Web Publisher QuickStart

Netscape Web Publisher lets server clients directly access, edit, and manage files and folders on remote servers. In this way, multiple users can collaborate on shared workgroup web server documents from their desktops.

This chapter focuses on a few of the most common tasks to get you up and running as quickly as possible. Chapters 4 through 8 describe the Web Publisher services and menu commands in detail.

Typical Web Publisher users need to:

The search, access control, and agents components of Web Publisher are discussed in other chapters. For search, see Chapter 5, "Search." For agent services, see Chapter 6, "Agents." For access control, see Chapter 7, "Access control."

Note

Web Publisher provides many internal and automatic features such as link management, file reindexing, and state checking. If you use your local file management tools to manipulate files and folders in the document directory defined for Web Publisher, you may get inconsistent and unexpected results.

Using the Web Publisher interface

When you start up Web Publisher, you see the server documents and folders displayed in a window that hierarchically lists all files and folders, as shown in Figure 3.1. There are several icons that provide information about a given file or folder.

The Web Publisher window

Web Publisher icons

As files undergo different operations, Web Publisher displays different icons in the Web Publisher window. Version control is indicated by a small document stack. Files that you have edited but haven't yet published have a distinctive pen icon. Locked files also have special icons that differ depending on whether you or another user is the lock owner. Table 3.1 shows the various possible combinations.

File icons for different operations

Operation Without version control With version control
(no operation)
edited by you
locked by you
locked by another user

When a file that is being edited is published back to the server, the pen icon disappears. Likewise, when files that have been locked are unlocked, the lock icon or the circle icon disappears.

Sorting the listed files and folders

You can choose to sort the files and folders in different ascending or descending sort sequences: by name, modification date, or size.

To sort the files, click the heading for the column you want to sort by. Alternately, you can go to the View menu and choose the Sort command, selecting the appropriate sort sequence from the submenu (name, date, or size).

Keyboard shortcuts

Web Publisher uses many standard keyboard actions:

Toolbar shortcuts

At the top of the Web Publisher file management window, the toolbar presents seven buttons as shortcuts for the most commonly used Web Publisher commands, as shown in Figure 3.2. The complete set of menu commands are described in Chapter 4, "Services and menus."

The toolbar

You can select a file or folder and use a toolbar button to execute a Web Publisher command. From left, the icons are:

Editing a server file

This section describes how to edit a file stored on a remote web server and publish the modified file back to the server so that it is available for other users. When you edit a file, it becomes locked to other users until you have published it.

With Web Publisher, you can edit any unlocked file that you have read and write permission for. Members of a workgroup often need to be able to make changes to shared files on a remote server as they collaborate on a project.

To edit a file:

  1. Select an unlocked file.
  2. Click the Edit toolbar button.
  3. Click OK to launch the file's editor application and begin editing the file.
    Depending on how your editor.txt file is set up, this command may launch Netscape Navigator's HTML editor, Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Word or Excel, a simple text editor, or another application that you have associated with this particular file's format. See Chapter 2, "Installing and configuring" for more information about setting up file editors.
  4. When you have made your changes, save the file in the editor application. If you are using the HTML editor in Netscape Navigator 3.01, do not use its Publish command.

The new version is not available on the server for other users until you publish it. To publish an edited file to the server:

  1. Select the edited file.
  2. From the File menu, choose the Publish an Edited File command. The Publish File dialog box appears.

  3. To add your own comments for a file that is under version control, you can type text into the Comments field.
  4. Click OK to publish the file.

The edited file is again available on the server. Web Publisher unlocks the file and updates the version number for files under version control.

Adding a new file to the server

Another common task is to add a new file to the server by uploading a local file. Whether the file is an application, a word processing document, a PDF file, a spreadsheet, or an HTML file--you can add it to the server with Web Publisher. Using the file filters, files in many different formats can be automatically converted to HTML for you. See Chapter 5, "Search" for more information about file filters.

To move one of your local files onto the server and have the file placed under version control, do the following:

  1. In the Web Publisher window, select the folder where you want to place your new file.
  2. From the File menu, choose the Upload to Server menu command. The Upload File or Folder dialog box appears.

