Weaving
a Tangled Web
About the Web
The Web is a hypermedia-based information server developed at
CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva,
Switzerland. You can combine text, graphics, sounds, video, software,
and other information into one document that can be accessed by
computers all over the world. On the one hand, the integration of
text, graphics, and photographs in one Web document resembles
conventional printed matter. On the other hand, the ability to add
audio and video material makes it a unique multi-media vehicle.
Furthermore, the ability to link to countless other documents on-line
makes every document potentially part of another. Web pages are
written in Hypertext
Markup Language (HTML), but you do not have to know code if you
use What-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) authoring programs.
A few useful tips
- A web page is "tangled" in that it interlaces through links
with other pages. It should not, however, be "tangled" in the
sense of "confused." Clarity is important!
- Plan out what you want to have the page look like and, more
importantly, what the content will be. You can author the text in
any word processing program and cut and paste into the web page
later. Remember though, the words transfer well from a word
processing document to HTML, but not necessarily the
formatting.
- Set up:
- make a folder, the name will become part of the address, so
keep it simple and in small letters, and no spaces or special
symbols (the same name rules are just as true for each
page)
- put all web pages for your site in this folder
- within your site folder create another folder for images
(call it what you like, e.g. "images" or "resources") and place
all images in there before you place them in a page. All your
images should be in gif or jpeg format and indicate which in
the suffix (e.g. "image.jpg" or "image.gif")
- Especially at first, Simple Is Better.
- Just like any writing assignment, let it sit a while, then go
back and re-read, re-write, re-do. Get someone else to read your
text and then look at your page. A web page is always
"under construction."
- It is good to view the web page in both Microsoft Explorer and
Netscape Communicator. Occasionally, the two browsers interpret
code differently.
- Learn how to use Tables This will help you organize the
appearance of your page.
A few useful links
Voice of the Shuttle (Internet
Information & Resources)
Learn Web
Publishing
Yale Style Manual
for the Web
W3C (World Wide Web
Consortium)
Computers and the Internet
(Yahoo)
Webmonkey:The
Web Developer's Resource
Web Building Tutorial
HTML
Graphics
Search Engines
Copyright and the WWW
Internet Resource Evaluation