Elementary Web Page Creation
25 August 2005
Hey folks!
There may be thousands of places where you can find out how to build a
web-page, but I don't have time to find them. The
purpose of this six-page tutorial is to give you a enough understanding
of web pages,
and enough sense of how the technology works, so that you can do this
yourself.
To begin with, download a copy of Mozilla,
install it,
and start it. (Later you might choose commercial software if you need
to manage a really large website, but here you can learn the basics on
freeware.)
When you first start Mozilla, it will open a web-browser ("Navigator")
page by default. If you look under 'Window' in the top menu, you will
notice that you can also open a 'Mail & Newsgroups' window, a
'Composer' window, an 'Address Book' window, and an 'IRC Chat' window.
In this tutorial we will only use the browser and composer functions of
Mozilla. Notice that when you switch into Composer and back to
Navigator, even the top menu items change. Mozilla is actually 6
programs rolled together into one, so be careful to know whether you
are in Navigator or Composer as you proceed through this tutorial.
About web browsers: web
browsers are the pieces of software which display web pages. There are
many different web browser programs,
such as Internet Explorer, Netscape and its cousins Firefox and
Mozilla. Basically they all perform the same function: you start them
up, they open a window, you enter a web address in the address bar, hit
<enter>, and they
display the web page found at the entered address.
The way that web browsers display a web page is that they find a text
file at the given address, they read the text file, and they follow its
instructions.
The text file is organised like the script of a play. It contains
commands which the browser must perform, and it also contains text
which is displayed on the web page itself. So, for instance, it might
contain a command:
"get the picture of Sophia from xxx location, named
'Sophia_010829.jpg',
and display it"
The text page might also contain the text "Yay! Sophia is born!" and
the browser just displays that text as written.
This is why HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is called a scripting
language. HTML text files are not programs written in machine
language; they are plain-text files written in English words (and
abbreviations). As with drama plays, there is a standard protocol (like
'downstage left') which every browser is expected to understand.
Where is a web page?
When you enter an address (e.g.,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page), your browser sends out a
request across the internet to that unique address to retrieve a
document which it can read. That text file sits on the hard drive of a
computer which is not only permanently connected to the internet, but
it is also running web-server software so that when requests come in,
it will send files back to web browsers all over the world.
In our case, www.calogero.org sits on a server in Glen Ellyn, Illinois,
because Advanced Network Hosting offered me a really good price for
hosting our website. At AN Hosting there is a computer, with a hard
drive, with a set of HTML text files and pictures, organized into
directories (folders), which comprise my website.
Note! You, too, can build a webiste on your own computer! In fact you
pretty much have to create it on your own computer first, and then
upload the files to your web-host so that others can read it. The copy
you keep on your hard drive is your backup, and you can proofread your
pages and test your links before the world sees it.
Is that it?
For now, yes. There are other ways to create web pages today, but you
do
not need to know how to do them. For instance, if you look up driving
directions on maps.google.com, software will create a unique web page
for you that includes the directions you asked for. Software-generated
pages usually end in .php or .asp, not .htm or .html as classic web
pages
do. I only mention this because as you look at other pages on the web,
you will notice these different filename suffixes, and many fancy
tricks such as running Flash animations or Java applets
(mini-programs). Those are beyond the scope of this tutorial.
on to Basic Web Page Anatomy
on to Hyperinks
on to Formatting Web pages
on to Graphics for the web
on to Organizing and Uploading Web Pages