Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 22: Creating Internet Documents with StarOffice

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Using the StarOffice Browser


With the Internet access options set, you can use StarOffice as a Web browser as easily as you use it to create documents.

Opening a Web Document

Viewing a document from the Web in StarOffice is as easy as entering the URL. Make sure that the Function toolbar is visible, and then enter the URL that you want to view in the URL field (see Figure 22.7) and press Enter.

Figure 22.7
Enter the URL for the Web page that you want to view in the URL field on the Function toolbar.

Tip - In the drop-down list below the URL field, you can see a list of other URLs for the documents that you've been working on. The URLs in this list usually start with file:/// to indicate that they are locally-stored documents. This list is similar to the history list in a Web browser, or to the list of recently opened files on the bottom of the File menu.


When you press Enter after typing something in the URL field, the Web page or file is retrieved and displayed in the working window as if you had used the Open item on the File menu. (See Figure 22.8.)

Caution - If your network connection appears to be working in Linux, but not in StarOffice, check that the Online button on the function toolbar (a small globe) is toggled to On.


Figure 22.8
A Web page address entered in the URL field causes that page to be retrieved and displayed in StarOffice.

After you have retrieved a Web document, you can treat it as you do in a regular Web browser--click on links to view other pages, print it, and so on. However, you can also treat the Web document as you do any other StarOffice document--edit it, save it, or copy and paste parts of the document into other StarOffice documents.

The formats of the Web and StarOffice are not the same, so some formatting features (such as footnotes) don't transfer exactly between the two; but StarOffice is intended to be used with the Web, making the Web just like an extension of your local workspace.

Note - If you have sufficient permissions and a Web server that supports it, you can also upload, or PUT, documents to a Web server from within StarOffice; check the StarOffice online help for more information.


One of the great advantages of the Web is its capability to easily hyperlink to other documents. StarOffice builds on that feature in several ways, as the next section describes.

Inserting Automatic Links in StarWriter Documents

As you work with documents in StarOffice that you've loaded from the Web, you probably click on a lot of links. StarOffice enables you to add links to any StarOffice document. This can be done in two ways: automatic or manual links. When either type of link is added to a StarOffice document, anyone who reads that document (within StarOffice) can click on the link and jump to that page.

To see an automatic link created, open a StarWriter word processing document and enter an URL or an email address as text. For example, in the middle of a document, type the following:


http://www.linuxjournal.com

Notice that StarOffice automatically creates a link to the URL that you entered. The link is usually blue and underlined. (See Figure 22.9.) Immediately after you enter the sample URL, click on it with your mouse. The document--in this case, the Web home page for the Linux Journal magazine--appears in StarOffice.

Figure 22.9
An URL entered in a StarOffice document is immediately converted to a live Web link.

Email addresses function in the same way. Enter an email address such as the following:


nwells@xmission.com

StarOffice immediately makes it into a mailto: link; therefore, clicking on the words that you just entered causes StarOffice to initiate an email message to this email address, as shown in Figure 22.10. (See Hour 23 for details on configuring and sending email within StarOffice.)

Figure 22.10
Email addresses also create automatic links; when you click on the links, they initiate email to the named person.

Inserting Manual Links in StarWriter Documents

Sometimes, of course, you don't want to enter the URL to a piece of information--you just want to click on a reference that links to another Web page.

Any piece of text in a StarOffice document can be linked to an URL, just as you might mark a piece of text as bold or italic. This can be done in a StarWriter word processing document, not just in a document written in HTML or intended for direct viewing on the Web.

To manually mark a word or phrase with an URL link to a Web page, follow these steps:

1. Select the text that you want to link to a Web page.

2. Choose Character... from the Format menu. The Character dialog box appears.

3. Select the Hyperlink tab (see Figure 22.11).

4. In the URL field, enter the URL to which you want to link the selected text. (The other fields aren't used in this example.)

5. Choose OK to close the dialog box. The selected text is now hyperlinked to the URL you entered.

6. To see the hyperlink, move the mouse pointer over the underlined words and leave it there for a second. A pop-up box with the linked URL appears (see Figure 22.12).

Figure 22.11
Hyperlinks can be added to any block of text by specifying a link address in the Character dialog box.

Figure 22.12
Hyperlinks within text are shown in pop-up boxes whenever you move over a hyperlinked phrase.

Tip - You can also enter a file:/// link to hyperlink the selected word or phrase to one of your own documents, sort of like a mini-Web site without the server.

Inserting Links in Spreadsheets and Presentations

In the preceding example, you created a hyperlink with a phrase in a word processing document. You can also enter links in spreadsheets and presentations, but not with as much flexibility.

When you type an URL within any spreadsheet cell or presentation slide, the URL is immediately converted to a hyperlink that you can click on to go to that page. (See Figure 22.13.)

Figure 22.13
You can enter an URL in a spreadsheet cell to create an automatic hyperlink.

However, you can't select a word in a cell or on a slide and attach a hyperlink to it. The Format menu for a spreadsheet or presentation doesn't include the hyperlink option.

Saving URLs in the Explorer

The Explorer window and the Bookmarks folder were described at the beginning of this book; now you're ready to use them.

Anytime you view a file or a document on the Internet, you can save the location of that document in the Bookmarks folder. To save the location of any document, follow these steps:

1. Open the Explorer window by selecting Explorer from the View menu. Click the Show arrow in the corner of the Explorer window if the Explorer is selected but hidden.

2. Click on the Bookmark icon, drag it to the bookmarks folder, and release the mouse button. (The link icon is shown in Figure 22.14.)

You can make use of the links in the Bookmark folder in a couple of ways.

To view the contents of the Bookmark folder, click on the Start menu below the document window. The Bookmarks submenu contains all your bookmarks. You can also open the Beamer window (select it from the View menu) and click on the Bookmarks folder in the Explorer window to view the bookmarks in the Beamer.

Figure 22.14
The Bookmark icon represents the URL of the current document. Drag it to the Bookmarks folder to save a link to the current document.

Tip - An HTML document in the Bookmark folder is listed by its HTML title, which appears in the title bar of any browser when you view the file. Local files are listed by their filenames.


To open a bookmark, select it from the Bookmarks submenu of the Start menu. If you're viewing bookmarks in the Beamer window, you can either

The advantage of using bookmarks is that they make a document easy to access, but take up almost no space (only a few bytes each).

Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 22: Creating Internet Documents with StarOffice

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