Making Web Pages in AppleWorks

Any AppleWorks document can be turned into a web page. This note tells you how to do it.
(Note: If you want real control over your web pages, see the note about Nvu below.)

First, here’s a reason why you might want to do this: Any teacher may request a public folder on the school website. Its name is “public_html”. There are instructions elsewhere for making this folder appear on your own computer. Once you can see this folder, you can keep files in it like any other folder. Unlike other folders, however, your files will be publicly visible to all students. There is a small catch to this: You need to store the sorts of files that web browsers like to read, such as plain text (“.txt”) and HTML (“.html”) files. In the end, this folder gives you the power to create web pages to communicate class materials to your students.

Your AppleWorks document can have any of the following kinds of information in it, and your web page will display a reasonable presentation of it:


There is one big catch to this process: You must maintain two versions of your document.

There needs to be a private and a public version of each document. The private version will be in AppleWorks format (as usual) and will not be visible on the web. The public version will be in HTML format and will be visible on the web. You must put these documents in separate places, and you must save to both places every time you make a change that you wish to appear on the web.

To create a web page, follow these steps:
  1. Choose a place to keep your original AppleWorks document. Your “protected” teacher directory is a good place for this, but you can use a private folder on your machine, too.
  2. Add text, formatting, images, links, tables, etc.
  3. Save your document in its normal place, as often as you want.
  4. Whenever you want to post to the web, select the menu “File” and then “Save As...”.
  5. In the resulting dialog, look for the “File Format” menu, and select “HTML”.
  6. Point the Save As dialog to your “public_html” folder on the school website.
  7. At the top in the “Save As:” box, remove all the spaces and punctuation from the file name. (Web servers don’t like file names with spaces.) You may choose any file name you want, but be systematic, or you’ll lose track of which files go where.
  8. Add the five characters “.html” to the end of the file name. This is not automatic.
  9. Press “Return” to save. If you already saved a copy, confirm with “Replace” (or Cmd-R).
  10. After the first time you save to the web, you will find you can select the name of your HTML file in the Save As dialog. Select it even if it is grayed out, verify the name at the top of the dialog, press “Return”, and confirm with the “Replace” button or Cmd-R.
  11. Repeat steps 4-6 and step 10 every time you want to post a change to the web.
Making Web Links

On the web, there are two kinds of links: a link to a document on the same website, or a link to a different website. Links to documents on a different website (such as yahoo.com) must begin with the "http://" prefix, and include the name of the other website. Links to local documents (such as this document itself) need not mention the website, and should omit the prefix "http://theschoolwebsite". In fact, a link to a document in the same folder (a common case) just needs to name the file.

AppleWorks represents both kinds of web links as "internet" links. Do not use "document" or "anchor" type links from AppleWorks if you want to keep things simple. To make an internet link, select the menu item "Format —> Create Link —> Internet", or use the toolbar button that looks like a paperclip with a globe of the world. When you enter the target of the link, be sure to mention a name that ends with ".html" and not ".cwk". The Mac tries to hide such file-type suffixes, but they are not optional when you make links.

You may have changed the name of your file when you saved to the web (in step 7 above). Note that when you write link names, you must use a name known to the web server. For example, if you have a file “Class Syllabus.cwk” that you stored to the web as “ClassSyllabus.html”, you must link to it using the latter name, not the former.

To keep track of the links in your document, select the menu item “Format —> Show Links Window”, and select the “Internet” tab at the bottom of the little window. You can work on them through that window. Select a link from the list and press the “Edit” button to view or adjust the name it links to.
Making Tables
An easy way to insert a table into an AppleWorks is as follows:
  1. Select “File —> New —> Spreadsheet”.
  2. Fill in the desired cells in the spreadsheet.
  3. Select the cells and press Cmd-C (“Edit —> Copy”).
  4. Go back to your original document, and press Cmd-V (“Edit —> Paste”).
  5. You will see a bunch of unstructured-looking data. Don’t panic!
  6. Press Cmd-Z twice (“Edit —> Undo”, “Edit —> Redo”). This will highlight your data.
  7. Select the menu “Table —> Convert to Table”, to turn your data into a table.
    This works with any text, actually. Tabs in the text mean “go to next column.”
The Fint Print: Feature Comparison

bold, italic, underline same in HTML (<B>, etc.)
text sizes approximately supported (not all sizes)
special fonts (Symbol, Courier, etc.) not supported
paragraph same in HTML (<P>)
image a JPEG file in the same folder
internet link same in HTML
document link not supported
anchor link same in HTML
table HTML table
numbered list same in HTML
bulleted list same in HTML

Want More Control?
The “Nvu” (enn-view) HTML processor is easy to learn and gives much better control over your web page layouts—if you want that control. Nvu runs on both Windows Mac OS X. You can find it at http://nvu.com/download.html. It is free software.