addngecko.html

{gecko engine} makes a hyperlinked TOC (insert/Table of Contents)

. one choice you have when working with html, and hypertext,
is whether to make your document single page or a multi-paged set:

a single page has local links that jump to other places on the same page
a multi-page set has external links that jump from one page to another

. by using local links, a single page can provide the same look & feel that a multi-page set has,
except that readers have to dowload the entire booklet
regardless of how much of it they need
. one of the disadvantages of creating large web pages
with dozens of subtitles to keep track of
had been a scarcity of free organizational tools;
but, since openware based on the gecko engine
( nvu, mozilla`composer, seamonkey`composer )
automatically generate a hyperlinked toc (table of content),
we now have such a tool available to everyone!
(except possibly developers who keep their pages on angelfire.com
or other free site providers who insert ad's at the top of every page)

. large web pages are now easier to create
than an equivalent set of small pages .
. it's like having a text outliner or other abstraction tool
that is reducing large amounts of text into a few subtitles

. in fact, gecko has the same effect as an outliner
if you do this routine (assumes use of
linspire`s repackaging of gecko nvu):

as you're editing the page, have the browser looking at the page you edit
. whenever some new subtitles are defined,
ask nvu to update the toc ( nvu\insert\Table of Contents ...\update )
and then update the page ( nvu\save );
. to see the changes, ask your browser, eg firefox,
to refresh it`s view of the page ( firefox\view\reload )
. after that, your browser has the outliner`s collapse-all view,
and nvu has the expand-all view .

-- linspire`<n|vu> is a revision of mozilla`composer;
linspire claims to sell a friendly version of linux, over the net and pre-loaded onto a pc;
and this is just a quick bit of free advertizing for them;
they've done nothing to make gecko a safe place to edit:
you must still remember to save often
. seamonkey is the next generation of mozilla and it's composer
. it still crashes like it`s predecessor .

advantages of large web pages

. if you're going to be reading more than a few pages,
downloading a whole chapter is the way to go
because

once the booklet is downloaded,
it's much quicker to flip between pages

. it effectively takes all that waiting time between little pages,
and collects it into a single waiting time at the beginning
allowing you to completely avoid wait times,
by switching to another task while that page is downloading .
. an html editor is practically not complete
without a tool for combining pages into html booklets .

disadvantages of large pages

(1: assumes visitor motivation)

. if you're not familiar with a website,
but wondering why a search engine thought it was relevant,
then you want to see a quick-loading
introductory page before you commit to big downloads .

(2: bandwidth overuse)

. if you find that a website is simply not available,
it may be due to it`s large downloads
. website providers often put a limit on the
total monthly size of downloads from your site;
and, one way to ensure the limit is not exceeded
is spoonfeeding information to visitors
. having very small pages will make sure they get
only the text they are highly motivated to get

( unless they are using an automated downloader,
which might be very useful if internet useage is time-limited;
eg, netzero cuts off free service after 10hours whether or not you've downloaded anything
. I read the fineprint once, and they did mention something about
terminating service if you employ certain forms of automation to access it )

marking up your headings

. gecko makes it very easy to
turn your text titles into html headings,
since it assumes each title takes up the whole line
. simply click any part of the title`s line,
and find your tag in the pull-down menu

Heading-tag your sub.titles

when you select the heading tag, you're choosing a subtitle level
from this menu:
{
Body Text [revert the heading back to having no heading tags]

, Paragraph
[every <enter key> creates a new paragraph,
while a <shift-enter> creates a newline]

, Heading 1 [the booklet` title],
, Heading 2 [volume]
, Heading 3 [chapter]
, Heading 4 [significant idea]
, Heading 5 [detail]
, Heading 6 [fine print]

, Preformat
	[retains original white space;
	eg a text`s newline(enter key) acts like an html`<br> instead of a space]

, Address [html`<address>]

, generic container(div) [html`<div> for style containment]

}

insert the toc

. place the cursor where you want the toc to be,
and then use the nvu`menu:

\insert\ table of contents ...\insert\(  options? the defaults are ok )

. if it doesn't look well-formed then remove it by nearly the same menu:

\insert\ table of contents ...\remove

and see the next section ...

malformed toc's

. if there's a problem with malformed toc's,
review the entire doc in tag mode,
and check that your heading tags form a nice neat hierarchy, like you intended
. when I had problems with the toc, it was because
while I was combining others`pages together and changed their heading tags,
I had left a lot of invisible tags that were not correctly placed,
and the toc generator responded by assuming that
long chunks of text were part of the headings .

show tags to see why a toc is malformed

look at the tabs at the bottom of the nvu window:

{ []Normal, [TD] HTML Tags, [<>]Source, []Preview }

. choose [TD] HTML Tags, and then the codes will show,
and the the Headings look like: [H1], [H2], ... or [H6], depending on the heading level
. make sure each heading tag has some text to the right of it,
otherwise it's invisible but it messes up the toc .