University of Oregon - Department of Architecture - ARCH 424/524 Cheng - Advanced Design Development Media

Session Four

Web Authoring III
Jan 16, 1996

Objectives: To become resourceful at learning about HTML

I. Strategies for Learning HTML

A. Use the Web to find learning resources

For example, using the Altavista Web search engine, I located Beyond the Bones of HTML and HTML Tutorials. B. Look at the HTML source of examples. Use the HTML Assistant in Pagespinner to see how tags relate to their result.

C. Copy from good examples. Download the HTML source of WWW pages which do what you want to do by saving the file to your local disk. Replace their text and graphics with your own, keeping the structure.

D. Figure out where to get help:

On-line sources
Reference books in the Computer Center library, Knight Library ITC (HTML Sourcebook by Ian S. Graham)
Classmates
E-mail to teaching assistants or instructor
Sunday night help sessions, Millrace Lab 7p.m.
Nancy Cheng's office hours Tuesday 1-3 p.m.

II. HTML Do's and Don'ts

A. DO check your links: Make sure that all your links contain the correct relative references to the file locations.

B. DO create a consistent feel to all related pages by standardizing type sizes, colors, formats. Adopt a template page and then modify it for subsequent pages.

C. DO plan the nodes of your site

D. DO provide an index, map or navigation tools

E. DON'T go crazy with color

III. Image Map Workshop

A.Image Map Basics

B. Making an Image Map

IV. Optimizing graphics for transmission

A. Smaller files = faster, therefore reduce the size of images and the number of colors used. If you want the files to be read from foreign countries, keep sizes of files small (<40K).

B. File formats: Compuserve GIFs are most universal. JPG works better for scanned photographs; experiment with level of compression to get best balance of quality and file size.

Transparent GIFs: "GIF89a" format allows a background to show through: you can export from Photoshop into this format or use the Graphic Converter to do so.

C. Use the ALT modifier within an IMG tag to provide a text preview of alternative to a slowly displaying image. See Pagespinner's HTML Assistant.

D. Tiling background GIFs

edited Jan 16, 1996 by nywcheng