This is Beagle-Ears
-> Lars
-> Professional
-> WWW-HTML
WWW - The World-Wide Web
The Internet is at least doubling every year by every measure you can describe:
The number of people connected, the number of machines linked together,
the amount of data moved per day, etc.
For the vast majority of Internet users today, the Internet consists of
electronic mail, and WWW. Yet, the WWW is a newcomer.
Invented only in 1992, it took a couple of years, before it edged out
FTP (file transfer protocol), USEnet News, and TELNET (remote login)
as a major network application.
WWW began as a way to link the helpfiles from a wide variety of different
computer systems at CERN, but even though
technologists admired the simple, yet general linking mechanism,
it did not take off until NCSA
released MOSAIC,
the first browser that could display pictures on the page ... and gave it away for free.
If you are able to read this on-line, you obviously know how to use the
WWW (or you are in the company of someone who does, and can teach you).
But just in case you are reading this on paper that someone else printed out,
here is the most basic explanation.
- First you need a computer. You will not be happy with less than
a 14-inch color display with at least 480 x 400 bits of resolution,
16 MB of memory and either an ethernet connection or a modem.
- Second, you need a network connection, either a connection to a
local area network at work (or school) that is permanently
connected, or a dial-up account from an internet service provider,
along with a modem and a telephone line to plug it into.
- Third, you need a browser program, such as Internet Explorer
(from Microsoft) or Netscape Navigator/Communicator.
- Get your computer connected to the internet.
- Start the browser program. You should now see a "start page" which
has stuff to look at and read, as well as some words that are
shown in blue and underlined. When you click on the underlined
blue words, you are taken to new places.
Building a website is almost as simple as writing a document with a
word processing program: You write a few pages of text with the
right "code words" inserted in the right places, and store them in
the right place on your internet service provider's machine.
If you get your web access at work, you need to find out what the
local rules are about web publishing. You will probably find that
they encourage you to publish things that are helpful to your co-workers,
adamantly do not want you to publish anything to the outside world.
Talk to your boss and your computer help people to find out what the
rules are.
Most internet service providers, including Earthlink, AOL and CompuServe
allow you to publish a moderate amount of information. They will tell
you where to put it and how to get it there. On most locally owned
internet services, the files will go in a folder called "public_html",
and you will use the FTP program to put them there. But first, you
need to write the files, and you can do this in a folder on your own
machine first, them move them up, when they look good to you.
Your first Web page
On your hard disk, make a folder called "myweb". Using a simple text editor
(MacIntosh Simple Text or Windows NotePad) create in that folder a file
named "index.htm" containing exactly the following:
<TITLE>My First Page<TITLE>
<BODY BGCOLOR=WHITE>
<H1>Start Page</H1>
Go to <A HREF=http://www.netfunny.com>some jokes</A>.
<HR>
My first page !!
</BODY>
Now start the browser program, pull down the file menu and select "Open page"
then select the file you just created.
You are now ready to admire what you just did, and to start reading
the following articles:
Documentation for html and WWW
-
Professional Web Design &er; Tutorials
- A set of four tutorials: Basic, Tables, Forms and Frames.
Also has how-to articles on more advanced things like
GateKeeper,
a JavaScript password protection for web pages.
- htmldoc
- Reference for HTML source language
A fairly simple introduction to HTML.
-
NCSA Primer
- Easy Introduction from Mosaic's home
- W3C Specs
- The reference manuals at the WWW Consortium's website
Revision history:
$Log: index.htm,v $
Revision 1.8 2001/10/26 13:28:29 lars
Replaced CMC -> Beagle-Ears
Revision 1.7 2001/01/15 07:06:31 lars
*** empty log message ***
Revision 1.6 2000/08/25 19:26:58 lars
Add reference to article about cookies.
Remove bad link on "spectacular websites" page.
Revision 1.5 2000/02/28 05:43:46 lars
*** empty log message ***
Revision 1.4 1999/11/08 16:48:56 lars
Added links to index.htm files.
Revision 1.3 1999/09/23 06:58:20 lars
Moved links from bookmark file to links page adn subject areas.
Revision 1.2 1999/06/26 22:17:46 lars
Site re-organization.
Updated 98-09-20 by lars@silcom.COM