Web Publishing I Introduction to HTML and the Web Publishing Process 1 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Who Am I & Who Are You? Me: Diane Cunningham You: Paired Interviews 2 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Key Course URL UCSD Web Pub Student Resources http://www.technoweenies.com/webpub/ Information on required textbooks Information on available student resources (mailing list, vault of links, software, etc.) 3 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Terminology 4 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Terminology Internet Intranet Extranet World Wide Web Browsers Client Server URLs 5 HTML DHTML XML XHTML ASP JavaScript © 2002 D & D Enterprises Internet: Publicly Accessible Web Servers 6 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Intranet Intranet: non-publicly accessible web servers A network that is internal to an organization Provides organization's users with same types of services available in the Internet Intranet resources are available internally and are not located on the Internet Usually if you have an intranet you have access the the Internet but a firewall is used to prevent access from the Internet to the intranet A firewall is a security mechanism used to protect files and programs on the intranet from unwanted access 7 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Internet vs. Intranet Internet Intranet TCP/IP 8 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Extranet You sometimes see the term extranet used in relation to the Internet and various Internet technologies An extranet is an extension of an intranet that allows certain users outside of the intranet to have limited access to the intranet Often used to allow vendors or suppliers access to information on an organization's intranet 9 © 2002 D & D Enterprises World Wide Web Global Interactive Dynamic Cross Platform Distributed Graphical/Multimedia Hypertext/Hyperlink Information System 10 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Browsers You need a special program (called a Browser) so you can view information stored on the World Wide Web. On a personal computer you typically use Netscape Navigator 3.x, 4.x, 6.x Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.x, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x The Browser interprets information, that is, it displays it on the screen and lets you move between linked items (hyperlinks) 11 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Client Server World Wide Web URL URL URL URL IP Address: http://209.130.124.111/ URL: http://www.technoweenies.com/ 12 © 2002 D & D Enterprises URLs An URL is a: Uniform Resource Locator that is, a pointer to a location on the internet, an address: http://www.ucsd.edu http://geocities.com/gumby9/html/samples.html 13 © 2002 D & D Enterprises The Internet Universe Chat & Conferencing Newsgroups E-Mail FTP Mailing Lists WWW Telnet Sites Gopherspace 14 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Types Of URLs (in Browsers) telnet://name_of_site Remote computing with telnet gopher://name_of_gopher_server Menu Driven System for Information Research ftp://name_of_site/directory/filename The File Transfer Protocol news:rec.food.cooking mailto:diane@technoweenies.com http://www.godiva.com 15 © 2002 D & D Enterprises HTML HyperText Markup Language A subset of SGML Standard Generalized Markup Language Web pages are HTML Files Created as a plain ASCII text file Using Embedded codes called tags Tags instructions for displaying text or linking to other Web documents <h2>Hello world!</h2> 16 © 2002 D & D Enterprises HTML HTML is a defined, standardized markup language That standard was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C www.w3c.org It is based upon SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) which is something of the "mother of all" markup languages It is a language that uses tags to define the structure and sometimes the style of your text 17 © 2002 D & D Enterprises HTML As HTML grew it evolved From version 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0 to 3.2 and now to 4.0 It has developed and gotten more and more complicated and the style and content tags have combined into one language Eventually, the W3C decided that there was a need for a separation between the style of a Web page and the content A tag that defines the content alone, such as <h1>, would remain in HTML while tags that define style, such as <font>, are deprecated in the latest version of HTML in favor of style sheets called "cascading style sheets" (CSS) – more on this in Web Pub II! 18 © 2002 D & D Enterprises DHTML DHTML: Dynamic HTML DHTML is a set of enhancements to HTML (CSS, JavaScript and the Document Object Model) that was created to add interactivity to web pages DHTML enables Web pages to update dynamically in response to user actions such as moving the mouse over text or clicking text, without having to download data from a server 19 © 2002 D & D Enterprises XML The eXtensible Markup Language is the language that the new version of HTML is based on XML is also based on SGML but is less strict than SGML yet still providing the extensibility to create various different languages as they relate to your business or Personal need XML is a language for writing markup languages For example, if you are working on genealogy, you might create tags using XML to define the <father>, <mother>, <daughter>, and <son> in your documents There are also several standardized languages already created with XML: MathML for