General


FastHTML is the product of many many hours of programming and research. It transformed from a personal project ("Let's make a HTML editor! Can't be that hard") to an editor that is pretty useful. That's why I decided to continue the project and make it available to the public. It's capable of reading and editing HTML (and plain text) files. The size of the file is limited to the amount of free memory on your system.

Browser wars
In the beginning there was the HTML specification by the
W3 consortium. Both Netscape and Microsoft made extensions to these specifications. That could be a good thing, but it isn't. Generally, Netscape doesn't support IE extensions and IE doesn't support Netscape extensions. If a tag or option is Netscape or Internet Explorer specific FastHTML displays that by a (N) or (E) behind it. When you are desinging your page you should keep in mind that both browsers should display it correctly (about 99% of all Internet users use either Netscape or IE) and you should test your page with both of them. If there are tags or options used on the page that are specific for Netscape or IE you should warn your users for that. As for the other browsers that are used (Mosaic, Lynx, Opera and many others) you should try to create pages that work for them too. Also be sure to include alt descriptions for your images and <noframes> alternatives when you're using frames.
To find out which browsers are the most widely used today you can check Browserwatch for an up-to-date overview.

This document has been succesfully tested with Netscape Communicator 4.02 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0. Opera 3.0 was also used during the writing of this document but that browser has some problems with special characters and links to anchors.

Resources
If you want to obtain more information about HTML I recommend these locations:

The status bar
The status bar, at the bottom of the FastHTML window, features a number which indicates the active line (i.e. the line the cursor is currently on) and column and the status of the CAPSLOCK and NUMLOCK keys.

The toolbar
The toolbar, right below the main menu, allows you to quickly use the most important FastHTML features. These are, from left to right: New HTML document, Open file, Save file, Copy, Cut, Paste, Bold, Italics, Typewriter, Link, Image and Anchor.

Contacting the author of FastHTML
Name: Hans van der Maarel
Email:
hans.maarel@wxs.nl
Homepage: http://home.wxs.nl/~maare002
Adress: Oosterstraat 39
Postal code: 4791 HH
Town: Klundert
Country: The Netherlands

Requirements
FastHTML runs best under Windows 95. It has been tested under Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0 and runs fine under those OS'es. Furthermore it is recommended that you have a forms-capable browser associated with the filetype .htm. Apart from that the requirements are minimal.

Conditions for use
If you like FastHTML and you are planning to use it more often I'd like you to do some things:

On startup you will see a message that has nothing much to do with HTML. It is the copyright message of a 3rd party Delphi component that I used to be able to handle large files (larger than 32 kilobyte) under Windows 95. The author of the component lets me use it for free, provided that I do not tamper with that message. If I would want to register the component (so the message won't appear anymore) I would have to ask you to register FastHTML. I decided not to do that, so please bear with me.

Revision history

Credits

The File Menu


New
This will either create a new HTML document or a new Text document. The first choice will pop up a dialog window where you can alter the HTML parameters such as META tags, body colors, title, used stylesheet and base URL.

The meta tags are used to describe the page, the ones supported by FastHTML are:
AuthorYour name should go here.
KeywordsHere you can enter some descriptive keywords. Search engines and Webspiders use these keywords to determine the contents of your page. The HTML specifications allow you to use up to 1000 characters here.
DescriptionA short description of your page goes here. Recommended length: 200 characters.
GeneratorThis meta tag contains the name of the program that created the page. When you save a document this tag will automatically be set to FastHTML
RefreshThis tags forces your browser to another page, with a delay of several seconds. Please make sure the URL you enter is a full URL (like http://www.whatever.com/a_html_file) instead of a relative URL.
Open
This will allow you to open a HTML file for editing. Possible extensions are '*.html', '*.htm', '*.txt', '*.css' and '*.*'. Basically any text-file can be edited using FastHTML

Save shortcut: CTRL-S
This saves the current document. If no filename has been specified yet you are prompted for one.

