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FME
HTML Course...
This is a collection of miscellaneous notes, links and
other material for the HTML course held at Fair-Mont-Egan
School during the month of February, 1997.
 Keep an eye on this page.
I'll update it daily if I run across enough material.
(Or, better yet, register for automatic
update notification via email.) Feel free to email me any handy links you may
encounter.
Who's the flapper? Well, the picture was taken in
Montana, circa 1928-1930. Aside from that, nobody really
knows. Is she dressed up for a prom, perhaps? Click on
her to to see more orphaned windows into the past.
Note:
This page will look best if you download and install Microsoft's
free collection of web fonts. Both PC and Mac
versions are available. Also, you should be using a
current version of Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer to get the full
effect.
| The
Rules |
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Learn from
others. Stealing from one is plagiarism;
stealing from many is research. If you encounter
a good idea or an attractive layout, see how it
was implemented. |
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Keep it
simple. Complex web pages with lots of
fancy graphics may look impressive, but they
aren't necessarily very useful and often take too
long to load. Never sacrifice clarity for the
sake of "elegance." |
| |
Degrade
gracefully. If you use an extension
unique to a particular browser, provide an
alternate representation for browsers without
that capability. Also remember to
"pre-size" images and to specify
"ALT" text for them. If you use
high-color graphics, make sure they look OK on
256-color displays, too. |
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Make it
navigable. Make it easy to get around
your site. When possible, provide links on each
page to the major sections of your site (e.g.,
navigation bars); at a minimum, supply a
"home" link. Users should be able to
work from the general to the specific with no
more than three clicks. |
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Make it
legible. Use high contrast color
combinations (e.g., not blue on black)
when displaying text. Don't use graphics or text
layouts that direct the eye away from the flow of
information. Use white space effectively. |
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Tell 'em
who you are. Put a "mailto"
link at the bottom of each page. This should send
mail to either the page's author or the person
responsible for the site. This is not just a
courtesy, it also helps to ensure that you will
be notified if there is a problem. Better yet,
you'll get the occasional compliment. |
FrontPage
Available for the Mac
Those of you using Macs might be interested to know that
Microsoft recently released a beta version of FrontPage for the Macintosh. This
is a free download although, being a beta release, it
does have an expiration date.
Some
Useful Applications...
Paint Shop Pro is a powerful tool for
creating and editing graphics, including photographs.
This is one of the best choices for Windows users not
willing to spend big bucks for something like PhotoShop
or Corel Draw. Actually, it's a pretty good choice even
if you do have the money.
The
HTML Library (HTMLib) is a free on-line HTML
reference in Windows help format. It is an invaluable
tool and one of my standard and most frequently used
sources of information on HTML syntax and programming.
Microsoft's
Web Fonts are a useful (and cheap)
tool for enhancing your web pages. They include enhanced
versions of some of the old stand-bys and a number of new
fonts designed specifically for web use. This page, for
example, uses Verdana for the main text and Comic Sans MS
for the headers. If you have installed the most recent
version of Internet Explorer, you should already have all
the fonts except Georgia and Trebuchet. The fonts are
free and you can get versions for both Windows and the
Mac.
And
Some Useful Links...
Severe
Tire Damage - David Seigel's comments
on web design. He has a unique perspective as a graphic
designer. I don't always agree with him, but I picked up
some interesting ideas and useful techniques. One of his
tricks, the use of transparent graphics to control
paragraph spacing, is used extensively on this page.
Jim
Gunn's Home Page - Jim has been playing
around with Publisher 97. Some of you were asking about
using this product to produce web pages. This site will
give you an idea of what can be done. It also illustrates
Publisher's heavy use of graphics to control page layout
-- good for consistency, bad for "page weight."
Color
on the Web - A somewhat technical
but useful treatise on producing GIF and JPEG images for
web publishing. It also reveals why the Netscape palette
contains only 216 colors, an item I forgot to mention
during the first class.
The
Netscape Color Cube - Speaking of the
216-color Netscape palette, this excellent article
explains the situation in some detail. Although he
doesn't mention it explicitly, this guy's page layouts
are optimized somewhat for Internet Explorer, although
they are still legible with Netscape Navigator.
Images For Your
Web Pages - A friend of mine went
on a hunt for images to use on his web site and passed
the addresses of the sites he discovered on to me. Here's
an edited version of that list. It is by no means
exhaustive, but it's a good start.
Background
Paradise
The
Clip Art Connection
Manual
of Traffic Signs (This is where I got the
underlying
images for my startup page.)
OU SCS
Image Archive
SDSU
Index of Background Images
Virtual Servers Web
Resource Center
The
Online Visual Literacy Project - This site discusses the
basic visual elements of an image. There's not really any
"how to" here, but there's a fair bit of
information on the underlying principles of design.
NetObjects Home
Page - NetObjects Fusion is
currently the top rated WYSIWYG HTML site creation
package. It also has an estimated street price of around
$500. Curiously, their home pages are not particularly
impressive, nor is the source code.
FrontPage
Home Page - Microsoft's FrontPage
site contains information about FrontPage as well as
links to other related subjects. Any future software
updates will be posted here, too.
Not to
Mention Your Web Pages...
Clicking on the person's name invokes email; the page
titles are linked to the URLs.
Joe Fisher
A
Science Bibliography for Elementary Students and
Teachers
Bob McCandless
Flathead Lake Music Camp
Somers School District #29
Michael Tuszynski
Kila School Home Page
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