Write your own web pages

There are several ways of getting published on the web. There are a number of commercial packages available (and some Freeware ones), which will help you to create pages, but they all have advantages and disadvantages. Using them is a bit like knowing how to drive a car, but being totally foxed when something goes wrong with your engine and you don't know how to fix it. Some word processors (such as 'Word') and some DTP packages (such as 'Pressworks') make it possible for you to write and draw your pages, insert images etc. in the normal way, and once you've finished them, click on the relevant button and it will be saved as a Web Page. This has the same problem of not always knowing what's going on under the bonnet - but then you may be quite happy with this. Break the Buddhist rule and take what has not been freely given! The 'source code' for most web pages is readily accessible - if you want to see the code which makes up this page, click on 'View' at the top of the Browser and then 'Page Source'. Click on the x close button in the top right corner to close it again. You can highlight some or all of the code, and copy and paste it into your own pages. This is a good way of learning how it all works - just change the text and replace the image sections with your own, and hey presto! Do it yourself! Basically a web page is just a simple text document - it's the user's browser which does all the work interpreting the codes. All you need to do is open Notepad, type in the relevant codes, and change the file extension to '.htm' when you save it. Below you can see the basic html (Hypertext Markup Language) code for a page. Why don't you try it out - open notepad, type in the text as shown below, save it as 'Test.htm' and then open it in your browser.

In my opinion 'doing it yourself' is much more satisfying, and allows you to do exactly what you want. For these pages I used a simple freeware package (see Author Information page) and I took one or two ideas from other pages on the web, but a lot of it has also been written using Notepad.

Notice that HTML commands are in 'greater than' and 'less than' brackets, these are called ‘tags’. Think of these commands as 'ON' and ‘OFF’ switches. The brackets containing a command are the ‘on’ switches and the brackets containing a command preceded by a forward slash are the 'off' switches. If you grew up on the old Amstrad 'green screen' word processor, you'll be familiar with this idea. In most modern word processors you also have on and off switches for things like bold and italic - clicking CTRL 'b' or CTRL 'i' respectively - the only difference being that you don't actually see the codes on the screen. With HTML the codes are not hidden until the browser interprets them. You can find lists of HTML codes in various places on the web - if you want to find out how to get a particular effect, just find a page which contains it, and view the Page Source. The main ones are covered in Joe Barta’s tutorials - see below.

If this sounds a bit confusing, help is at hand. Joe Barta has a brilliant set of tutorials for designing your own web pages. You can download the lot and work on them off-line. Joe's pages taught me all I know about HTML. Why not have a look?

Click on the idiot to see how to amuse one. (Joe Barta has a sense of humour!)