Save As
This saves the document under another filename.

Convert text to HTML
This will equip a standard text file with valid HTML headers. The dialog box for editing meta tags and body options will pop up.

Test page in browser
This will save your file and start your browser (i.e. the program associated with *.htm files) to view it. The file will be saved as testpage.htm in the FastHTML directory.

Print
You can use this option to print your HTML file.

Exit
Exits the program. If the current file hasn't been saved since the last edit you will be asked whether it should be saved.


The Edit Menu


The Edit menu offers some options for working with selections and the clipboard. Selections can be made by dragging the mouse or by using shift-arrow or shift-ctrl-arrow (select whole words). If you right-click inside the main window you'll get a context sensitive menu. At this point the clipboard-functions in that menu don't work correctly, however if you press the 'context menu button' on a Windows 95 keyboard it works fine. Furthermore the last action can be undone using CTRL-Z.

Cut shortcut: CTRL-X or right-click
This removes the current selection from the file and places it on the clipboard.

Copy shortcut: CTRL-C or right-click
This copies the current selection to the clipboard. Any existing text on the clipboard is replaced.

Paste shortcut: CTRL-V or right-click
Pastes the contents of the clipboard on the current cursor position. If a portion of text is selected it will be replaced with the text on the clipboard.

Clear shortcut: CTRL-DEL
Clears the current selection from the file. It will not be placed on the clipboard.

Select All shortcutr: CTRL-A
Selects the entire file.

Find shortcut: F3
Finds a string in the file. This option is still not working just as I like it, but it's working.

Replace shortcut: CTRL-F3
Replaces a string with another string. Just like the Find option, it's not perfect yet.

Edit header
This pops up a menu that is similar to the
New HTML file menu. Here you can edit the meta tags, body colors and other header-settings. When you choose this option FastHTML will attempt to display the current settings by reading them from the file. As this is a very complicated operation it may be possible that FastHTML can't do it. If that happens, the best thing to do is delete the current header, choose the Edit header option and enter all values again. FastHTML will then create a new header. Headers created with FastHTML 1.1 are guaranteed to work.

Unfortunately all body options cannot be read from the file, you will have to enter them all over again.


The Add Tags Menu


Line Break shortcut: CTRL-R
This command places the tag <br>. It forces your browser to end the line at that point. If your browser encounters the line
This is <br> an example of the forced line break
in your file it would be shown as:
This is
an example of the forced line break.

Center text
Causes text to be centered on the page:<center>Like this.</center> .

Like this.

Other elements, like images, are affected too. When you use this tag inside a table the elements are centered within the cell.

Horizontal line
This places a horizontal line across the window. In the dialog window you can enter the different options available for <hr>. These are:

Here are a few examples:
<hr align="center" color="#FF0000" size="4" width="75">


Note that Netscape ignores the color attribute!
<hr align="right" noshade color="#FF00AA" size="6" width="50%">

A horizontal line is best used to separate two different parts of a page.

Paragraph shortcut: CTRL-P
The <p> tag forces the browser to create a new paragraph.

Add List
The best way to sum things up on your Webpage is using a list. There are 5 basic types of lists, some of them have subtypes:

All types can have the 'compact' attribute, meaning that the browser will display the list as compact as possible.
Here are some examples of lists:
<ol type=1 compact>
  1. First item
  2. Second item
<ul type=disc>
<menu>
  • First item
  • Second item
  • <dir type=square>
  • First item
  • Second item
  • <dl>
    First item
    First defenition
    Second item
    Second definition

    List item shortcut: CTRL-L
    This places the <li> tag at the current cursor position. This tag indicates the next list item when you're using ordered, unordered, menu or directory lists. When you are using a definition list you should use the
    <dd><dt> tag.

    Definition
    This places the <dd><dt> tags at the cursor position. The correct use of these tags is: <dd> term <dt> definition.

