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BOOTLOG
004 27/09/05
BUILDING
A WEBSITE, part 4
It is now
time to start thinking about making web pages and there are essentially two
methods, the hard way and the easy way.
The hard
way is to use HTML code or lines of text commands or ‘tags’ that specify
everything that’s on a web page, down to the smallest detail. HTML is not
especially difficult to learn, much of it is in plain English and the beauty of
it is that complex web pages can be composed using a simple text editor or word
processor. For example the first few lines of HTML code for this page are as
follows:
<html>
<head>
<title>Contents
4</title>
The
trouble is there are more than 400 other lines on this fairly basic page and a
fair few of them look like this:
<p class=MsoNormal style="line-height:100%;
margin:0;" align="left"><font
face="Arial"><span style="font-family:Arial;
font-weight:normal;"><b>BUILDING A WEBSITE, part
4</b></span></font><b><font face="Arial"><span
style="font-family:Arial;
font-weight:normal;"><o:p></span>
</font></b></p>
That
little lot basically specifies part of the heading at the top of the page,
including the position of the text, typeface, font size and weight. Have
another look, you can probably figure out what most of it means and if you want
to know more we looked at basic HTML coding in Boot Camp 373. However, the
point is composing web pages using just HTML code can be slow and laborious, at
least to begin with, so without more ado let’s consider the easier alternative.
Most
Internet pages are created using a ‘wizzywig’ (WYSIWYG or what you see is what
you get) web-authoring program and there is a very good chance that you already
have one on your PC. Microsoft Word has basic web page design facilities built
in, and if you are using MS Office then you should also have a copy of
FrontPage, one of the best and easiest to use web page editors, and a good
place for novices to start. Don’t worry even if you have neither of these
programs there are some very decent freeware programs available, including the excellent
Nvu (pronounced N-View). This is open source software and it began life as a
Linux application but versions are now available for Windows XP and Mac OS X
from: www.nvu.com/
Dedicated
web page editing programs like FrontPage, Nvu, Dreamweaver, WebEditor and so on
have three elements in common. The first and most important one is a wizzywig
editing window that lets you design a web page by combining the functions of a
word processor, page layout and picture editing programs. In other words you
build a web page with chunks of text, pictures and graphic elements, which you
manipulate on the screen so what you see in front of you is more or less what
will appear on the finished web page.
The
second element is a HTML editing window and sometimes a split HTML/Edit window
as well that lets you see both the code and the actual page at the same time.
HTML is necessary because some aspects of web page design are most easily
handled by short segments of code but don’t let that worry you and you can
safely ignore it for simple page layout and design jobs.
The third
and final element is an FTP publishing utility or ‘client’ program. FTP or File
Transfer Protocol is the means by which finished web pages are uploaded from
your PC to your web host’s server computer (see part 3) and ‘published’ on the
Internet. This is the one thing that’s missing from Word so if you want to use
it to create web pages you will need a separate FTP client. If you are using
free web space supplied to you by your ISP; you may be able to use Internet
Explorer or software provided by them to upload your pages, otherwise there are
plenty of freeware and shareware FTP Clients available for download. SmartFTP (www.smartftp.com/) is a popular choice and
it is free for personal use.
part 5 -- web page layout and design
Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
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