defining mathematics, SMIL for working with multimedia, and XHTML 20 © 2002 D & D Enterprises XHTML XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language) is really HTML reformatted to XML standards There is NOT that much difference between the two (XHTML and HTML) ... but here are a few notable differences XHTML is written in lower case All XHTML tags must have an end tag All attributes must be quoted in XHTML XHTML attributes must have a name and a value XHTML requires that tags are nested correctly 21 © 2002 D & D Enterprises ASP ASP: Active Server Pages An .asp file is a text file that contains normal HTML tags and text as well as script commands written in a scripting language like VBScript, JavaScript, etc. that are executed on the Web server By including script commands, interactivity and customization can be added to a Web page without having to be concerned with the operating system used by the client accessing the Web page When a .asp file is requested from the server the Web server carries out any script commands it may contain and generates an .html file that is sent to the client's browser 22 © 2002 D & D Enterprises JavaScript JavaScript is an extension of HTML that allows a programmer to do things with the Web page as it is displayed to the user JavaScript is an interpreted programming (or script language) from Netscape It is somewhat similar in capability to Microsoft's Visual Basic 23 Where HTML is the skeleton that gives a document its appearance and structure, JavaScript is the brains and the muscles that give a page life The web page must be displayed in a browser that understands the JavaScript language Netscape browsers versions 2.0 and above do, and MSIE versions 3.0 and above does © 2002 D & D Enterprises What is a Home Page? A Home Page can be defined in several ways: To a Web User: The Web page that loads when you start your Browser (like the Netscape Home Page) To a Web Developer: The top level page; the first page presented when a user selects a web site or web presence on the World Wide Web 24 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Web Site Terminology Web Site Web Page Home Page Splash Page 25 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Web Site Web Site: a related collection of Web files that includes a beginning file called a home page A company or an individual tells you how to get to their Web site by giving you the address of their home page From a home page, you can get to all the other pages of a web site 26 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Web Site For example, the Web site for IBM has the home page address of http://www.ibm.com The home page address actually includes a specific file name like index.html but, as in IBM's case, when a standard default name is set up, users don't have to enter the file name IBM's home page address leads to thousands of pages. So, a Web site can have thousands of pages or it can be just a few pages 27 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Web Page Web Page: a file notated with the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) Usually, a web page contains text and specifications about where image or other multimedia files are to be placed when the page is displayed You can think of a Web site as a book (albeit a hypertext kind of book rather than a sequentially arranged kind of book) that arrives a page at a time as you request each one 28 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Web Page Each web page is an individual HTML file with its own Web address (URL) The first page you usually request at a site is known as the home page Most home pages have a default name that doesn't have to be specified; you only need to enter the domain name for the site itself 29 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Splash Page Splash Page or Splash Screen: An initial Web site page used to capture the user's attention for a short time as a promotion or lead-in to the site home page or To tell the user what kind of browser and other software they need to view the site 30 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Splash Page Examples A good example of the meta push splash page is provided by Coleman College: http://www.coleman.edu/ A good example of a "Plain" Splash Page is: http://www.nleomf.com/ 31 © 2002 D & D Enterprises About Splash Pages Some people LOVE Splash pages and others HATE them! Spend some time at home researching the pros and cons of splash pages and decide if you want to include one in your Web site! http://www.thewebseye.com/doorway.htm http://webdesign.about.com/library/weekly/aa031401a.htm http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol3/promo_no13.htm http://webdesign.about.com/library/weekly/aa031401b.htm 32 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Web Pub I Final Project You final project assignment is to create a 5-9 page website! BUT how to begin?? 