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ITIB's HTML course information

Learning how to use HTML is an important step in this course. This page should help you get started.
GOOD TUTORIAL HERE

HTML in French

http://www.grr.ulaval.ca/grrwww/manuel/manuelhtml.html
http://www.xhtml.net/
http://www.allhtml.com/
http://oxygen.citeweb.net/toc.html
linked to this one: http://www.ccim.be/ccim328/,
http://hakatai.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/, to write good HTML
http://www.webhostdir.com . Best web hosting services

What is HTML, really?

If you surf the Internet with your browser, you may see flashy pages, with dazzling colors, fantastic pictures, brief animations and video, and maybe you hear some music. A veritable multimedia experience. But the basis of it all is text, plain ABC text. This text is called HTML, for Hypertext Markup Language. In this course we cannot teach you how to make music or video for the Internet. We can teach you the basics of HTML. By clever use of its tags (which are codes that you insert into the text) you can then insert an image (like a photo) into the webpage. The resulting website, such as your homepage, may then look very different from the underlying HTML text.

How to start?

There are three elements to consider when you make a website:

storage space on a server. A server is a computer that is permanently connected to the Internet (it has a permanent address that other computers on the Internet can find). Only once your file is stored on the server, can other people have access to your site to read it. You need software to copy your file from your PC to the server. This software tends to be called an FTP program (for File Transfer Protocol).
an HTML editor, which is a word processor that you use to make an HTML text. This text will become your website.
a browser, to surf the Internet to see your website, just as everyone else sees it. Netscape's Communicator and Microsoft Explorer are the best known browsers, but by no means the only one's around.

What is HTML?

What you need at this point is a brief to-the-point tutorial about how to make an HTML text. So here goes:

Dutch language HTML tutorials:
- Hans de Jong wrote an HTML tutorial for his students.
- Maikel Wijsbek's introduction to HTML.
English-language HTML tutorials:
- HotWired's Webmonkey has an HTML tutorial
- The C:Net website has a comprehensive set of tutorials. Please select the option 'Authoring & Site Design". There you see references to various HTML tutorials, including a very brief one: 'HTML for beginners'. For those of you in a hurry.
German language HTML tutorial:
- Stefan Münz wrote a German HTML tutorial (hint from our student Andrea Schrenk).
Design principles for your homepage:
- I found the core lesson on web design to be this nice statement: "Jeffrey Veen explores the history and future of Web design, concluding that you can never go wrong with speed, simplicity, and clarity." (from HotWired, Aug. 2000, http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/design/site_building/index.html).
- James "Eric" Tilton, "Composing good HTML" at http://www.ology.org/tilt/cgh/.
- More for entertainment, perhaps, is the following: Web Pages That Suck -- learn good Web design by looking at bad design, http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/
If you understand the basics, here is some extra information:
- If you have already covered the basics, you may want to look up the meaning of this or that tag. (If you don't yet understand what a tag is, don't worry, just go back to the HTML tutorial). Here is a list of tags, with their definition, and how you can use it.
- You don't want to have it all grey, don't you? Here is a webpage with information about using colors, or its new address (information from the author, Daan Runderkamp).
- On a more flimsy note, here are some animated GIFs (only for those of you who are not in a a hurry!)

Publish HTML files

If you have your homepage, you will want to publish it on the Internet. That requires that you get storage space on a server. Web hosting services do that: they offer you storage space on a server and software to copy your HTML files from your PC (with Internet connection) to their server. There are free (gratis) webhosting services on the Internet. We know of the following:

Yahoo! GeoCities gives you 15 megabytes storage space for free, see http://geocities.yahoo.com/main/about.html. Yahoo! includes an HTML editor, a website builder, and an FTP program. In short, it offers everything you need for our course.
The University gives students a 2.5MB server account. Register here. (I think it helps if you know some Dutch.)
The Freewebsite contains a page with free hosting services.
If you know of alternative free (and reliable) webhosting companies, tell us!!

OK, give it to me!

To make an HTML text for your homepage, you can use the program SiteAid. SiteAid is simple but usefull (or should I say, simple, and therefore useful?). The latest version is shareware (it costs about $20), but an older version is freeware (gratis). You can get the SiteAid HTML editor from the following locations:

The Site Aid website: http://www.siteaid.com/s_main.html, which has a freeware download page for SiteAid.
The SiteAid file has also been copied on the T: drive for students, at t:\educ\ib\bp1\7035\
C:Net Download.com, search for siteaid.
Windows 95 files, where you can find SiteAid on this page.
You get online help about SiteAid, and download a help file, at the SiteAid site http://www.siteaid.com/s_help.html
For a list of other HTML editors, see the cnet site (http://download.cnet.com/), choose PC, then search for 'HTML editor', and pick a free html editor. Shareware versions cost money, and demos usually expire after 30 days or so.

Copy your files on the server

Once you have your homepage HTML files (using the HTML editor), and storage space on an Internet server (using a webhosting service), you may need an FTP program to copy the file from your own PC to the server. There are two kind of sources for this kind of copy program: Your webhosting company may provide you with it. And SiteAid contains an FTP program (see the Tools menu).

Hints

If you see a nice website, and you would like to copy some of its ideas do this: surf to this website, and then go in the browser to the command View, and choose the option Page source or Source. This gives you the html code of the website you like so much. You can then copy this information, and paste it in SiteAid. Of course you should replace the actual text by your own! But at least you can copy some good ideas about lay-out.

Cool sites of the day

A selection of your websites. To be announced, once your are working on them!

This page was last updated by Marc van Wegberg, 8-9-2000. Contact me if you have any suggestions or questions about this page. See my home page for how to contact me.