If you want to hone things to a fine edge, skip this page, and check out our four [pages] on tags, page design, transport, and utilities.

I should warn that this is just a collection of documents, some of use, some outdated, many with broken internal links, or outdated links elsewhere, and all without images (even though they may show up on your screen). I'll expand on some of this later. These are copies stored locally. If images show up, they will have been fetched by your browser from the original sources (if the base address is listed in the head section). Not infrequently nothing will show cause the original address has disappeared off the web.

I haven't read any of these closely lately, so if some turn out to be less than usefull, let me know and I'll delete them. In turn, if you run accross anything great let me know also, I'll add it, or the link.

Before you start

Try this link first, "Publish Yo'Self" at [http://www.links.net/webpub/] The best and briefest directions on getting started. Good links elsewhere. (If you can't connect, or if it disappears, find a local copy is [here].)

Easy as Hell List of Stuff

[html2.htm ]

The NCSA Primer (HTML4) This is the definitive document for beginners.

[htmlq.htm ]

A good, quick intoduction and guide to html.

[badstyle.htm]

A collection of "don'ts" -- many of which I disagree with

[cgh.htm ]

Composing "good" html

[darkside.htm]

Yes indeed, HTML2 based (I wonder if there is an update)

[html.htm ]

Quick summary (HTML3+) and usefull links and how to "put the stuff up."

[design.htm ]

Accessable design - continues to the three links below:

• [design2.htm ] design elements
• [design3.htm ] design testing bla bla
• [tools.htm ] more of ..

[stupid01.htm]

Stupid Web Tricks

[style-gu.htm]

Style guide for text and writing, rather than for tags.

[flop.htm]

How to make your webpages flop.

[rag.htm]

Webpage design.

[mmm.htm]

How graphics will ruin the web.

[viewable.htm]

Downward compatibility.

[sucky.htm ]

Top ways to tell if your web page sucks.

[tyrant.htm ]

Web Tyrant Page

[webhints.htm]

Browser independent Design

[webtips.htm ]

"Use the defaults, Luke" Great page!

[checklis.htm]

A HTML terrorist's list of bad html code, and checklist to send to the owners of Bad Stuff (TM) Web pages.

[confuse.htm ]

Gripes about money, dates, country designations.

[counters.htm]

Rant about hit counters, ahuh.

[doctype.htm ]

The meaning of "doctype" and other head elements

[essay500.htm]

Top ten mistakes. Ha! Frames is one of them

[font.htm ]

What can go wrong with the"font" tag

[frames.htm ]

Quick rundown on frames parameters.

[frame_sy.htm]

Similar to the above, but more verbose.. From Netscape.

[glossary.htm]

A great set, covers all of the web and some. Look up terms and impress your friends. Dont expect to find MMX and other product jargon.

[hex.htm ]

It's Lynda's patient explaination of what goes wrong with colors.

[ismap.htm ]

Image map drawbacks

[learn.htm ]

Specialty items for web pages, from Netscape.

[low-impa.htm]

A rant on Bad Ideas (TM) in web pages.

[friendly.htm]

More on downward compatibility for Text browsers

[manifest.htm]

The Lynx users group manifesto (But Netscape is so cool!)

[nhtml.htm ]

A good rant on Netscape's manipulation of Browser standards

[ns2color.htm]

A more verbose explication of the limited pallette available under Windows, MAC, and Netscape. The images are missing.. I'll get them later.

[page.htm ]

Page tags and target windows (frames)

[table.htm ]

Tables explained in brief

[target.htm ]

Windows targets for Frames

[wwwfaq.htm ]

Sun site FAQ on WWW.

[wysiwyg.htm ]

WYSIWYG and editors.

[badnavig.htm]

Navigation And Java script

[dependen.htm]

Style Sheet dependence

[quick-tu.htm]

Style Sheets tutorial

[suck.htm ]

Suck Site

[styleshe.htm]

CSS intro

[style.htm ]

Effective use of Style Sheets

[writing_.htm]

CSS guide

[structur.htm]

CSS rules

[style-ht.htm]

linking CSS

[doctype.txt]

doc type headers

[htmlstyl.htm]

Good Style

[htnl4.htm]

new in HTML 4

[http2.htm]

Http / html design

[secure.htm]

Secure or not

[tricks.htm]

tricks

[eoti.htm]

The last page on the internet

Start your web life off with the easy HTML2 tags, and expand into the wider range of things available (and mostly implemented worldwide) with HTML3.2, you may want to discover what the difference is in going to HTML4 -- which is the current standard, but not widely implemented yet. (Note that HTML3 was never accepted, and HTML3+ is an entirely bogus creation of Netscape.)

