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World Wide Web - My Tools and Processes |
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Work on this page has taken a back seat to the development of the total site, I'm planning on breaking it into several smaller pages, 'cause it's just too big right now. Anyway, I'll get back to it soon. (11-8) | |
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Search Engines |
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The Internet (more than just the Web) is a dumping ground of information. Everyone who uses it should learn to find that information and use the thousands of resources that are the online experience. The first step to finding useful information is expecting that information exists. Next, learn to use search engines. Search engines are basically one of two styles: indexes: such as Yahoo and InfoSeek; and the crawlers: WebCrawler, Lycos and, my favorite, Alta Vista. An index is just that, sites are submitted and essentially approved for listing. Crawlers are machines that roam various links across the World Wide Web and record (index) the pages they encounter. The differences between indexes and crawlers become more apparent when using them. Indexes allow you to search catagories, as pages are organized when they are listed. Crawlers only offer free text searches, which scan for chunks of text and keywords. Crawler keywords are defined by the HTML authors on the page, index Keywords are defined when the site is submitted. Details about embedding keywords are available on Alta Vista's help page, and I'm sure the other crawlers explain how they record pages as well. Yahoo is fairly straight-forward to use, when you get there you can choose between typing what you are looking for or descending into their category listings. Alta Vista offers much more freedom in searching, I often wish I had an Alta Vista search for everything I read. After a little practice, you learn how to search for any string of text, even if it's as obscure as the middle word of a sentence and one word of the title. There are dozens of search engines now, and at this point, it's mostly preference as to which one will work best for you. I prefer Yahoo and Alta Vista , though I can usually find everything I'm looking for with Alta Vista. | |
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Web Links and Tools |
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HTML Links: |
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A Tangled Web Unwoven - The Lecture notes this person used to describe the Web and HTML. One of several very easy to understand sets of lecture notes about online technology. The Bare Bones Guide to HTML - A self-described "cheat sheet" for HTML tags and syntax. World Wide Web FAQ - Everything from what's a "FAQ" to automating pages with CGI scripting. UH - Web Page Authoring - a list of links that go to various resources about creating HTML, and the Web in general. Some links may not work. | |
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HTML Books: |
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Lynda Weinman's books about the Web are some of the best, if not the best books available about real issues of Web page design. Designing Web Graphics |
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HTML Tools: |
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I use more than a dozen tools while creating Web pages. Most of those tools do one or more things exceptionally well, and I like to take advantage of the strengths of each. In addition to the following, I use Photoshop, Illustrator and Netscape Navigator. PageSpinner I credit this program most with teaching me HTML. PageSpinner is referred to as a semi-WYSIWYG HTML editor. That means you will create HTML, see HTML while you are creating it, but then save and preview your documents into Netscape or whatever other browser you specify. Besides an "HTML Assistant" this application also offers a complete set of instantly accessible HTML examples, which you can see and use. PageSpinner does not yet support hierarchical formatting but it is one hell of a great program, and a steal at $25 shareware. I paid four times that amount for PageMill from Adobe, which sucks and crashes. ($25 Shareware) Download
PageSpinner 1.2.1 (1.1mb) ColorSieve This tool is so great and underrated I'm going to make a
page for it. Until then: (Freeware)
Download
ColorSieve I've recently come to love this program. It brings many programming ideas to HTML that most non-computer scientists have never seen. My favorite features are Syntax Coloring, Automatic indenting, Balancing (paren flashing as well as quotes and brackets etc.) and hierarchical HTML formatting. This is a program to use after you've already gotten a good understanding of HTML, there isn't much in the way of an HTML tutorial. However these are the most versatile HTML and text editing tools I've ever used, and fast too. Hopefully soon, they will also support JavaScript in HTML pages. A limited but still very useful demo of the latest version is available from the BBEdit home page, as well as ordering information. ($79 w/ free T-shirt mention the MacWay offer) Download
BBEdit 4.01 Demo (3.5mb) Tex-Edit Plus This is the third text editor I use, though this is more of a "munger" than others. Text Munging is the process of stripping away all the extra crap that clutters files. Extra line breaks, space, paragraph marks, hidden characters, formatting, invisible gunk and non-universal characters are all stripped away here, bringing text back to plain ASCII. This usually needs to be done to all text received from clients, this program does it better than any other. ($10 Shareware) Download
Tex-Edit Plus (454k) GifBuilder GifBuilder helps create animating GIF files as well as doing a number of incredible conversions of graphic files into GIF format. You can drag just about anything into this program, Quicktime movies, Photoshop files, PICTS, picture clippings, any clipboard containing images, other gifs, icons, just about anything. Once it's in there GifBuilder offers controls over colors, frame size and interframe delay, transparency and probably every other option pertaining to GIF animations. There are other programs offered that do similar things, but they are all commercial or expensive shareware (expensive being anything above $25), GifBuilder is freeware, and is still head and shoulders above the competition. (Freeware) | |
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Some thoughts about working with HTML: |
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My theory about creating HTML is that tags, no matter how long they are, represent the same idea as one letter. A letter can be assigned another value (let x = x, or x = dogs); this is the basic premise of algebra and programming, at least as I've come to understand it. Since computers are meant to help us, and pushing a button doesn't always result in one letter on screen, I see no reason to ever have to type out complete HTML tags; they should be available as keystrokes or menu items. I'd much rather spend my time entering content, not code. It is important to understand the workings of HTML, but you don't have to type out the whole mess to learn how it works HTML works on the premise that once a command is opened that command must later be closed (what goes up must come down, cause and effect, put your toys away, etc). So if I decide to start something as italic, <I> or <EM> (emphasis), I must close that italic command later on with : </I> or </EM>. The same holds true for every HTML tag. Another way to see this is sets of nesting containers; everything goes into a container and every container goes into another container--eventually all the containers fit within the <HTML></HTML>container. Fortunately or unfortunately, Netscape Navigator usually overlooks end tags, and assumes they have ended when a contradicting tag is started. That said, most commands work better or at least more expectedly if all the end tags are in place. A great help in determining if your tags are balanced and in the right places is an editor that recognizes and formats HTML hierarchically, such as BBEdit. When a page contains totally balanced tags, the beginning and end will line up horizontally. When I first learned about hierarchical formatting (the same time I really learned about closing tags) I was horrified to see exactly how incomplete and sloppy some of my more complicated pages were. heirarchical formatting indents a starting container tag and all following text will remain indented until the closing tag appears, closing the container and reversing the indent. | |
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JavaScript: |
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I've been really getting into this lately, actually it's sucked away the better part of last week. I think these are some great links which could be all anyone would need to learn JavaScript. The problem with books on Javascript is that the syntax is still in flux, so it changes frustratingly often. As a result, most of the books are wrong. And, like all computer books, they're too expensive. Intro by Voodoo - the place to start. I think I learned more from this than anything else. (details about the following are coming) JavaScript
Authoring Guide 3.0 (netscape's official listing for the
language) | |
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The Future |
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The future of Web development whether it be HTML or not, is automation via scripting. This medium simply requires too much maintenance. Enormous amounts of time and money are spent on updating pages, rather than valuable information and interesting content. JavaScript is a beginning, but more established systems like CGI and Frontier must be brought closer to english so that non-programmers can use them efficiently | |