Operation Manual

20 | Getting Started
What will I need to preview or publish my Web site?
You can preview one or more pages at any time, either within WebPlus (using
a special window based on the Internet Explorer browser) or separately using
any browser installed on your system.
Publishing a site with WebPlus is a one-step operation that both: (1) converts
your project to separate files for the Web, and (2) copies the Web files to a
location you specify, either to a local folder or to a World Wide Web host.
• To publish to a local folder, you don't even need a connection to the
Internet.
• To publish to the World Wide Web, you'll need a host for your Web
site—that is, disk space on a server connected to the Internet—so that
others can access your site. This usually means opening an account with
an online service provider: either a large entity such as America Online or
a specialized Internet service provider (ISP) . The big subscription
networks typically allocate to each user several megabytes of server space
for a "personal web site," and many plans are available from smaller ISPs.
Once you've set up your account and can connect your computer to the
host, publishing to the Web is simply a matter of transferring your files.
The Publish to Web feature included with WebPlus takes care of this.
What about HTML?
One advantage WebPlus has over a dedicated Web-page creation program is
that you can take your newsletter layout, or a print ad with a wild mix of
multicolour graphics and fancy typography, and publish them intact to the
World Wide Web. In fact, your page can look as great on the Web as it did on
your screen!
While you don't have to know HTML (the description language for Web
pages) to use WebPlus, you should understand that:
1. The time it takes a visitor to load your page is directly related to the size
of the HTML file plus
any accompanying graphic or multimedia files.
These other files take up considerably more space—and slow down
loading time.
2. Those parts of your layout that WebPlus cannot translate to HTML will
be output as graphics. The more of your layout that WebPlus can translate
into HTML, the better.
If you're used to working in a Desktop Publishing environment, you may have
to scale back your typographic expectations somewhat when designing for the
Web. However, WebPlus gives you a lot of design latitude. In laying out text,