--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
Developing a Sample Web Page
by Donald W. Hyatt
How simple can it get?
Although there are programs that will convert text to HTML for you, it is
fairly easy to make a web page without that help. It is much easier to use
a simple editor like wordpad or notepad in a Microsoft environment, or vi
or emacs in a UNIX environment rather than a word processor. Word
processors insert their own formatting characters and commands in the text
that can confuse the web browser.
For step-by-step instructions for making a very simple web-page for our
computer systems in the CS Lab, take a look at this brief Web Page Tutorial.
To make a simple web page, just type in the text as well as the HTML tags
needed for formatting. Save the file with the a name that ends in either
".htm" or ".html", and you have created a web page. On the systems at
Jefferson, you need to put these files in a directory called "web-docs" so
that our web server can see the file. If you are a teacher and have a LAN
Account with space on the P-Drive, the file can be placed there also. After
that, as long as our web server is working, anyone who has access to the
Internet from any place in te world can read your files. With so many
documents out there, though, the probablility of someone finding your stuff
is rather remote unless you tell people about your files.
Lets look at an example: first.html
<HTML>
<BODY>
<H1> Computers are Great </H1>
Welcome to the Internet.
Learn HTML and make a Web Page!
</BODY>
</HTML>
See the results
Notice that even though the two sentences were on different lines, the web
browser put all the text together as one big blob. That may seem irritating
at first, but it can be an advantage in many ways. First, it won't make any
difference how unorganized the text is, the browser will try to make it fit
the size of the window. If someone makes the window a different size, the
text will adjust. In fact, in order to make a paragraph, one must actually
insert a paragraph marker as shown in first example of the next section.
Adding new features
Try these simple modifications. As you look at the examples shown below,
also click on "View" followed by " Page Source" on the Netscape browser to
see the actual HTML code that made the web page.
To make the two sentences appear on separate lines, put a <BR>, or a
"break:, or else a <P>, or "paragraph marker", after the word "Internet."
The text should now appear on two lines.
See the results
To add a graphic, just insert an "image tag", or "<IMG>, including the name
of some available picture. In this example, we added the line:
<IMG SRC = "spheres1.jpg" > on a new line below the title.
See the results
To center the Title and the Graphic, we have to use the "center tag". This
tag has a counterpart, so we know when to stop centering text or graphics.
In this example, type the tag <CENTER> on a line between <BODY> and <H1>,
and also add the tag </CENTER> on the line following the <IMG SRC = "...">
tag.
See the results
To link the words "Learn HTML" to a web page on this computer about HTML,
type < A HREF = "basic.html" > prior to the word "Learn" and put </A> after
the word "HTML".
See the results
To make the two sentences part of an ordered list, type <OL> on a line
before the list, and </OL> after the list. Put <LI> at the start of each
sentence.
See the results
To change the background to DEEP BLUE and the text to WHITE, change the
first <BODY> tag to:
< BODY BGCOLOR = "#000044" TEXT = "#FFFFFF" >
See the results
Any web pages that you make can be viewed on your computer using a browser
like Netscape. To make those files available to other people on the
Internet, you must place them on a "server" that is running some other
special programs and its location, or "domain name", is know to others on
the Internet. Because web servers run other complex programs and should
maintain a high speed connection to the Internet 24 hours a day, most
people will use commercial providers to host their web pages.
I hope this simple introduction will get you started making some web pages.
For additional information, there are excellent resources on the Internet,
and you can also buy a good reference book. One of my favorite resource
texts is Web Design in a Nutshell published O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. You
can also learn a lot by looking at the "source" of other people's web
pages. When you see a page you admire, click on the "View" option, and then
Click on "Source". The browser will open a new window and will show you the
HTML code that created that page.
There are also new features being added to the web design all the time.
Unless you are under 17, however, it is almost impossible to keep up. Just
do what you can do, and have fun creating some quality content for the web.
You may decide to get your own domain, and maybe even start a business!
Good Luck!
--
