Another SCPCUG member has joined our list of Member Home Pages (http://www.scpcug.com/memhome.html). Visit Bob Wilhoit's site at http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Tower/2415/. Bob is into writing poetry. It never ceases to amaze me as to the diverse interests we all have and yet the web brings us all together.

Last month we learned how to create a basic home page and get it up on the web. I told you this time we would discuss learning HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) so that you could expand and modify that home page. I really don't want to get into teaching HTML step by step as there are many places on the web that will give you that instruction. What I plan to do is give you the information to find some of these sites and also talk about my experiences with creating web pages. I'll explain why I think you need a basic understanding of HTML even if you use one of the HTML Editor programs like Microsoft's FrontPage (http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/) or Adobe's PageMill 3.0 (http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/pagemill/main.html).

Of the many sources of information on the web for learning HTML, one of the best (in my opinion) is called Web Tutor. Web Tutor 3.5 is a great basic course in HTML and is available as freeware at http://junior.apk.net/~jbarta/. Go there and look at the menu on the left side of the page. Clicking on the "Web Tutor 3.5" link will take you to a page offering download options. From there you can download the whole course as a 1.3Mb zip file. Simply unzip Web Tutor to its own directory. It does not install or scatter files all over your hard drive. Just double-click on the index.html file in the unzipped directory to run it. Web Tutor uses your browser to teach you HTML. This allows you to take the course offline at your leisure. The complete course is also available online so you can preview it first and then decide if you want to download it. Just click the individual menu items under "Main Tutorials" at the link mentioned above. I found it much easier to take the course offline as everything is instantly available on your hard drive whenever you want it.

The Web Tutor 3.5 file actually contains several tutorials plus a bunch of other goodies. There is the beginner tutorial "So, you want to make a Web Page!" along with other goodies like a Color Picker, Font Viewer, info on Netscape's 216 colors, info on Special Characters, Short List of free HTML Editors, etc. Other more advanced tutorials also included are "Table Tutor", "Form Tutor", and "Frames Tutor".

After you have completed the tutorials offered by Web Tutor you should have the basic knowledge you need to hand-code your web pages. You can now start to expand and modify your home page. One method of increasing your knowledge is by looking at the source code on other web pages. It is best to start with simple pages like the home pages of friends rather than commercial sites. (With commercial sites you might also get involved in a copyright problem.) If you are using Windows 95/98, first open your home page in WordPad. Next open your browser to view the source code of the web page you want to copy from. When you have the source code visible on the screen highlight what you want to copy, hit the "Ctrl" and "C" keys together to copy, and paste it into your home page within WordPad. Finally, save your home page as a text file with the htm or html extension. Then view the result in your browser by selecting open file and calling up your home page. Depending upon what you are trying to accomplish it may take a bit of trial and error to get the code perfected. This is a learning process to see how the code affects the resulting html page that appears in your browser. Once you understand what code changes affect the resulting web page, you are on your way to becoming an HTML expert.

Okay so you have taken the HTML course and tried your hand at hand-coding but long for the ease of using an HTML Editor. A word of caution here. The HTML Editors are not the answer to all your web page creation problems. They are a very useful tool for creating complex web pages but knowledge of HTML code is essential for correcting their mistakes and getting around their shortcomings. Before you rush out and buy an HTML Editor you might want to try a free one like the "Composer" that comes with Netscape Communicator. I tried Composer briefly when I was hand-coding my personal web pages and did not find it easy to understand yet other friends have used it and think it is great. What you will find is HTML Editors come in a number of flavors and it becomes a personal subjective choice as to what you like. You can check ZDnet's Software Library (http://www.zdnet.com/swlib/) for several HTML Editors to try out. I would stay away from Microsoft's FrontPage unless you are running a professional web site. A friend said it took him over a month to learn it going at it daily, just because it is so big and complex.

