If you have been installing your own copy of Netscape Navigator, you will probably have noticed that there is a 'Gold' version. Originally the 'Gold' only existed on the Windows 95 version, but now you can get 'Gold' on most Unix systems.

So what is this 'Gold' version?

The 'Gold' suffix to Netscape Navigator refers to its ability to create/modify WWW pages, as there is a built-in Hypertext Editor. The editor can be used in its most simplest form as an offline Web Page editor, where the HTML pages are later uploaded manually to the Web server.

Where it really scores is for remote administration and publishing of Web pages, but to make use of all the features you would need to have access to a Web server running with a Netscape Navigator product called Livewire.

As an intermediate case, and something that can be used on the Apache Web servers that we run at Manchester Computing, is remote preparation/editing and then publishing (via FTP) of your own personal Web pages. This document you are reading was 'reverse-engineered' in this way, in that I typed it up using the Editor in Netscape Navigator Gold, and then converted it back to a Microsoft Word file for inclusion in the MC Local Newsletter. Needless to say, this 'original' hypertext version of the document will be available on the Web long before the Newsletter goes to print.

How do I get the document onto the Web?

First create/aquire the source page.

You can do this directly in the 'Gold' editor, just as if you were using a word processor like WordPerfect; Microsoft Word etc..,

• From a predefined template;
• A blank page
• Or by using an online page wizard.
• You can even take a page from the Web and transfer it to the 'Gold' editor by selecting 'Edit Document' form the 'File' menu on Netscape Navigator.

To publish the page, you need to modify, 'Editor Preferences' panel on Netscape, i.e

Of course, you must supply your own details, so if you have a username on MIDAS you would enter:

on NESSIE you would enter:

on INFO you would enter:

With your <username>/<password> in the last two boxes.

And the select 'Publish' from the 'File' menu on the 'Gold' editor, the program will then attempt to open an FTP session to the hostname specified in 'Publish To' and will then transfer the current document and optionally all its included images to the remote system. You can verify that the transfer was sucessful by selecting 'Default Publish Location' from the 'Go' menu on Netscape Navigator Gold.

Where do I get the Gold ?

The last time I put something in an article about where software was available, the source dried up before the article went to print, and I got lots of email messages telling me that the files couldn't be found.

Lets see if I can do it again...:-),

The Netscape Navigator Gold program is available in the UK at Imperial College (src.doc.ic.ac.uk) by anonymous FTP, in the /packages/Netscape/pub/navigator/gold directory. When this article was prepared, the current version was 3.01.

In the case of Windows 95/NT you get a self installing executable, but with the UNIX platform, you get a Compressed TAR archive. This new version is BIG at 3 - 6 Megabytes.

What Gold doesn't do !

After playing around with 'Gold' for some time, I have found that :

• it can't be used to edit a page composed of Frames, although you could edit the individual parts one at a time.
• anything composed of fill-out forms and other specialized HTML elements which it doesn't know about show up as a small graphical character.i.e:
• Version 2.xx of can't be used to edit pages with tables but this has been fixed for Version 3.xx onwards.

What it will do !

You can make use of the Drag'N'Drop facility in the Windows 95 version, to move images from one place (i.e, the desktop) directly into the editor window as show to the left.(this is the Linux 2.0 mascot just in case you were wondering!)

If you want to insert some of the more specialized HTML tags, which can't be found on the menus, then select the 'HTML Tags' option from the 'Insert' menu and a text entry dialog box will pop up.

A quick tour of the button bar

On the button bar, there are three sections,

which with Windows 95 can be ripped off and moved around the desktop, i.e:

• New Document
• Open File
• Save
• Browse
• Cut
• Copy
• Paste
• Print
• Find
• Publish

• Reduces character size
• Increases character size
• Display relative character size
• Bold
• Italic
• Fixed width
• Colour
• Insert link
• Remove all character styles
• Insert target
• Insert image
• Insert line
• Open properties dialog

• List available paragraph styles
• Create a bulleted list
• Create a numbered list
• Outdent the current paragraph
• Indent the current paragraph
• Left-justifies the current paragraph
• Centre the current paragraph
• Right-justifies the current paragraph

More Information ?

If you actually buy your copy of Netscape Navigator Gold it will come complete with several manuals and quick reference cards, but the odds are that you either downloaded the program from some FTP site or that you just use the one that is provided on your local fileserver.

Netscape Navigator Gold documentation includes:

• Netscape Navigator Gold - Authoring Guide (62 pages) - 802-7612-10
• Netscape Navigator Gold - Quick Reference Card - 802-7613-10

I don't have any prices for the above documentation, as my copies came as part of a larger package, but I'm sure that Netscape would only be too pleased to sell you some:

Netscape Communications Corporation
501 East Middlefield Road
Mountain View, California 94043
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http://home.netscape.com