33 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Blueprint Specification Defining Your Web Site! 34 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Planning Your Web Presence Planning is the single most important step in the HTML Publishing process! KEY: Mission Statement: What you want people who visit your site to be able to do, think, say, feel or see? You need to map out your top level Web categories what do you want your various Web pages to do or show and who you want to reach… Decide: What is the purpose of your web site?? 35 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Consider Web Site Purposes Marketing and promotional information Commerce retail sales Entertainment Technical support Information presence (on-line brochure vs. white paper) Research or education Personal Home Page 36 © 2002 D & D Enterprises What Do You Want Your Web Presence to Be? Personal Information Hobbies or Special Interests Personal Publications Poems, letters, etc. Shopping Catalogs Opinion Gathering Anything else you can think of! 37 Corporate Publications Newsletters Documentation Company Profiles Job Information Sales Materials etc. © 2002 D & D Enterprises Set Your Web Page Goals What do you want people to be able to accomplish after viewing your web presentation? Will you be giving them specific information on how to do something? Do you expect them to read through each page in your presentation or start at your home page and wander around until they get bored? 38 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Deciding What You Want on Your Web Site Come up with ideas for your Web Site by browsing the Internet and looking at lots of Web pages! When looking for ideas, make sure to look at Web pages that are based on the same topics and aimed at a similar target population as your site We will do lots of targeted site browsing in our Web Pub I, II and III course assignments, but get a heard start now for this homework assignment!!! 39 © 2002 D & D Enterprises About Site Flowcharting From Designing Web Graphics.3 by Lynda Weinman 40 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Flow Charts Initially, it’s a good idea to think of your Web site as one great big organizational chart with the CEO being your site’s home page The next level of the organizational chart would then be the menu options available on your home page This idea is illustrated in next few slides scanned from <designing Web graphics.3 by Lynda Weinman Sketching a flowchart or ‘Web chart’ will help you to classify the individual topics that your Web site will contain 41 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Flowcharting Once you’ve developed a basis for the structure, your next task is to design a means of intuitive navigation throughout the structure If you’ve developed a logical structure, the navigational paths will almost define themselves We devote much of Web Pub III to the critical topic of designing navigation 42 © 2002 D & D Enterprises 43 © 2002 D & D Enterprises 44 © 2002 D & D Enterprises WYSIWYG Tools Flowchart Options Tools like Dreamweaver, GoLive and FrontPage (and even HomeSite!) have site management capabilities which include automated creation of flowcharts and site maps 46 © 2002 D & D Enterprises 47 © 2002 D & D Enterprises FrontPage Navigation View HomeSite View As Tree HomeSite View As Chart Further Flowcharting Resources 53 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Audience Analysis For Your Blueprint Determine: Who is your Target Population? 54 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Audience Analysis – CRUCIAL!!! Who is your intended audience? What do they want? Where are they coming from? When are they viewing your site? 55 Why have they picked YOUR site? How are they accessing your site? What technologies do they have? © 2002 D & D Enterprises Identify Information Sharing Needs When you create your blueprint, you need to spend time identifying your target audience and determining your mission statement When you determine the purpose of your web site, it helps you determine what kind of web site you require – you have identified your "information sharing needs" Information sharing needs can be categorized as internal or external This helps you to determine if you should create an Internet Web Site or an Intranet Web Site 56 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Surveying Your Information Sharing Needs Reports Reports prepared by department? Required information? Access to the reports? Projects Projects within the department? Required information? Who needs information? Customer Support Required information? Reduce requests by providing information? 57 Communication Tasks Information provided regularly? Information required regularly? Forms Forms used by organization? Information requirements? Combine or eliminate forms? Move paper-based forms online? Databases Identify type of information? Type of access and results required? © 2002 D & D Enterprises Share with Organization Accounting Data Organizational Charts Sales Projections Share with Customers Product Information Ordering and Payment 58 Project Status Information Product Availability Shipping Status © 2002 D & D Enterprises Identify Information Sharing Needs Internal information sharing needs are addressed by an intranet Web solution External information sharing needs are addressed by an Internet Web solution 59 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Audience Analysis – WHO? External Business to Consumer Business to Business Business to Customer Internal Employee to Employee Department to Department Manager to Employee 60 © 2002 D & D Enterprises External Audience Business to Consumer http://www.mysimon.com/ 61 © 2002 D & D Enterprises External Audience Business to Business Business Online Publishers International http://www.bopi.com/ 62 © 2002 D & D Enterprises External Audience Business to Customer http://www.amazon.com/ http://www.godiva.com/ 63 © 2002 D & D Enterprises WHAT? What do THEY want? You have defined your mission statement, you know what you want the site visitor to do, say, think, or feel after they visit your Web Site Now, flip it, what do do they want? Do we have a match? 