The Log
(an introduction to Web publishing and HTML)

When friends started asking for my help with their homepages, I decided to keep sort of an 'online log' on the development of my pages. I thought it might be useful to other Newbie Web authors.
This will not be a manual on HTML (but there will be links to useful sites and tools). It will inform you of some considerations I made and obstacles I ran into while publishing these pages.

The very first and most important thing for me was that I wanted my pages to be free of the factors that I myself find annoying about Web pages, when surfing the Web.

Some examples:

1. Way too heavy graphics. Making the user wait and wait, only to find that in the end, the page is not what he or she is looking for anyway.

   If you have to use heavy graphics (maybe because you're a graphic artist) please make sure the user is warned in advance. That way the user can make up his own mind about whether or not to give it a shot. An acceptable compromise may be to put your graphics below the text. This way, there is something to look at right away while the graphics are slowly taking shape. Please note though that it depends on the browser whether this will actually work.

2. So-called 'hip' background images making the text illegible.

   No matter how interesting your story is, people will stop and turn back immediately when they have to read purple letters on a black, red and blue background.
   Always keep in mind that it is a whole lot easier to read what you've written yourself than it is to read what somebody else wrote.

3. Offering files for download, without providing information on the file type and the size of it.

   Take note of the fact that there are millions of users out there who probably don't all have the same computer set-up as you do. Though you may not be able to provide your files in lots of different formats, you certainly can let the user know what format you are offering and point out sites where she might be able to find the necessary helper applications.

   As far as file size is concerned: Remember, this isn't called the World Wide Web for nothing. People use it all around the globe. It is not unlikely that someone at the other end of the planet is interested in what you have to offer. What is likely though, is that they have to deal with slow modem connections. Let the user be the one to decide whether or not he has the time (and money) for slow downloads!

4. If you use icons or clickable imagemaps, make sure they are understandable.

   Test them out on your friends to see how much time it takes them to understand what your images mean. You may be in for a surprise! (After spending lots of time formatting my texts, I had a friend try to navigate through them. To my complete surprise and horror, he started clicking on words the browser showed in bold type! I thought I had made the text clearer by adding emphasis tags, yet the result was quite the opposite.)

Even if your only goal as a HTML author is to simply have fun, you should be aware of the fact that the larger the download, the less bandwidth is left for others.

Bear in mind that the great thing about HTML, namely the crossplatform functionality, is its drawback at the same time.
Basically a HTML document can be viewed with any browser on any platform. That's because HTML is all about structure, or "logical markup", as opposed to the "physical markup" ("lay-out") you're probably used to working with in your text editor or desktop publishing application.

This means HTML offers the unique possibility to create a hierarchically structured document, or set of documents. It is this revolutionary concept which has enabled the existence of the World Wide Web.

Example: when you want to emphasize a word, in HTML you won't need to (and shouldn't) write it in bold typeface, but instead use the approprite HTML element <EM> telling the browser to emphasize the word (or string of words). Exactly how that emphasis is conveyed to a visitor will then be up to the browser. It might be shown in bold typeface, but it could also be shown in italics or underlined or even upside down for that matter.
The way in which the content of a HTML document is conveyed is therefore completely decided upon by a combination of

1. the browser vendor
2. the possibilities of the operating system
3. the user's personal preferences.

This is why I can safely say the browser you're using at this moment shows an emphasized word like this.

The fact that the browser is the one deciding on the lay-out is what confuses many aspiring HTML authors. For if you know only 1 browser, it's easy to make the mistake to think that that particular browser's way of laying-out is the 'normal' way.
Believe me: It is not. (Or, better yet, don't believe me and see for yourself ;-))

Also, it is the user who, by setting up preferences in his or her computer and browser, decides things like:

• what fonts will be used,
• how links and visited links will be displayed,
• the default text and background colours,
• whether or not to view images right away or only after download is completed (or possibly not to show images at all, thus speeding things up),
  
• what screen resolution is used,
• How large the browser window will be, etc.

You should be especially careful with the use of colours. Either specify all colours (text, background, links, visited links and attending links) or none.
If you specify only some, someone may end up seeing everything but your text, or simply nothing at all!
This is because the colours that you, the author, don't specify, will be decided upon by the browser's preferences. So if, for instance, you were to set a light green background colour and leave the other colours up to the browser, the user that has his preferences set to display links in a light green colour will not see your links at all.

