An InfiniSource
Information and Support Site
All links and information presented on this page are provided as a resource for HTML and Graphic Design |
This page 
October 14, 2004
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Hypertext Markup Language or HTML is the language of the World Wide Web. Although it may sometimes seem like magic, it is not difficult to learn. Using the View/Document Source menu option of most web browsers like Netscape, allows you to view the HTML source behind any web page. You can copy and paste any piece you like into a new document and customize it for your own purposes. There are a number of excellent on-line guides to HTML... from the most basic to the in-depth. A number of good choices are listed in the links section below.
HTML Editors are the software of choice for writing HTML although you can write it with any word processor. HTML editors, however, have many time saving basic authoring tools built in with the click of a mouse. A number of popular ones are listed below.
One of the first considerations for designing a web page is the use of color. Some people just use white backgrounds and the default text colors, but that is pretty dull. Netscape permits the use of 216 different colors without dithering. For people using a 256 color display, they can't see many more colors anyway. These colors are written in HTML code as "hexdecimal" values... Two characters for each of the red, green and blue colors (RGB)... for example 00000 is zero red, zero green and zero blue... or black. A nice true red is FF0000. You can get a thorough explanation of all this from Victor Engel's Web site. Linda Weinman offers a good chart of all the 216 non-dithering colors organized by hue or value. Any art program like Microsoft Paint or Paint Shop Pro will give you the RGB values for any color you select. We've also got a handy little RGB/HEX CONVERTER popup window for converting RGB colors into hexadecimal values which will show your color choice as the page background color just as your Netscape or MSIE browser will show it. If your browser can't handle JavaScript, you can use the more basic cgi form below which will give you the value but won't show you the color.
Graphics are another of the primary ingredients that make the World Wide Web so popular. Although it can add considerable time to download a page with substantial graphics, particularly with a slow modem, these colorful additions can add a lot of spice to a web page, making it memorable and creating a lasting impression. There are literally thousands of graphics banks on the Internet, many of them offering the graphics free to anyone who wishes to use them. See a small partial list of graphics bank sites below. If you are new to web graphics, Graphics Wiz provides help in understanding the basics of graphics and multimedia in a very straightforward manner.
You can download virtually any graphic image on the Internet simply by right-clicking with your mouse on the image and saving the image to disk. Background images are in wide use on the web today. You can save to disk any background image you see by right-clicking on the background and selecting "Save Background as". This page makes use of an innovative JavaScript Random Background Selector. Just reload the page to select at random one of 13 other backgrounds! Animated gif files have also become very popular and most current web browsers accommodate animation today. They are both eye-catching and entertaining and can add a lot of appeal to a Web site when used properly. Gif Construction Kit from Alchemy Mindworks is one of the more popular animation construction applications available. Irfanview is an excellent and inexpensive shareware animated gif viewer and can be downloaded here. Or get the newest ACDSee image viewer.
An important thing to remember when creating images for web use is that jpg or jpeg format is generally used for photographs and can support up to 16 million colors. The gif format is generally considered best for line art and graphics and only supports 256 colors. However, both formats are sometimes used interchangeably. A gif can be interlaced to allow the whole image size to load immediately and then gradually fill in the pixels and become clear. A jpeg can be compressed allowing a much smaller file to be used which will allow the image to download more quickly across the phone lines. Some of the newer browsers also support progressive jpegs which load gradually similar to the way an interlaced gif loads. For more on jpeg's see the JPEG FAQ.
DOMAIN NAMES FOR YOUR WEB SITE
If you are thinking about registering a domain name for your site, you can check to see if it's available using this handy search form courtesy of InterNIC:
Web Based Whois Search on InterNIC
Note: There are seven new Top level domain names, or TLDs, that have been "in the works" for a couple years now. In addition to the traditional .com, .net, .org, the new TLDs are reported to be: .web, .info, .nom, .shop, .firm, .arts and .rec. For the latest information on all this, visit the Generic Top Level Domain Memorandum of Understanding.
The central registrar site, Network Solutions, has been redesigned to simplify the domain name registration process. This site offers the following services:
- allow domain name look-up and INSTANT registration
- instant alternative domain name suggestions when first choice is not available
- key word driven domain name suggestions
- a low-cost domain name hosting option that eliminates the expense of contracting a web hosting service just to register a domain name
- http://www.domaindirect.com
- http://alldomains.com/
- http://www.register.com/
- http://joker.com/
- http://www.budgetnic.com/
HOSTING YOUR WEB SITE
One of the more difficult tasks you will face in building a Web site is to find an appropriate Web hosting solution. If it's just your personal homepage, you can host it anywhere. Lots of ISP's (Internet Service Provider) will give you a certain amount of disk space on their server to host your site included as part of your monthly service fee. There are also various "community" sites like Yahoo!, GeoCities, Angelfire, Tripod and others, where you can host your site for free.
