Netscape's Composer and Microsoft's Front Page Express offer easy "what you see is what you get" style editing of HTML pages.
Normal text can be typed directly from the keyboard. Without any adjustment by the user, the default settings of the composers will be "Normal" and "Variable width". Most text, except Greek letters, should be written in this style.
Both Composer and Front Page Express provide toolbar and menu access to many functions and fonts. They make it easy to create subscripts, superscripts, and italics, or to insert images and tables.
To type accented characters you might need to resort to your operating system's character map. If you use Microsoft Windows, for example, hit the "Start" button and select "Programs - Accessories -- Character Map". In Windows, if the character map is set to Times New Roman, you will find the accented characters in the last two rows of the map.
If you resort to a character map, please limit your selection of fonts. In Windows, all text except Greek letters should be pulled from the Times New Roman map. If you are working on a Mac or Unix machine, use the Times Roman font for everything except Greek letters.
To type Greek letters, do not use the character map. Instead change the font setting inside the HTML editor from "Variable" to "Symbol". You will then find that entering letters from the keyboard yields Greek letters directly. For example, when you hit the letter "a" while in Symbol font, you will see a Greek letter a appear. The correspondence between keyboard letters in the normal variable width font and in Symbol font is shown below:
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a = a b = b c = c d = d e = e f = f g = g h = h i = i j = j k = k a = l m = m n = n o = o p = p q = q r = r s = s t = t u = u v = v w = w x = x y = y z = z |
A = A B = B C = C D = D E = E F = F G = G H = H I = I J = J K = K L = L M = N N = M O = O P = P Q = Q R = R S = S T = T U = U V = V W = W X = X Y = Y Z = Z |