Help Document

About the Home Page folder
A Home Page folder contains material (web pages) that you want others to view using their web browsers. FirstClass publishes the contents of your Home Page folder on the web.
You can only have one Home Page folder. You can rename or delete this folder, but do not move it off your Desktop, or it will not work properly. If you inadvertently move this folder off your Desktop, you can move it back, and it will work again.
To open your Home Page folder, choose File > Open > Home Page. A Home Page folder is placed on your Desktop, if it is not already there.

Creating content for your Home Page folder

To create content for your Home Page folder, you can:

•       drag FirstClass folders, documents, messages, and URL links into this folder

Note

Any graphics that were embedded in messages or documents as PNG files will be rendered on the web as GIF files.

•       store shortcuts to conferences by pressing Shift while you drag the conferences to this folder

Web users will only be able to view conferences if your administrator has set up these conferences to allow this. Web users who are not recognized by the server will be asked to log in when they try to access a restricted conference.

•       upload plain text files directly to this folder

These files can contain HTML code.

•       create documents directly in this folder.

These documents can contain HTML code.

About HTML documents

Documents containing HTML code that are placed in your Home Page folder look like source code when you create them and view them using FirstClass, but are rendered as normal web pages when opened with a web browser.
To pass HTML code to a web browser unaltered, so that it will render properly on the web, format the HTML code by selecting it, then choosing Edit > Style > Literal HTML. In FirstClass, this format is in fixed-pitch, plain text.
An HTML document can contain URL links to other documents and image files that are located in your Home Page folder, as well as images embedded directly into the document.

Specifying a default HTML document

You can designate an HTML document as your home page.
If you do not designate a default home page, anyone accessing your Home Page folder over the web will see the entire contents of this folder, just as you see them in FirstClass.
To make an HTML document the home page, you must give it one of the following names:

•       index.htm or index.html
•       home.htm or home.html
•       default.htm or default.html

Use one of these names for a document created using the standard document form.

•       home page.

Use this name for a document created using one of the special document forms.

Viewing others' web pages

You can see another user's web pages using the Directory. Any HTML code viewed this way will look like source code.

Customizing how FirstClass looks on your web browser

You can specify how FirstClass web pages look on your browser. This includes how many items are initially downloaded from the server, and how many are displayed per page in listings.
To customize FirstClass on your web browser, fill in the fields on the Web subtabs of the Preferences form.