How I Learned to Write HTML |
| It all started when I decided that a really great way to advertize my antenna company would be to put up a Web site. | ||||||||||||||||
| I had already watched a few episodes of CNET on the tube, visited their WWW site and subscribed to their weekly news e-zine. Then it happened - the e-zine came - and it mentioned a tutorial on WWW authoring. BINGO! |
e-zine: The e-mail equivilant of a magazine.
At around 8:00 AM on a rainy Saturday morning, I re-read that e-zine, clicked on the link,
was transfered to the CNET site, located the notice of the tutorial, again clicked on the
link and there it was - the tutorial on HTML...
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HTML: | Hyper-Text Markup Language.
After doing a little browsing through the tutorial, I knew this was going to be a l-o-n-g
session... checked the supplies of COFFEE, cheese crackers w/ peanut-butter,
Mountain Dew®, frozen pizza, etc...
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This is the | normal diet of computer programmers.
After reading the CNET tutorial, I started surfing. My starting point was a link to the
NCSA at the University of Illinois, where I down-loaded and printed "A Beginners Guide
to HTML" - it's only 24 pages...
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Links to all of | these sites can be found on my links page. (If you click on this link, it will open in another window. You can then switch between windows by using [alt+tab].
Next stop was the WDG for a copy of the "Wilbur" specification. Yup, I printed the whole
36 page book... This is also available as a Windows '.HLP' format file...
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Then I started reading. I surfed a couple of WWW sites, went to 'View' 'Doccument Source'
and read the HTML code. After a while, it all started making sense...
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I picked up a copy of my antenna catalog, looked it over and asked myself, "Could I put
this on a Web site?" The answer was a resounding "YES!" Not only could I do it but
I could make changes and additions without encuring printing costs, delays, etc.
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Now came the question, "Would I need special software for writing/editing HTML?"
It turns out the answer is "No!" All I really needed was a text editor - and I already
had one. "Note-Pad" works just fine. If I open my browser (Netscape 3.04 Gold), switch
windows back to "Program Manager" and launch "Note-Pad", I can write the code, save it,
switch to the browser and see what it looks like... When I make a change, the sequence
is - save - switch - reload...
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Netscape Gold | has a built-in HTML editor... I don't use it.
So - here I was with all the tools and supplies I would need for a long haul. It was going
to be "learn as you go" and I dove in head first. This total imersion method of learning
works for some people (I'm one) but not for others. It takes a particular mind-set.
| Twenty-three hours, a case of Dew, a couple gallons of coffee and two large pizzas later, I had an HTML program, complete with photographs, drawings and text. You can see it at https://www.angelfire.com/biz/AntVentures/. A couple of weeks later I started writing this site. If you're reading this, I don't have to tell you where it is - you're already here... I'm still learning some of the different ways to use HTML, styling, etc. One thing I learned very early on is K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid). Too many pictures or graphics, complex backgrounds and a lot of fancy stuff make for a long down-load. Large, hi-res pictures take a long time to load and are beyond the capabilities of most browsers to display them. - A 75K picture better be worth waiting for. I use HIGH compression JPEGs. They load faster.
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A couple of things I found out after I had my site 'up and running':
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I built a set of | tables showing the Netscape colors. You can see it here. |
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