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  SeaMonkey    Webpages Made Easy with SeaMonkey Composer

People's skills and enjoyment from working with webpages vary, but even those who dislike the work must agree that webpages are becoming an increasingly important tool of communication between instructors and their students, and also between colleagues. TAs are strongly encouraged to use their graduate student years to develop the basic skills necessary for the construction and maintainance of personal and course webpages. New TAs are instructed in basic html, set up rudimentary personal and course webpages, and are given information on the directory structure of our department computer system in the Math 5000 section (the Tuesday section) of computer information, taught by Kevin Marinelli.  If you are willing and able to learn html or other web design software like DreamWeaver or Front Page, and set up sophisticated webpages, you need not read any further. This page is for those who have not mastered html or a web design software, and would like to use a webpage editor that is easy to use and intuitive, and which produces basic clean, pleasant, and useful webpages. This webpage editor is SeaMonkey Composer. It is a free, wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) editor, that works with both Mac and PC platforms. For an example of webpages constructed and maintained with SeaMonkey Composer, see the TAProgram pages.

Getting SeaMonkey:
  • Downloading SeaMonkey to Your Home Computer: Download SeaMonkey to your home computer, PC or Mac, from this site: http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
  • SeaMonkey on Your Office Computer: SeaMonkey is already installed on our department server. If  you do not see the SeaMonkey icon (the icon in the title of this page) on the quick-launch Application Dock of your office Mac, you can drag it there by the following procedure: Like most native Apple applications, SeaMonkey resides in the Applications folder on  the Macintosh HD hard drive. Click on the Finder, the smiley face blue icon on the left of  the Application Dock, a window will display the Finder Window. This window allows you to navigate the file system on a Mac. Clicking on Applications, on the left side bar of the Finder Window  will display the available Applications. Dragging SeaMonkey from the Applications folder to the Application  Dock will make it available to be launched from the dock.

Working with SeaMonkey Composer:
  • Directory Structure: The folder structure (also called directory structure) housing your webpages is as follows: The largest folder is called by your family name, for example, glaz. Every TA has such a folder in their name on the department server. Inside this folder you have the folder containing all your webpages, it is called Sites (or public_html). Your personal webpage is a file in the Sites folder, and it is called index.html. The Sites folder also contains a folder for each course you wish to have a webpage for. An example of a course folder's name is: math1011f08. To name a course folder substitute your course number for 1011, f (fall) or s (spring) for the semester, 08 for the actual year. Inside the math1011f08 folder sits the course homepage file, which is called index.html. You get the idea, each folder contains an index.html file. This is the file that becomes visible on the department website as a webpage under the web address http://www.math.uconn.edu/~glaz (for the personal page of glaz); and http://www.math.uconn.edu/math1011f08 (for the course page of math1011f08). If you work on your home computer you must reproduce this directory structure in order to be able to easily transfer files back and forth between your home computer and the department server. You can do this by creating new folders and naming them accordingly.
  • Starting a Webpage: To construct a webpage you can use SeaMonkey Composer to start a new webpage from scratch. But it is easier to choose an existing webpage you like, and "steal it" by saving it to your computer under any name you wish and in the appropriate directory. You can then edit it with SeaMonkey Composer and adapt it to your own needs. Don't forget to ask permission to "steal a webpage" from the webpage owner. When you "steal" a webpage by saving it to your computer, you save  the webpage itself, but not all the linked pages and images associated with this page. If you wish to use any of the images or linked pages you must save them to your computer separately. You will get a chance to link them back to the webpage when you edit the page with SeaMonkey Composer. 
  • SeaMonkey Composer Tutorials: SeaMonkey Composer is an easy to use and intuitive webpage editor, still one needs to learn a few basic things to get started.  There are a number of good SeaMonkey Composer tutorials on the web, and one day we may have our own. Meanwhile, three favorites are linked below. Pick the one you like best.
Transferring Webpages to the Department Server:
  • For PC users: If you set up your webpages on your home PC you are now ready to sftp (safe file transferring ) to our department server. This will make your webpages visible from the department website. You can do this with a visual and intuitive free sftp software called Winscp.
  • With Winscp you will be able to transfer files to and from the department server, and also perform remote operations like deleting, creating, and renaming folders. Remember that you can only transfer from same name folder to same name folder (that is why you need to have the same directory structure for your webpages both on your computer and on the department server). To connect to the department server you need to input the following information on the first screen of Winscp:
    • Host-name: This is the computer name you are connecting to, and you may use as NAME the name of any of the computers in the graduate lab or the computer in your office. This information is restricted to department members, and may be accessed, with id and password, from the IT Resources page, by clicking Remote Login Access. The host name is then: NAME.math.uconn.edu.
    • Your e-mail name.
    • Your e-mail password.
  • For Mac users: If you set up your webpages on your home Mac you can transfer your files to the department server by using a free and safe file transfer software called Fugu. Fugu operates for a Mac in a similar way that Winscp operates for a PC. In particular, you will need the information mentioned above (host name, e-mail name, and password) to input on the first screen of Fugu.
  • Alternatively you may mount your files directly from the department server by a procedure called network file sharing. The following link, restricted to department members, provides guidelines for network file sharing: https://www.math.uconn.edu/Restricted/Wiki/pmwiki.php?n=ITResources.  For additional help please contact Kevin Marinelli.

Good Luck constructing fabulous webpages!