  3. In the Upload Local File or Folder field, type the full pathname of your local file. If you are using Communicator, you can click the Browse button to look for the file on your local system.
  4. Your destination folder's pathname appears in the To Server File or Folder field. You can also change the destination that appears.
  5. You can optionally start version control for this file, by checking the "Start version control on uploaded files" option. The default is to start version control.
  6. You can lock a file when you put it on the server by checking the "Lock files after upload" option. The default is not to lock files.
  7. Click Upload to add your local file to the server.
  8. A dialog box is displayed asking you to update the file properties for this file. Click OK to go to the Web Publisher Services page with the Properties for this file.

Viewing a file's information

You can view a file's default and custom properties as well as its version history from the Web Publisher Services page. You can also check a file's links from this page.

The Web Publisher Services page

File properties

There are two types of file properties: default and custom properties. Each Web Publisher file has a set of default properties, and these are displayed when you click the Properties link. You can only modify the owner of a file, and then only if you are the assigned owner or the file has no owner. Your server administrator can also define some custom properties and these are displayed when you click the Custom Properties link. You can enter your own values for any property that has been designated as modifiable by your server administrator.

Default properties

To see the default properties , follow these steps:

  1. Select a file from the Web Publisher window .
  2. Click the Information toolbar button or choose the Properties command from the View menu. The Web Publisher Services form is displayed with the file's properties page visible.
  3. If the file's properties are not visible, click the Properties link to display them.

Files have the set of default properties listed here. Folders have only two modifiable properties, Description and Owner, and four read-only properties: Filename, URL, Size, and Modified. Also see Chapter 4, "Services and menus," for information about properties.

You can perform a search on any property as well as on any searchable file contents. For example, you can search for all files that belong to a certain author, for all the locked files, or for any file with a particular string in the title field. For more information about doing searches, see Chapter 5, "Search."

Custom properties

To see the default properties , follow these steps:

  1. Select a file from the Web Publisher window .
  2. Click the Information toolbar button or choose the Properties command from the View menu. The Web Publisher Services form is displayed with the file's properties page visible.
  3. Cick the Custom Properties link. A list of properties with their current values is displayed.

Version history

In Web Publisher, all files placed under version control begin with version 1.1, and each subsequent time you edit and then publish the file, the version number is incremented by 0.1. Once a file is under version control, Web Publisher maintains a record of each version of a file and gives you access to its versions.

To view a file's version history, do the following:

  1. Begin by viewing a file's information through the Web Publisher Services page as described in the previous set of steps, in the section "File properties."
  2. Click the Version History link in the left frame. The version history for a file is displayed in the right frame.

The history consists of a series of version information sections, one per version. Each section has this information:

You can also compare different versions of a file, by following these steps:

  1. Begin by viewing a file's information through the Web Publisher Services page as described in the section "File properties."
  2. Click the Version History link. At the top of the version history page, there is a section for comparing versions.
  3. From the two drop-down lists, select the two versions you want to compare. The version selected from the left-hand list is taken as the starting point from which the other version is compared for additions (in green) and deletions (in red).
  4. Click Compare.

The output is an HTML file in your web browser window that highlights where the versions differ, with green text and arrows to mark added text and graphic objects and red text and arrows to mark deletions.

Checking a file's links

You can check the status of all the links in a file's or all the links in all the files within a folder. There are two ways to obtain the check links page: through a link on the Web Publisher Services form or with a menu command.

If you are already viewing a file's information through the Web Publisher Services page, you can follow these steps to check the file's links:

  1. Click the Check Links link in the left frame. A Link Status page similar to the one in Figure 3.4 is displayed for files whose links have never been checked.

The link status for an unchecked file

  1. Click Check Links. A list of all the outgoing links in your file is displayed, as shown in Figure 3.5. This lists all the working, broken, and external links for your file.

The list of a file's links

When you check links again for this file, this list will be displayed. If you think your links may have changed since the last time you checked them, you can click Check Links to obtain a current link status list.

If you are not in the Web Publisher Services form, you can use the applet's menu command to check a file's links. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Select a file or folder in the Web Publisher window.
  2. From the Services menu, choose Check Links. The Link Status page is displayed. If you have not yet checked the links for this file, you see a page like that shown in Figure 3.4.
  3. If you are checking the links for a file whose links have already been checked, you see a list like that in Figure 3.5. This lists all the working, broken, and external links for your file.
  4. To be sure the file's links are up to date, you can recheck them by clicking Check Links.

You can also check the links in a folder as well as produce a report on the broken links in all the files within a folder. See Chapter 8, "Managing links," for more information about link management.