Writing HTML (the language that the WWW uses) pages is very simple. The best way to do it is use the 'View source' option of your WWW browser to look at other people's pages, and you'll quickly learn how to do headings, bold text, images, etc.
Some HTML writing resources
Hints'n'Tips
- Once you've uploaded your pages to the server, check them live with a WWW browser. They may work fine offline, but you may have forgotten to upload a file, or got a link wrong. Click on every link on your pages to ensure it works.
- Try your site with image loading switched off. Can you still use your pages? Have you made good use of the ALT tags so that navigation around your pages is still possible.
- Other browsers. Your site may look great with NutScrap Gold Master Pro 4.06-beta, but try it out with some other common browsers, or ask friends to try the pages for you.
- Colours. You may have a really lovely background tile image, but is the text readable? Check that the foreground/background colours contrast enough to be readable.
- Screen resolution & colours. Try your site at lower resolutions with 16 or 256 colours to make sure they are still readable.
- Do all the links work? You may be sure that all the links between your pages are fine, but what about the links to other sites? Links change all the time, and you should try and check them all every few weeks to make sure they stay up to date.
- Images. Have you got huge images on every page that take an age to download on 28.8K modems? Perhaps you could use a thumbnail image inline, and then provide a link to the large version. For photographic images use JPEG rather than GIF to provide smaller files and a higher quality (24 bit colour instead of 8 bit). Don't convert GIFs into JPEGs, because you've already lost the quality by dithering the photo into an 8 bit GIF, and JPEG'ing that will just make it even worse.
- Can they contact you? If you want feedback on your pages, make it easy for people! Provide mailto: URL links on every single page, or provide an obvious 'mail me' button. Having this on just one page isn't good enough.
- Download 3.xx NOW! Don't tell people this! How do you know they can run that browser on their hardware, or even want to? Design your pages so that they work with all browsers.
- Frames suck. Yes, it's official, people don't like frames, and most browsers can't display them, so if you must use frames, make sure you also provide all your pages with
<NOFRAMES> versions. Note that almost every effect that you can do with frames, you can provide with tables and server-side php scripts. Tables are supported by far more browsers, and can still be read even on non-tables browsers.
- Did you use DOS or Windows to write the pages? Make sure that all your file extensions are
.html rather than .HTM - and that means the links in the HTML pages, not just renaming the files once you've uploaded the pages! Use lower case extensions as well. eg, .jpg .gif .txt, and also check that your links use the correct URL separator. eg, wibble/fred.gif not wibble\fred.gif.
I highly recommend the excellent book web concept & design (by Crystal Waters) if you're serious about writing good Web pages. Invaluable.
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