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:
- understand the Web Publisher interface
- edit a server file
- add a new file to the server
- view a file's information: its properties and version history
- check a file's links
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.
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:
- If you double-click a file, it opens in a web browser window.
- If you double-click a folder, it opens (or closes if already open).
- If you click the small plus or minus sign in the list next to a folder,
it opens (or closes if already open).
- You can select a file or folder and move it to a new location by using
the drag-and-drop method.
- You can select a file or folder and make a copy of it in a new location
by pressing the Control key while you use the drag-and-drop method.
- You may sometimes need to move the cursor on the screen to refresh
an hourglass cursor, updating it to an arrow cursor once more.
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:
- Open folder: opens the selected folder.
- New folder: creates a new folder within the selected directory.
- Browse file: opens the selected file in a web browser window.
- Edit file: opens the selected file in an editor window.
- Publish file: allows you to publish an edited file back to the server.
- Information: opens the Web Publisher Services page, displaying information
about the selected file or folder.
- Search: launches the Web Publisher search interface.
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:
- Select an unlocked file.
- Click the Edit toolbar button.
- 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.
- 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:
- Select the edited file.
- From the File menu, choose the Publish an Edited File command. The
Publish File dialog box appears.
- To add your own comments for a file that is under version control,
you can type text into the Comments field.
- 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:
- In the Web Publisher window, select the folder where you want to place
your new file.
- From the File menu, choose the Upload to Server menu command. The Upload
File or Folder dialog box appears.
- 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.
- Your destination folder's pathname appears in the To Server File or
Folder field. You can also change the destination that appears.
- 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.
- 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.
- Click Upload to add your local file to the server.
- 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:
- Select a file from the Web Publisher window .
- 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.
- 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.
- Owner--The user name assigned to the file. Only owners can modify this
field. If a file has no owner, anyone can define themselves as owner. See
Chapter 7, "Access Control," for more information about file
ownership.
- Title: The HTML title, as tagged with the HTML tag of <TITLE>.
This property is only available when the file's content is made searchable.
- Author: The file's author, as tagged with the HTML tag of <META
NAME="Author">. This property is only available when
the file's content is made searchable.
- Description--A description for the file, as tagged with the HTML tag
of <META NAME="Description">. This property is
only available when the file's content is made searchable.
- Lock-Status--The current lock status for the file. If a file is locked,
only the lock owner can unlock it.
- Lock-Owner--The user name for the user that locked the file. Only the
lock owner can unlock a file.
- Filename--The name of the file.
- Path--The relative filename for the file. This is the filename without
the root directory.
- URL--The file's full pathname.
- Size--The size, in bytes, of the file.
- Created--The date when the file was created.
- Modified--The date when the file was last modified.
- Searchable Contents--A flag indicating whether or not the contents
are searchable. The default is Yes.
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:
- Select a file from the Web Publisher window .
- 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.
- 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:
- 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."
- 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:
- Version--The version number. This is initially set to v1.1 and
is incremented each time the file is published. Click this link to view
the version.
- Modified By--The user ID of the person who was the last person to publish
the file or who set up version control for this file, whichever is more
recent.
- Last Modified--The date of the latest file modification, which is the
creation date for new files.
- Comments--The text entered when the latest version was created. This
initially contains text generated by Web Publisher, but when you later
publish the file, creating additional versions, you can input your own
comments here.
You can also compare different versions of a file,
by following these steps:
- Begin by viewing a file's information through the Web Publisher Services
page as described in the section "File
properties."
- Click the Version History link. At the top of the version history page,
there is a section for comparing versions.
- 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).
- 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:
- 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
- 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:
- Select a file or folder in the Web Publisher window.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.