in permits local file access, but requires you to confirm all such operations.

In Netscape Navigator 3.01, for example, when you want to edit a file, Web Publisher displays a set of dialog boxes such as those shown here in Figure 2.3 and Figure 2.4. An edited file is considered to be a "local" file because Web Publisher places a temporary copy of the file on your local system while you are editing it.

The local file write confirmation dialog box

Figure 2.3 shows the dialog box for confirmation before trying to modify a file, and Figure 2.4 shows the dialog box checking for permission to edit the file.

The local file edit confirmation dialog box

You may get an additional dialog box if the temporary directory for storing files while they are being edited does not yet exist. Web Publisher will create the directory for you, but you must confirm that it is okay.