    Add table
    Using this command you can insert a table on your page. When you are creating a table there are a number of options you can choose from:

    Add row
    This allows you to enter a row to your table. The options are:

    Add cell
    The options for adding a cell are essentially the same as the ones for adding a row. Except that colspan has become rowspan.

    Here is an example of a table:
    Table
    Item one Item two
    Item three Item four

    <table border=3  bgcolor="#FFC973">
    <th>Table</th>
    <tr colspan=1 align=center valign=center bgcolor="#B3FFFF">
    <td> Item one </td>  <td> Item two </td></tr>
    <tr><td colspan=1 align=center valign=top bgcolor="#FF42FF">Item three </td>
    <td> Item four </td>  </tr>
    </table>

    Special charracter shortcut: CTRL-W
    With this option you can insert 'special characters' in your document. These special characters come from the ISO-Latin 1 character set and feature all possible accents for the normal letters, some letters that are specific for the Scandiavian languages and some symbols.


    The Add Links Menu


    Add hyperlink
    Hyperlinks are what the WWW is all about. By links you can direct your visitors to other pages you made or to pages made by others that might be interesting to them. The most well-known hyperlink is http but FastHTML supports the whole range: You must specify a location to link to and a text that should be displayed as the link (if you have text selected in the main edit window it will be regarded as the text you want to be displayed as the link. You are of course free to change this.) You can also specify the target, that's especially handy when you're working with frames but you can also use it to spawn another browser window.
    Here is an example of a link:
    <a href="http://home.wxs.nl/~maare002/fasthtml.html">FastHTML </a>
    FastHTML
    Note that the linked page appears in this frame rather than fullscreen. That is because I haven't specified a target.
    The link is per default displayed in blue and underlined, a followed link is purple. These colors can be changed in the Body options window. An image can be used as link too. Simply click the image button and FastHTML takes care of the rest.

    Targets
    These are the magic target names that control the window the link will be displayed in:
    _blank This target will cause the link to always be loaded in a new blank window. This window is not named.
    _self This target causes the link to always load in the same window the anchor was clicked in. This is useful for overriding a globally assigned BASE target.
    _parent This target makes the link load in the immediate FRAMESET parent of this document. This defaults to acting like _self if the document has no parent.
    _top This target makes the link load in the full body of the window. This defaults to acting like _self if the document is already at the top. It is useful for breaking out of an arbitrarily deep FRAME nesting.

    Add image
    When you are inserting an image it is always wise to use the alt option. People who still use text-based browsers or people who don't auto-load images will be able to understand your page a lot better if you tell them what the images are all about. Currently FastHTML only supports images that are placed in the same directory as the HTML page that calls them. If you want to use an image from a subdirectory or another location on the WWW you should manually enter its adress. You can restrain the size of the image (in pixels or percents). The align option allows you to specify where the text will be placed, relative to the image. Here's an example of the use of images:

    <img src="fast.jpg" alt="FastHTML logo" align="middle">
    FastHTML logo

    Add anchor
    An anchor is basically a place on a HTML page where you can link to. Using this command you place it and when you want to link to that spot on the page you add #anchor name in the URL field (If the anchor is on the current age you don't need to use the entire filename. When the anchor is on another page you must). The URL of this subjects header is: mantext.html#anchor. The anchor there is placed as: <a name="anchor">.
    You can also place an anchor from the menu you can pop up by right-clicking in the FastHTML window.


    Text styles


    There are many text styles you can use in a HTML document. Here's a short overview of them: Bold
    Italics
    Typewriter
    Strong
    Emphasis
    Keyboard
    Strikeout
    Underlined
    This text is in Superscript
    This text is in Subscript
    Blinking (N) (Netscape only!)

    Preformatted
    Preformatted text looks like typewriter text but it has one difference: the spacing is kept.
    <pre> This
    is
    preformatted
    <pre>
    looks like:

    This
    is
    preformatted
    
    Remarks
    A remark is a line of text (or more lines, whatever you want) who are not shown by the browser. You can add your own comments to your HTML file by using remarks. If you view the source of this page you will see a remark right here.

