To start the editor in Netscape Communicator open a "New" from the "File" menu, then click on "Blank Page". You should have a blank window similar to your browser window but with a few more buttons across the top. (see example below)
You can either start typing in this blank page, or copy and paste text from another document, like MSWord, or even another web page.
Practice formatting your page by playing with the buttons to see what they do. The bold A will make your text bold, and the italic A, will make your text italic. The icon of the letter A being erased lets you undo all the formatting you have done to your text. So if you are typing along and decide to make some text Red but everything you type after that is still red, you highlight the text and hit this button and it goes back to normal. The chain icon adds links to other web sites or files in your directory. If you go to the menu "Format" and select "Color" you change the text color. But be careful to choose colors that have enough contrast to your background color. If you use Yellow on a light background it will be unreadable.
Most of the buttons are pretty easy to figure out.
If you click on the menu above that says "Normal" you will see many options. Titles should use the "Heading" feature, with Heading 1 being the largest, Heading 2 a bit smaller, etc. Why use this feature? Well some search engines will go through your site and pick up the information within the headings tags. The example below will give you some idea of what they will do but go ahead and try them yourself to see what results you get.
Example:
Heading 1
Heading 2
Heading 3
"Formatted" text is text you want to stay pre formatted so they line up a certain way, or for scientific reasons, etc. Formatted text usually uses a fixed font like Courier.
Now you are ready to save your file!
Many servers can now handle long file names, but UNIX servers cannot. If you do not know if your server can handle long file names it will make your life simpler to stay with 8 characters plus .htm extension. Note: some servers are also case sensitive so it is better to stay with all lower case.