Composer: The Netscape & Mozilla Graphical HTML Editor & Word Processor

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Composer Makes Mozilla a Browser-Suite

Inclusion of Composer in the Netscape 6 and Mozilla packages is one reason we usually refer to them as browser-suites rather than merely as browsers. Composer adds a basic word processor plus a WYSIWYG, graphical interface, HTML and Web page editor to the browser module to make the basic suite. Then the addition of the e-mail, news, and chat/messaging modules makes Netscape 6 and Mozilla nice, well-rounded, browser suites.

Composer Features -- The New, The Old, The Missing, & The Lost

The new Mozilla Composer looks and feels somewhat like the old Netscape 4.X Composer. However, the new Mozilla Composer has been re-built from the ground up.

There is not too much that is new in the Mozilla/Netscape-6 version of Composer as compared to Netscape 4.x. The emphasis in re-building Composer from the ground up has been to try to take the features already in the Netscape 4.x Composer and make them even better in the Mozilla/Netscape-6 version of Composer.

Much of the improvement involves what happens underneath the Composer desktop window. So you might not notice anything new. Please see Figures 2a and 2b for a comparison of the old Composer and the new Composer desktops.

Figure 2a. Screen shot of Netscape 4.5 Composer

Figure 2b. Screen shot of Netscape 6.0 Composer

One very handy new feature is the view tab bar at the bottom of the Composer desktop. Simply click on the view tabs to switch from the graphical, WYSIWYG editing (normal) view, to the source/HTML editing view, to the show all tags view, to the preview display -- all within the same composer window. Please see Figures 3a through 3d.

If you do not see the view tabs on your Composer desktop please look in the View dropdown menu on the Composer desktop. Then click on Toolbars > Edit Mode Toolbar. That should display the view tabs.

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