So which HTML Editor do I use for creating the web pages on the SCPCUG web site (http://www.scpcug.com) and why? The respective answers are "Adobe PageMill 3.0" and because the SCPCUG provided it for my use as Web Master. When I took the job of Web Master in May 98 I thought I could continue as I had on my personal web site by hand-coding the SCPCUG web pages. I was reluctant to try an HTML Editor as I knew there would be a learning curve. I very quickly found that the complexity of the SCPCUG web site that Dave Nottingham had originally created with Microsoft FrontPage was just too much for editing by hand. This was in fact a blow to my ego, although I had known for some time that the complexity of my personal web site was also getting to be too difficult to edit by hand. So where does the break point come when one must give up hand-coding for an HTML Editor? I would say when you get into tables of more than several rows. I have tables with many rows on both Curt & Milada Potsic's Home Page (http://www5.palmnet.net/~cpotsic) and Curt's Midi & Music Page (http://www5.palmnet.net/~cpotsic/index4.html). It was becoming a nightmare everytime I wanted to add a new link in the middle of my "Favorite Web Links" on the home page or a new midi song in the middle of my Songs table on the Midi & Music page.

It took me some time (a couple of hours/day for several weeks) to learn the PageMill program and I was already familiar with HTML code. Nevertheless I persisted and today am quite comfortable using it. One thing I have found is that PageMill wants to do things certain ways. It will screw up a perfectly fine existing page of code because things are not in the exact format and/or place it's program requires. This is probably true of most HTML Editors. This does not matter if you are starting out fresh and creating a new web page with the HTML Editor. But copying a page (or part of a page) of code from the web and then pasting it into an existing page you created with the editor might present problems. Last July I took my own personal web site (which I had hand-coded for two years) and dumped it into PageMill. I figured if I was forced to learn PageMill for editing the SCPCUG web site why not use it on my own site. That proved to be more of a challenge than I expected. It took me two weeks to get it all working again within PageMill. I still have to tell PageMill to ignore certain sections of code as it does not understand that code (but Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers do). To do this I use "NOEDIT" tags which informs PageMill to ignore everything between these tags. The CGI (Common Gateway Interface) code that is used on the SCPCUG home page for the visitor counter is an example of where these "NOEDIT" tags come into play. Here is what the source code looks like:

<!--NOEDIT--><FONT COLOR="#66ffcc"></FONT><TABLE WIDTH="154" BORDER="0"
CELLSPACING="1" CELLPADDING="2">
<TR>
<TD WIDTH="147" BGCOLOR="#00ffff">
<P><CENTER>Welcome!</CENTER></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH="147" BGCOLOR="#66ffcc">
<P><CENTER>You Are Visitor</CENTER></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH="147" BGCOLOR="#66ffcc">
<P><CENTER># <!--#exec cgi="/cgi-bin/counter"--></CENTER><a href="/access.html"></a></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH="147" BGCOLOR="#00ffff">
<P><CENTER>since May 31, 1998</CENTER></TD>
</TR>
</TABLE></TD><!--/NOEDIT-->

Without the "NOEDIT" tags PageMill automatically changes the code making the counter inoperable. Please note that this visitor counter code will only work for home pages based on Palmnet's server. (Palmnet, our Internet Service Provider, graciously hosts the SCPCUG by providing free server space for our web site and conduct of SCPCUG business.) If you are not a Palmnet customer, copying this code to your home page will not give you a working counter.

Every so often I still find myself having to go into the source code within PageMill to straighten out code which PageMill (because of its unique interpretation of the rules) chose to change in a way other than what I intended. The bottom line is no matter what HTML Editor you pick it is best to have a basic understanding of the HTML code and how it works or you will be totally lost when the editor does something you didn't intend. Sometimes the undo command will work but other times you are on your own.

Earlier I said I planned to give you information on finding some of the sites that instruct you in HTML. So far I have only told you about Web Tutor. Here are some other sites to check out: The Web Developer's Virtual Library: The Beginners Page at http://wdvl.internet.com/WebRef/Help/Begin.html; reallybig.com "The Complete Resource for All Web Builders" at http://reallybig.com/; The Webmasters Services at http://www.thewebmasters.bc.ca/resources.html; CNET's Builder.com at http://www.builder.com/. Under the download section of Builder.com you can also find HTML Editors. Finally, you might need a site to see if your site is "up to snuff". For that go to Web Site Garage at http://www.websitegarage.com/ and get a checkup.