Browsers

Note that not everybody is using the same browser. Although Netscape's Navigator/Communicator seems to be the most commonly used, there are a lot of other programs in use. (And even then, there are a lot of different versions of Netscape's browsers in use, all acting differently.) This means that every browser will display your document differently.

Do take the time to try out several browsers. Not to learn how to get your page displayed the same in every situation, as that is impossible. But to actually see how things will look differently, yet equally correct.
If you really wish to take it serious: Try and get different versions of each program. Even that will show some (sometimes dramatically) different results.
An example: Today (Jan 13, 1997) the newest Netscape version for Windows is 4.0, for the Mac it's 3.0.1. Yet, many still use the 2.0 version because it uses less RAM.

Which ones you can use depends on what operating system you have. Therefore it may take you a little time to find a few that work for you. You will find it time well spent though. I promise.
Here's a short list of the most popular browsers:

• Netscape's Navigator/Communicator.
• Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
• NCSA's Mosaic. Both the afore mentioned are based on this one.
• MacWeb (MacOS only). Not too fancy but very clean and fast.
• Lynx. A very fast and highly configurable text based browser, originally available for UNIX only, which is why still many universities use it.
  Also typically usefull for shell-accounts.
  MacLynx. There now is a Lynx version for Mac OS!
• iCab is a brand new Mac-only browser. Although it's still in (public) beta it is swiftly conquering the Mac community thanks to its low RAM and HD footprint and it being highly configurable. It's also the first browser (that I know of) that actually makes use of Doctype Declarations: it has a build-in HTML checker!
• Opera. Currently only available for DOS based environments, but they seem to be seriously working on versions for other operating systems.
• Apple's 'CyberDog' (MacOS only), which is really a suite of integrated internet applications (WWW, E-mail, FTP, Usenet etc.).

Monitors

Don't forget, not everybody is using the same monitor size/resolution. It's considered good practice to now and then adjust the size of your browser window and adjust your screen's resolution (640x480 is still considered to be "commonly used"), to see what's left of your gorgeous lay-out when viewed with a different monitor size/resolution. Of course the same goes for the amount of colours you use: Your monitor may display millions of colours but if you switch back to the still more commonly used 256 colours, see what's left. (Some people still use 16 colour or even gray-scale monitors!)
Even if a monitor displays 256 (or more) colours, it still depends on the browser's, as well as on the platform's capabilities, what will actually be displayed.
If you wish to know why this is and how you can take these things into account when publishing your HTML own pages, read Jill Morton's excellent paper on colours and gamma and Joe Gillespie's Web Page Design.

Here are some pointers to sites I found useful in the search for info on HTML and Web publishing:

• The place "where it all begins", as some say, is the W3C. This is the institute that is responsible for the HTML specifications. You may find it a trifle "dry", but it's definitely the number 1 authority.
• Sure. You can do a search at "Yahoo" or "Lycos" for something like "HTML for beginners" or so. But how will you know if the stuff you find is actually reliable information?
  A group of Internet gurus set up the WDG, in order to help you out. Here you can easily find documentation on all kinds of aspects you should be concerned about if you're planning to create your own homepage. The greatest thing is they have sorted out the good from the bad documentation.
• NCSA's Beginner's guide to HTML.
• You can write HTML in a regular text editor, like SimpleText. However, if you're new to this, HTML editors may help to point out some of the possibilities. Always check your documents 'manually' though. Many claim to be WYSIWYG editors, but none of them are! The nature of HTML simply makes that impossible. Therefore, you should make sure to get an editor that offers a 'text mode', allowing you to edit the actual HTML
• A lot of information can also be found in the newsgroup comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html. Please take your time reading the FAQ and some of the discussions, before posting questions. You'll find a good many have already been answered there. Especially note the postings by Warren Steel, Galactus, Tina Marie Holmboe, Alan J. Flavell, Diane Wilson, Liam Quinn and Lester Garrett. These people know what they're talking about.
• After you've created your site, I suggest you have it validated. You can use for instance the W3C's on-line validator service.

As with everything else, you can learn a lot from taking a closer look at what others have made. Did you know that, when you're surfing the Web, you can view the actual HTML document? In Netscape, go to the 'view' menu and select 'source'. If you use another browser, look for something similar.
You should realise though that you really should check the validity of that code before you start using it yourself.

One more thing: Please make sure you know what you're doing before you start using fancy stuff like frames, java script, animated gifs etc. If you don't know the implications, chances are you'll probably be doing more harm than good.

Feel free to mail me any questions.