64 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Audience Specifications -- WHERE Where are Viewers Coming From? Home Work School Public Places Airport terminals Cybercafes Geography (local or international) 65 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Audience Specifications -- WHEN When is your site being viewed? Weekdays Weeknights Weekends 66 © 2002 D & D Enterprises WHY? Why have site visitor's picked YOUR Web Site? Why not a competitor's? What makes your site so good for your target population? The goal of a good Web Site is to attract and retain members of the target population 67 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Audience Specifications HOW? 68 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Audience Specifications We have examined: Who? What? Where? When? Why? Now we must consider a most important and ever changing aspect, HOW, that is, using what technologies?? 69 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Audience Specifications – HOW? What technologies do your viewers use? What Browser? PC, Macintosh, UNIX? Netscape 3.x 4.x 6.x Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.x 4.x 5.x AOL? (More on this in a sec) Other like Opera? http://www.opera.com/ Download the browser of your choice at www.browsers.com 70 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Audience Specifications – HOW? What technologies do your viewers use? What Browser Extensions? Plug-ins: Shockwave, Flash, Real Audio, Specialized? With what programming Support: Java, Active X, JavaScript Cookies? Cookie FAQ: http://www.cookiecentral.com/faq.htm 71 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Audience Specifications – HOW? What technologies do your viewers have? Speed High speed always-on direct connect broadband or 28.8 dial-up? Audio Visual Support streaming audio, video, chat, IM? People in offices generally do not have SoundBlasters or speakers! Monitor Issues 72 Video card support and resolution varies wildly, and you have to consider color depth and gamma. 16 colors, 256 colors, True color? © 2002 D & D Enterprises HOW: What Screen Resolution? http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_4491.html (Feb 2000) [more on this later!] 11% 640 x 480 54% 800 x 600 How can you test for screen resolution? This is really for Web Pub II, but here is a JavaScript for automatically determining the site visitor's screen resolution http://javascript.internet.com/user-details/resolutionpage.html 73 © 2002 D & D Enterprises HOW: AOL User? In January 1999 CMP's TechWeb Reported that AOL had 15.1 million subscribers According to Dr. Crompton, there are more AOL subscribers than Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today…combined http://www.ultranet.com/~mejac/intro2/sld084.htm By January 2001 AOL had 27 million subscribers Source Ziff Davis News: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0%2C4586%2C2675364%2C00. html Current Estimates place AOL subscription numbers at 37 million… 74 © 2002 D & D Enterprises HOW: AOL User? So what? Well, for example, AOL uses their own added, proprietary image file compressed using the JohsonGrace compression algorithm on top of your gif and jpeg compression, so caveat emptor and do your homework! AOL Design Tips (meta list) http://webdesign.about.com/compute/webdesign/msubaol.htm http://webmaster.info.aol.com/ http://webdesign.about.com/cs/aol/ 75 © 2002 D & D Enterprises HOW: WebTV User? After more than 3 years on the market Web TV just topped 1 million subscribers in January 2000 http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2 522434,00.html WebTV Design Tips (meta list) http://webdesign.about.com/compute/webdesign/msubwe btv.htm 76 © 2002 D & D Enterprises HOW: WebTV User? See http://developer.webtv.net/ Screen resolution of only 544 x 372!! Titles truncate to 35 characters or less Frames are converted to tables in version 2 No frame support in version 1 Forms often choke if not coded perfectly Red and (*gasp*) white!! appear VERY bright Best on black or dark backgrounds 77 © 2002 D & D Enterprises HOW: Palm Pilot or Handheld PDA? Probably exaggerated, International Data Corporation projections show non-PC devices outnumbering PCs as Internet clients by the year 2005! (source: Internet World July 15, 1999 Page 61) 78 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Final Project Ok, so now you have the URLs and resources to determine the who, what, where, when, why and how of your blueprint and all the help you need to design the 5-9 page website for your final project! On the next slide are a few URLs to help your refine your blueprint! 79 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Blueprint Resources How to establish a clear mission, determine a target audience, create user personas, and clarify design goals http://builder.cnet.com/webbuilding/pages/Graphics/ Conceptualize/?tag=st.bl.3881.plbl Pre-Design Steps http://webdesign.about.com/compute/webdesign/library/weekl y/aa071999.htm Information Architecture Tutorial 80 http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/design/tutorials/tutorial 1.html © 2002 D & D Enterprises Blueprint Homework Blueprint Assignment: Create Sample Page Layout Sketches Main Page Content Page http://www.jshook.com/flexible _pages/planning.html 81 © 2002 D & D Enterprises File Naming Guidelines The Rules, The Guidelines and the Suggestions 82 © 2002 D & D Enterprises How to Name Your Files How you name your actual files is very important! You name: HTML files, Graphic files, etc. Files are read