The HTML3.2 and HTLM4 specifications are available on the internet, at the following URLs (as near as I can tell):

HTML 4:
at [http://www.w3.org/TR/PR-html40/]
or [http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/]

HTML 3.2:
at [http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/]
or [http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/]

If you need these for your very own, download [this] zipfile (860 K). It includes HTML 4, HTML 3.2, and all the other files in this directory and more (284 total). Place it to a directory, say something called "html", and unzip it with the "-d" parameter for pkunzip, in other words, type "pkunzip -d htm.zip" at the DOS command line.

Then make up a file called (for example) "start.htm" which goes as follows, and is placed in the same directory... this..

---

<h2>START.HTM</h2>

<P>LOCAL
<a href="./index.htm">[Various]</a>
<a href="./3.2/index.htm">[HTML 3.2]</a>
<a href="./4/index.htm">[HTML 4]</a>

<P>REMOTE:

<a href="http://spaces.org">[spaces.org]</a>
<a href="http://jnocook.net/">[jno cook]</a>

---

I added the last two items to show how you can make this "start file" into source for listing frequently accessed websites. Add you own favorites.

The last thing to do is to type "file://c:/html/start.htm" in your browser's address space, and select this file as the default starting point. In the future you can add whatever links you want to this file. The browser can thus be used to browse all of your harddrive, or let you go anywhere you like on the internet.

To see the content of your harddrive you would use something like

<a href="file://c:/">[C Drive]</a>

You may need to use backward slashes before the "c" or replace the colon with a "|" -- depends on which browser you are using.

Browsing Hints

Things will go a lot easier if you set your browser to ignore a few things. The following is for a recent version of MS Explorer. It starts under the menu heading View. Basically the same menu exists in Netscape, except that it starts under Edit. Open up the box under Internet Options:

• General:
  Set up a local page as a starting place
  (so you won't be logged into micro-something.com every time you start the browser). Or select that later as Use Current after you go through the remaining directions.

• Colors:
  A lot of newbee "Web Designers" screw with the font colors and types endlessly, even though most of these are only approximated by browsers.

  • Text as black, background as white

  • Visited links as bright red, unvisited as bright blue

  • You may also want to underline the links also, under the Advanced tab. This can be helpfull on clickable images and stuff.

  • In Netscape set Use my default colors. In Explorer, go to the Accessibility tab (see below).

• Fonts:

  • BTW, You can add fonts to the Explorer View menu by selecting this option under the Advanced tab. Allows changing font sizes on the fly (like, Alt-V,N,G changes to Giant size). Netscape has this on the menu (under View).

  • Secondly, pick your character set as Western, which is the ISO-8859-1 standard. At least, do so if you participate in Western culture.

  • Proportional Font: a serif font will be easier to read. Try any of the Roman types.

  • Fixed Font: Really, pick a font that is evenly spaced, or you will miss a number of texts that depend on type-space indexed information.

  • Font size: set it to make the screen readable.

  • In Netscape set Use my default fonts. In Explorer, go to the Accessibility tab (see below).

• Security:
  Uncheck everything, and just accept the cookies. You can always delete them. Saves a lot of messages to answer, "Accept cookie?"

• Java:
  disable it, under the Advanced tab for either browser. Java Script for MS Explorer and Netscape are not the same.

• Accessibility:
  For Explorer, this will tie all these together: Check each of these:

  • Ignore colors specified. This will make all those yellow on black screens readable.
  • Ignore font styles. You don't own those fonts anyway.
  • Ignore font sizes. Be forever rid of pages that suddenly drop the size to something miniscule.

• Advanced:
  Under Explorer's Advanced tab, you can turn off all those crazy-making moving gif files. Just uncheck Play Animations; try it for this page. Under Netsacpe this is listed under the View menu, but gets reset with every new page or reload.

• Cache:
  Set disk space to whatever you can afford (like 20 to 50 percent of the disk space which is not in use), especially if you are stealing very large image files. Set memory cache space (if you can) to as much as possible.

  • Explorer: the General tab, click Settings.
  • Netscape: the Advanced tab, click Cache.

More on cache: To refresh Every time will just slow things down. Set the refresh rate at Once per session, so at least you won't be looking at files which only exist on your harddrive.

Lastly, be aware that some changes won't take effect unless the cache is cleared, or the browser is restarted, or both. And very last, don't expect anything to work as it would seem to be designed.