Mozilla Composer Tutorial

Welcome to the Mozilla Composer
WYSIWYG Editor Tutorial

Have you ever wanted to create a website but you don't know HTML? Not to worry, because with mozilla.org's free Mozilla Composer WYSIWYG web editor, you don't have to know HTML to create a wonderful website! This website will hopefully help you with the basics of creating a site with Mozilla Composer.

Structure of this Tutorial

This tutorial has been divided up into sections in hopes of making navigation as easy and useful as possible. Each section will contain a great deal of screenshots accompanied by text describing each. Aside from the screenshots, this site will be mostly text for simplicity sake. The tutorial is centered around the website Sunny Meadows Farm that was created using Mozilla Composer. Most of the screenshots will feature this site, and some of the little more advanced topics will be fairly specific to that site.

While not mandatory, it is recommended that you read the sections in order from top to bottom the way they are presented in the navigation bar to the left. By doing so, you will be familiar with the basic user interface elements before having to tackle the more advanced topics like Tables. You'll notice that the screenshots become less focused on exactly where to click as the tutorial moves from top to bottom and more focused on explaining the options being discussed.

Limitations of this Tutorial

This tutorial is in no way meant to be exhaustive. The intricacies of web design take years to master, partially because of all the technologies that can be used these days. Also, Composer can be used to build more powerful sites than the one showcased in the tutorial, but for the sake of all the web newbies who may come across this, many of those techniques will be ignored. Image editing and accquisition is also omitted from the tutorial. Keep in mind that there are more than one way to do almost anything that will be demonstrated, so if you find another way, it's pefectly ok to do the task that way.

It's also important to note that this tutorial will not cover the Publish function of Composer. The Publish function seems to be very buggy and its method of getting files to and from the server leave something to be desired. For best results, it is recommended that an FTP program be used for uploading files to the server once you're finished editing them locally with Composer.

Getting the Most from this Tutorial

Composer is no different than any other piece of software in that you have to practice, practice, practice with it in order to learn to use it to its full potential. Play around with it and don't be scared. Make backups off all the files you'll be using with the tutorial. That way, you can mess around with the editor without having to worry about breaking something. Besides, it's just web design!

Where to Begin

If you don't have Composer yet, see Getting Mozilla. It will explain where to get it and how to install it. If you run into any problems, be sure to check out the Resource Links as there may be something helpful in there.