by all sorts of computers You need to take file names down to the least common denominator Make sure there is nothing “funny” some computers cannot understand 83 © 2002 D & D Enterprises index.html Most Web servers recognize the index.html as the default home page If you type http://www.technoweenies.com what you really see is http://www.technoweenies./index.html even though you didn't type it that way 84 © 2002 D & D Enterprises index.html The Web server knows to open the index.html file automatically without requiring the full URL to be typed in Therefore, if you name the opening page of your Web Site with the file name index.html the Web server will know to automatically display this file first 85 © 2002 D & D Enterprises index.html Take this "auto open" concept one step further: You can have an opening page to each section of your Web Site, not just to your home page There are two advantage to this Visitors to your site will not have to remember really long URLs and typing index.html again and again Site visitors won't end up looking at a generic site index like http://www.technoweenies.com/atp 86 © 2002 D & D Enterprises index.html So, index.html is significant and most professional Web developers use it as the root file name NOTE: On some servers a different name is used such as default.htm or index.asp 87 © 2002 D & D Enterprises index.html Remember, you are not limited to one index.html file on your site You can have an index.html file inside each folder that represents a major topic or category http://www.technoweenies.com/webpub/ http://www.technoweenies.com/webpub/html1/ http://www.technoweenies.com/html/ http://www.technoweenies.com/palm/ http://www.technoweenies.com/nav/ 88 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Six Filename Guidelines 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 89 Use all lowercase letters Use only letters or numbers, no special characters (4 exceptions) No spaces All web pages must end in .htm or .html Include extensions on graphics files like .jpg or .gif Keep filenames short © 2002 D & D Enterprises How to Name Files It's good practice to use short, easy-to-remember file names that describe the file A file called "page4.html" is not terribly descriptive, and a file named bobs_page_about_chicken_feet.html" is just too long Name the file concisely For example, Bob could use chickenfeet.html as his file name You'll want to keep file names short, because the longer they are, the more difficult it becomes to link to them correctly or type them into a browser 90 © 2002 D & D Enterprises How to Name Files You'll also want to avoid mixing case in your file names for the same reason A file called ChIcKenFeeT.hTml will frustrate people trying to link to it or even type it into a browser If you keep your file names lowercase, you'll avoid all sorts of potential problems 91 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Filename Guidelines SUGGESTION:Use all lowercase letters Technically, you can use capital letters BUT! It is easier to keep things straight and if names are all lowercase It is easier to keep things organized if names are all lowercase It looks cleaner if names are all lowercase Open: http://www.internetsd.com/courses/html1/casesensitive.html 92 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Filename Guidelines Use Only Letters or Numbers No Special Characters (4 Exceptions) Letters and Numbers no apostrophes ( ‘ ) no colons ( : ) or semi colons ( ; ) More on next slide Exceptions UNIX: You can use a tilde ( ~ ) ALL: You can use an underscore ( _ ) ALL: You can use a hyphen ( - ) ALL: You can use a period ( . ) 93 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Filename Guidelines No Special Characters Don't begin a filename with a dot (.) Don't use any of the following characters ;?{}<:|*\># )[]'$ "!%/ http://www.challenge.nm.org/Help/bfile98/tsld010.htm 94 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Filename Guidelines SUGGESTION: Use No Spaces It is best not to use a space in any file name Spaces in filenames Could cause a 404 Not Found Could Need to be rendered as %20 (most common) Example: http://www.technoweenies.com/atp/head%20labelled.jpg 95 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Filename Guidelines All of the web pages for this class must end in .htm or .html .htm is most common on older DOS and Win 3.1 PCs and older Macs .html is most common on new Macs and Win 95/98/NT and UNIX machines Note: Whether named .htm or .html pages are considered “HTML Files” On the web you will see .asp .php .cfm .jsp etc. but for now, just think .htm or .html 96 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Filename Guidelines Include Extensions on Graphics Files Make sure to name your graphics appropriately so both you and the computer know what they are (don’t worry if you don’t know what these files formats refer to yet - -that is part of next lecture's topic!) If it is a gif name it .gif If it is a jpeg name it .jpg or .jpeg If it is a png name it .png 97 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Filename Guidelines Keep Filenames Short Names should be kept short for several reasons, not the least of which is reduced typos of people who have to type in the address! Example: http://www1.scasd.k12.pa.us/scasd/pfe/5th/D-2/Simile-Metaphor/SimMet_HomePage.html How many rules does THIS name violate? 98 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Pop File Name Quiz!!! How well do you "get it"? 99 © 2002 D & D Enterprises Next... HTML Basics 100 © 2002 D & D Enterprises