Hints & Tips

This document is a collection of "lessons learned" (or in some cases, unlearned) related to Web design in general and the Winfield Wide Web in particular. It includes many of the constructions mentioned by Don Shorock at the Acoustic HTML Workshop at Winfield 27 (1998).

Steal!

The easiest way to get started is to copy the HTML constructs from an existing page. Be careful not to copy content without the permission of the author. IE or AOL Right click on any area that is not a graphic or a hyperlink. Click on View Source - this opens NOTEPAD with a copy of the document's HTML source. Use File...Save As to create your own document or just cut the piece you need. Netscape Depending on the version of Navigator you have, some setup may be required. The following applies to Navigator Version 3. Select Options from the toolbar Select Editor Preferences... Under External Editors use the Browse button to point HTML Source to C:\WINDOWS\Notepad.exe After the above procedure is performed once you can use the toolbar's View pulldown and select Document Source to open NOTEPAD. Note that this is a copy of the source from a temporary folder. You must use File...Save As to create an html document in a permanent folder. With Netscape Version 4: Select View Page Source Use Ctrl + A to select all text Use Ctrl + C to copy the selected text to the clipboard Use PASTE in your favorite HTML editor to copy the HTML source from the clipboard Watch out for constructions that are added by the site's server: for instance Geocities popups. Don't steal this code - it normally won't work.

Keep the reader in mind

Keep the number and size of in-line graphics (<IMG ...> tags) "reasonable" to optimize load time. Loading is usually faster if you also include the WIDTH= and HEIGHT= specifications. Use the ALT="description" specification to give the reader something to see while images are loading. Include a your.name tag to make it easy for someone to comment on your page. Include links to related pages or other sites. Examples: Index of current directory Main page Higher-level-directory Home page The examples above are relative references. Note that since no document name is included, when you're working locally on your PC (using "Open File in Browser") the examples show real index listings, not index.html. This can be very useful during testing.