DEVELOPING YOUR WEB SITE
Below are collections of resources to help you get started building a new site or adding depth and variety to an existing one. With any one of the HTML guides mentioned below, an HTML editor from the next list, and the entire Internet as a source of authoring tricks (remember use View/Document Source) and outrageous graphics, you can start building your own web page in no time. If you're not up to creating your own Web site just yet, you can search "web design" using your favorite search engine and find hundreds of companies out there who will do the job for you.
HTML Guides
HTML Writers Guild - a great place to start to learn more about HTML.
RFC1866 - The HTML 2.0 specification as written by Tim Berners-Lee and Daniel Connelly - complete text version [143KB].
W3C HTML Specification - The World Wide Web Consortium, led by Tim Berners-Lee, sets the standard for the web today with this hypertext crosslinked reference to HTML and XHTML.
A Compendium of HTML Elements - one of our favorite sources of markup code.
Barebones Guide to HTML - a good beginner's guide to HTML.
NCSA--A Beginner's Guide to HTML - an excellent primer on HTML.
Composing Good HTML - tips for creating well crafted HTML pages.
Ian Graham Tutorial - Web Documentation - a in-depth online guide to HTML programming.
WebDesign Group's HTML 3.2 and 4.0 Reference - a good on-line guide to the new tags and elements for the latest HTML standard.
WebDesign Group's HTML 3.2 and 4.0 References - excellent downloadable guides in Windows Help Format.
An Interactive Tutorial For Beginners - a good place to start
HTML help For Beginners - a good beginning tutorial
The Web Design Resource - a lot of good resources for Web Designers
Lycos Webmonkey - lots of advanced tips & references for web designers
WEB Developer.com - everything for web developers
Web Page Notes - tips on everything from HTML to use of color, scanners, midi guestbooks, etc.
HTML Guide - tips from a Russian HTML author
Miscellaneous HTML and Web Design Reference Sources
ISO Latin 1 Character Entities - a great table with all the HTML codes for every symbol that can be used... in numerical form things like extra spaces, ö, ñ, è, ¼, ®, ©, etc.
A Webmaster's Guide to Search Engines and Directories - a very thorough study of search engines and how they index web pages.
Search Engine Tutorial - Northern Web's great file on HTML tricks to list your page with the web search engines.
HTML Help Site - Web Design Group's WWW Help site for answering HTML authoring questions.
Experts Exchange - an innovative on-line service offering HTML advice on a fee-for-service basis with a free trial.
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html - CIWAH is a great USENET newsgroup with a lot of traffic where you can learn all the latest tricks in HTML, ask questions and share your own discoveries.
Web Design Articles - online repository of web design and website promotion articles.
WebDesign-L - another excellent place to learn about HTML, share new ideas and ask for help are mailing lists.
More Web Design Resources
HTML Editing Tools
HomeSite - an excellent editor; the new version 4 is our personal choice for power editing, now fully integrated with CSE 3310 HTML Validator.
HTML-Kit - an excellent and powerful freeware HTML editor from our friend Kim Jensen in Denmark.
Arachnophilia - another terrific "careware" HTML editor absolutely LOADED with features.
HTML Assistant Pro - another good freeware HTML editor.
Dreamweaver 3 - Macromedia's solution for professional Web site design and production.
Microsoft Front Page - an excellent wysiwyg HTML authoring program - easy to use.
Hot Dog - a powerful shareware HTML editor which can be downloaded for a 30 day evaluation period.
Hot Metal - another good, freely distributed HTML editor.
BBEdit HTML Tools - another popular HTML editor.
HTML Editor - a good tool for Macintosh users.
Web Weaver - another full featured HTML authoring program.
Yahoo's list of editors - if you don't see it on the list above, try this list.
HTML Validation and Link Verification
BiggByte - a link test application from Infolink for Windows - freeware versions available!!!
HomeSite - an excellent editor for Windows, also includes a superb link verification tool that we use to maintain the thousand or more links at this site. You can also buy it from us direct at our software store.
Watchfire - tools for Windows to maintain an error free Web site including a link verification tool.
LinkTest - an inexpensive link verification tool for Windows.
Doctor HTML - a good on-line validation tool that will also test all your links.
CSE 3310 HTML Validator - good donwloadable Validation tool for your software arsenal - integrated with HomeSite.
For beginners who have just made their mind to develop a website should first decide a web design. For this he needs to learn web design tutorials which are easily available on internet. Nowadays most of the programming is being done in PHP so for proper web site design you must know the basics of PHP language. In this regard many web hosting companies are also offering free PHP scripts. |