    Set basefont
    With this option you can set the basic font for your page. This tag is Internet Explorer specific, Netscape will ignore it. You can specify a list of fonts the browser should use, if the first one can't be found on the clients pc it will try to load the second and so on. If none of the fonts in the list can be found the browsers default font is used. You can specify the color of the font and the size in absolute (ranging from 1 to 7) or relative (-3 to +3) numbers. Please note that FastHTML uses a standard Font Dialog but all choices made there except the font's name will be ignored.

    Font
    You can use this option to set some text in a different font than the browsers default, the basefont or another font specified by font tags (these tags can be nested). The options are equal to those of the
    basefont. Please note that it is not wise to use more than three fonts on a page, unless they are very much alike. You should also keep in mind that some fonts may look good but that they are very hard to read. The best choices for fonts are: Times New Roman, Arial and Sans Serif. They also have the advantage that they're available on most graphics based platforms (Windows, Apple Macintosh). Text-based browsers will ignore the font tags.

    Bigger and smaller
    With these options you can have the browser display text one point bigger or smaller than the current settings.

    Blockquote
    If you want to quote a large portion of text you can use the blockquote. Here's what it does:

    Here's a nice quote: <blockquote>You're so young 
    and we're so old</blockquote> by Pete Townshend
    Here's a nice quote:
    You're so young and we're so old
    by Pete Townshend

    No line break
    The browser will display the text within this tag as one line,without breaking it up when the right side of the screen is reached. (The last part of the last sentence should be displayed on one line.)

    Word break
    By placing this (Netscape specific) tag you can tell the browser where a word could be broken if necessary.

    Division
    This tag defines a division in the text. It's primary use is to define portions of text that should be member of a certain
    class or id in order to display them in a special way. This can be achieved using stylesheet information.


    Stylesheet
    This sets a <STYLE>...</STYLE> section where you can enter stylesheet information. It is recommended however that you place all your stylesheet information in a separate file.

    Span (E)
    This Internet Explorer specific tag lets you define stylesheet information for a portion of text/elements.

    Import stylesheetThis lets you import a stylesheet. This option can only be used inside a <STYLE>...</STYLE> section. It basically adds the stylesheet information in the external file to the stylesheet information defined in the <STYLE>...</STYLE> section.

    Set class
    With this option you can make a tag member of a class of tags. For each class you can set specific stylesheet information.

    Set ID
    This option has about the same effect as the
    Set class option. The only difference is that the ID option should be reserved for a single tag or element, where the class option is meant for a group of tags or elements.

    Stylesheet properties
    Using this page you can enter all stylesheet properties. At this point there is no full help available for all these properties.


    Add frameset
    With this command you can add a frameset to a document. Please beware of the fact that a document containing a frameset can not contain body tags! In the dialogue box you can specify whether the frames should come in rows or columns and how they are distrubuted over the page. The values in the rows/cols field can be entered as numbers (representing pixels), percentages (using %) and parts (using *). This part of FastHTML is not automated yet so you will have to enter these values manually. Netscape supports spacing between frames, borders and bordercolors.

    Add frame
    The most important property of a frame is the HTML document that should be displayed in it. Furthermore you can specify a name, a bordercolor, the scrolling behaviour of the frame, the margins and whether it should resize or not.

    No frames alternative
    Some browsers do not support frames. These browsers will display the text you put between the noframes tags. Browser that do support frames will simply ignore these tags and anything between them.


    About
    Show FastHTML version information.

    Manual
    Launches your favourite browser (that is: the browser you have associated with .htm files) with the FastHTML manual. If you don't have a browser associated with HTML files this option will not work. If your associated browser does not support frames you can resort to viewing this file (mantext.htm) instead but you will not be able to use the navigation system.