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HTML Hints, Tips and Other Stuff
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Tutorials |
Tips |
Graphics |
Software |
Site Submission |
Cascading Style Sheets
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If only someone had told me this at the beginning!
Funny 'ol thing design. Very subjective. What one person finds appealing and wonderful, another thinks is awful and hurts the eyes. As the Curious? Webmaster I have tried to make this site visually pleasing, informative, interesting, and perhaps a nice place to visit. I also did a lot of work during 2003 regarding accessibility
The code is written in the raw using Windows Notepad. There must be a certain creative masochism about it? I have played with one or two HTML editors, and I've no doubt they are useful if you have no knowledge of HTML coding, but as they seemed to assume at least a nodding acquaintance with the code - why not get in there and learn it?
I discovered HTML Notepad v 2.2 by Cranial Software which is not an HTML bells and whistles, do-it-all-for-you editor, but rather like a super version of Windows Wordpad with lots of short cuts - highly recommended!
There are some very useful sights on the web with excellent tips, instruction and tutorials about HTML. Here are some I found helpful.
TIP: After uploading the site do you find that some links won't work? This despite them working fine internally on our machine. I eventually discovered that file names are case-sensitive on some servers (UNIX servers for example). So keep all your file names in lower case.
TIP: If you are getting into HTML and live in the U.K. (where we spell things correctly!!), be aware that HTML uses American spelling: ie. COLOR and CENTER. Of course if you cannot see what the problem is, check out your dictionary ....ho hum!
TIP: The <FONT> </FONT>tag is an 'unofficial' tag, but is very useful, which is why it is widely used. It has some handy attributes.
For instance:
produces:
The FACE attribute enables the style of font to be changed, but only if the font is resident on the computer being used to view the page.
Size can alter the font size (unsurprisingly enough). The '+' is how much bigger you want it over the nominal size.
Color - note the american spelling changes the colour (UK spelling!)
The <FONT> tag works happily with Netscape and Internet Explorer.
Enjoy!
Colour codes: (or if you prefer, color) can be a bit daunting at first, and who can remember the code for azure? Not me for one, so put some colour You can use the FONT tag much more elegntly with Cascading Style Sheets
The animated GIFs come from various resourse sites on the web, but the "Curious", "?" and other rotating gif's were created using the Xara-3D GIF Animator. Click the link for a 15 day free trial. This is a most excellent piece of software created for the sole purpose of animating text - and it does it really well, so 10/10; 5 Star; Gold Medal!.
I refuse to use Gif Construction Set from Alchemy, as it has a lot of advertising for pagan material that comes with it, but an excellent GIF animator, "GIF MovieGear" can be found at the Movie Gear site.
Here are some places to visit for animated GIF info, software or for free GIF's.
Browsers: Plug-ins: There are no complex plug-ins required, although certain fonts are used which make the overall look of the site distinctive. I don't know about you, but I find it rather tedious to visit a site and to be told I need to spend anything from 20 mins to an hour downloading a piece of software to view the site in all its glory. Recently I had to detour and download the latest version of a certain plug-in to view a certain site. It worked fine, then the very next site I visited told me I needed an even later version - Hmmmm! Boring!
Music: Although I've deliberately avoided any audio content on this site - to date - I do like the idea of music on a site and the SSEYO KOAN plug-in (yes - I know!!) looks interesting. This is an intriguing piece of software. It's billed as an program which will produce everchanging, real-time generated music. You design the parameters, and the program does the rest. We shall see!
In the mean time embedding a midi file is quite good. Embedding a midi file is easy. The code is:
Where 'n' gives you the width and height of the playback graphic. 'n'=0 means that no playback icon shows. 'autostart=true' means the file plays when the page is loaded. 'loop=1" means it will play once; 'loop=2' twice etc.
trademarks are acknowledged
Site submission: So, now you've created that wonderful site, you're going to want the world to see it. Can I recommend a really great way of submitting your site to a number of the major search engines. I can? OK.
Go to I Need Hits. An excellent site which makes the submission process to a large number of search engines very easy, and who also supply However, I found I needed to register at specific mainstream search engines as well, for instance: Google: http://www.google.com/ Yahoo UK: http://www.yahoo.co.uk/ Lycos: http://www.lycos.com/ Web Crawler: http://webcrawler.com/
That pretty well wraps up the technical stuff Happy HTML'ing!: May the code be with you .... |
Send your favourite HTML Hints to the webmaster they may be included
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All original material ©2000 The Curious? Web Site
