 Tutorials and Guides to writing HTML
If you've never written a webpage before, the first thing you should know is that the When you choose this option, your browser will display the HTML-code that generated the webpage that you are currently looking at. This is a time-honoured manner of learning how to write HTML. If you are looking for a more structured and straight forward approach to learning how to write HTML, there are many tutorials to choose from. Below are those that I like to recommend to people.
BareBone's HTML Guide Yale Web Style Guide If none of these are to your liking, just go to any search engine and type HTML Guides as a search query. HTML Questions & AnswersOne of the nicest things about the web are the number of people who are willing to devote the time and energy to helping others, particularly when it comes to writing more webpages. Most help sites consist of lists of questions linked to their answers. Many have forms that allow to ask your own questions. Often your question won't be answered directly but will be posted to the webpage, so remember to check back if you've submitted a question. The first two links, below, are ones that I find very useful. The third is more of a reference tool, since WWW Consortium's recommendations are thorough and useful guides to HTML, but not necessarily followed by the various browser makers.
Web-Safe ColoursIf you've ever spent anytime making images to display on the web, you've proabably discovered that while your finely crafted work of art looks great on one flavour of Operating System or browser, it really stinks on another. Web browser still support less than 8-bit (or 256) colour. Generally, they max out at 216. Which 216 colours come with any given browser are up to manufacturer. Any remaining colours are dithered, which involves adding tiny little spots of one colour to another to mimic the colour you really want. Dithered colours are not the end of the world, but they are ugly. Lynda Weinman has figured out the non-dithering colours used by Mosaic, Navigator/ Communicator and Internet Explorer. They are listed both by Hue and by Value, as image files with their hex values (bgcolor='#003366') printed with each colour. She has also made CLUT (Color Look Up Tables) files available for applications that use them.
Animated GIFsGIF's are one of two commmonly used formats for web-images. Animated gifs are made using the GIF-89a standard, which allows for multiple images to be stores in a single image file. This means that you can create simple animations to include with your webpages. While not as fluid as real digital video, animated-gifs are supported by all the graphical browsers and can be made small enough in file-size that their download time is managable. There are a variety of shareware programs available will convert multiple images into a single GIF-animation. They can be downloaded from many of software libraries on the web. There are many excellent webpages about how GIF animations work, and best to create your own, including:
JavaScriptJavaScript is the name of Netscape Communication's web-based scripting language. JavaScript allow you to program in degrees of user control, including form validation, dialogue boxes, and opening and closing new windows. You can also create simple games, scrolling status bars, and randomly generated images or text. Unlike CGI scripts which run on the server and then return and answer to accomplish their task, JavaScript's are loaded with their respective webpages. This means they can be interpreted and then executed locally, on your computer, without having to submit and then download any additional information. Most browsers currently support JavaScript, but none support it in exactly the same way. This can make writing JavaScript exceptionally difficult. Netscape continues to change the way JavaScript operates from one version of Navigator and Communicator to the next. Internet Explorer supports a varying degree of JavaScript depending on what version of the browser you are using and what flavor of JavaScript it is trying to interpret. The most recent version of JavaScript is 1.2 The links below are not the definitive JavaScript links but are the ones that I use most often and have proven themselves to be the most useful.
Extra ServicesServer Side Includescurrenly only available for business accountsServer-Side Includes (SSI) are commands that you can include in your HTML file which will call the Vineyard.NET server and load a given file of information, on the fly, before displaying your webpage to a user. This can include elements such as a boilerplate header or footer for all your pages, the current time that a given page is viewed, or the date that a document was last modified. The NCSA maintains a thorough and easy to follow tutorial on what SSI commands you can use with your web documents.
Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scriptingcurrenly only available for business accountsVineyard.NET allows all it's business accounts to create and use Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts on their sites via CGIWrap. CGI's allow you to create webpages where you can enter and return user information dynamically. Most webpages are considered static, in that they simply display HTML that was written sometime in the past. Webpages that use CGI scripts are considered dynamic because they can generate webpages on the fly that are specific to given users or the information that they provide. There are many collections of CGI scripts available for free on the web. As with anything free, please be sure that you understand what it is you are getting and what specifically it is intended to do.
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