(Latest Revision: 01/04/2000)
Help Getting Started with HTML
Dear Students --
I asked Brian Del Selva, who designs web pages (HTML documents)
professionally, to give us a few tips on web authoring. He
kindly wrote the message included here below.
Brian tells where to get information about publishing web pages
for free. He also gives pointers to information that teach how
to create web pages.
-- john sarraille
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Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 19:15:35 -0800 (PST)
From: B DelSelva <bdelsalv@toto.csustan.edu>
To: John Sarraille <john@ishi.csustan.edu>
Subject: Re: Web Authoring Book
John,
I started back in the good ol' days at
http://www.geocities.com
Geocities is a free web hosting service that has many HTML
tutorials and allows you to construct web pages directly online
or upload your own pages from your home computer through a web
based ftp program. Last I checked you could even directly ftp
using your favorite program (Cute FTP or Fetch).
http://www.tripod.com
Tripod is similar to Geocities, just started a little later.
The biggest difference is the way your directory is accessed.
All Geocities sites have a URL that looks like this:
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Campus/4021
while Tripod you get this:
http://members.tripod.com/yourname
I suppose it's just a preference...
Most of my web education has been through the Wired Ventures
Inc. family of web sites, but I think they are a little more
advanced.
the only advice I would have is:
- 1. don't spend money
- everything you will ever need to know about
designing and hosting a web site is available
online-free.
- 2. learn the code
- HTML has about 50 tags that you need to learn, and
a good cheat sheet is all you need (http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/reference/)
- editors have their place, but they still can't offer
the kind of control and speed that you get with
hand-coding.
- years before editors existed, 12 year-olds were
design web pages by hand, any college senior should be
able to do the same, IF they are interested. If they
aren't, buy/download an editor.
- I'm old- school, what can I say . . .
I hope all this helps.
-brian del selva
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bdelsalv@vega.csustan.edu
http://yahi.csustan.edu/~bdelsalv
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