Live Chat with Dave Taylor
at CompuServe's Internet Publishing Forum

Conference Date: March 28, 1998

Creating Cool HTML 4 Web Pages with Dave Taylor

Anne/Moderator Welcome to the Internet Publishing Forum
Today we welcome Dave Taylor, author of "Creating Cool HTML 4 Web Pages"
In his book, Dave brings you up to speed with the latest HTML tags, showing you how to create engaging Web pages that communicate your message as well as your style.
He also shows how to use graphics, animation and other special effects to help make your pages stand out. Dave has authored numerous Internet related books, including two previous editions of "Creating Cool Web Pages with HTML."
In addition, Dave is the author of the free Web Page Creation and Design course currently being offered here in the Internet Publishing Forum If you have a question for our guest, please type a single ? and we'll take your questions in order!
Dave, is there anything you'd like to add?

Dave Taylor sounds good for now!

jen The pages that have different colors in different areas....are they done with tables or is that Cascading Style Sheets?

Dave Taylor (Now I'm ready. I've got my background music started: Peter Gabriel "Shaking the Tree" :-)
Most likely those are done with tables. A typical use is to have the entire page defined as a zero-border table then each table 'cell' is assigned a different color. This can be very effective. Another strategy: a huge background graphic that has different colors in different areas and another zero-border table to precisely place things over the different colors. (precision placement, however, is much more powerful with style sheets)

jen What exactly are style sheets and are they only usable with IE 4 and Communicator browsers?

Dave Taylor style sheets are a super-complex addition to HTML added in Internet Explorer 3.x, then adopted by the W3C (world wide web consortium, the group that sets the HTML standards) for HTML 4.0. Style sheets let you define formatting in a separate language, so instead of using, say,
<FONT SIZE=4 COLOR=red>text</FONT>
you would instead define this more like
<DIV STYLE="font color=red size=14/16">text</DIV>
which looks more complex, but notice that it's given us some capabilities that are not part of regular HTML: we're specifying an EXACT point size (14) and the leading (the inter-line spacing) of 16 points. So if you wanted to have a paragraph of text double spaced, for example, you'd use:
<P STYLE="font: size=14/20">lots of text</P>
which would give you 14 point text within a 20 point line spacing.

Robert Beverly Sorry. I just realized that my question may not be related to this topic. It's about cookies. I'll refrain, unless otherwise instructed.

Dave Taylor cookies are a good question if you'd like... it's covered in the book! :-)

Robert Beverly ok. I hate them. I don't trust them. Is it really true that they are completely harmless?

Dave Taylor I use cookies extensively on my sites to allow personalization and to add 'memory' to our interaction. I have never found a site that was greviously misusing cookies in all my surfing, and 99% of the time it's something like "LastVisit=25Mar98" or similar. You can see more about cookies, including reading some privacy articles, at
http://www.intuitive.com/articles/cookies/

Robert Beverly If someone WERE to want to use them in a nefarious manner, is it possible?

Dave Taylor Not that I know of. The worst you can do with cookies is keep track of where someone has visited *on your site*. That's the key: you can't get cookies from other sites however you finagle it.

Mary I am a newbie to web pages. I have created a web page with a background, some gifs and some links. What is javascript? How does it compare to perl? When is it a good idea to use them

Dave Taylor An interesting question, Mary. The lay of the land is thus: JavaScript (and Visual Basic, if you must) are scripting languages for *within a web page* so they're sent along with the HTML and interpreted by the browser. That's how I get the 'rollover' effects on my home page (www.intuitive.com). Perl, C, C++, etc etc are languages that execute *on the server* and can output HTML pages. That's how search engines typically work, for example. Java is a hybrid: it can be compiled into little programs called 'applets' that are then sent along with the web page (but not in a human-readable form) and it can also be used for programming the server too. Does that clarify things?

jen What is your opinion on the Java versus Microsoft Active X debate?

Dave Taylor blech. I think that Java is overhyped, but Active X is supported by significantly less browsers and apparently has more security problems. I use neither, actually, but if I had to pick one, I'd go for Java.

jen Thanks!!

Natassha I 'm taking a class on HTML at school and we are just starting to do pages with graphics. When I do mine and test it, the graphics and page look fine. But when I check it on the web, my graphics are missing. What can I be doing wrong?

Dave Taylor are you uploading the graphics to your web server along with the HTML files?

Natassha yep

Dave Taylor what kind of server are you running? (i.e, Mac/PC/Unix)

Natassha a vax system

Dave Taylor so that'll be running Ultrix, DEC's version of Unix... you need to double -check the case of the filenames (e.g,. if you reference <IMG SRC=GRAPHIC.GIF> on your PC it'll work even if the file is actually called "graphic.gif", but when you upload it to a Unix server, you *must* ensure that the case is consistent.
A second possible problem, btw, is that you're uploading the graphics in 'text' mode rather than 'binary' mode: double check your upload/FTP utility.

jen What is the difference between server side and client side includes?

Dave Taylor Sheesh, Jen, you're hoggin' the mike! :-) Server-side includes let you do nice things server to the browser. You can include files, for example, with

depending on what's supported. Client-side includes I haven't heard of, and I think you're talking about client-side and server-side *image Maps* anyway. Right?

jen Yes...... I think you are right!! Thanks

Mary what's a good way to do a table so that one of the fields can link to another web page, basically a good table design tool

Dave Taylor (Jen: client-side image maps are vastly superior...bail on server-side image maps)
Mary, that's pretty straightforward...
<TABLE> <TR> <TD><a href=newurl>some text</a></TD> </TR> </TABLE>
would give you a single cell with a link within. Is that what you mean?

Mary I am not sure, I'll try it tho. Thanks :)

James M Ball I am totally new to web page creation, where do you suggest I go to start?

Dave Taylor GREAT QUESTION, JAMES! :-)
I suggest you start with my lovely new book! "Creating Cool HTML 4 Web Pages" from IDG Books. You can get a sneak preview: www.intuitive.com/coolweb/ :-)

Anne/Moderator Dave, why don't you tell us more about your book and how we can get a copy?

Dave Taylor Um, the book is a major rewrite of the previous best-selling edition, which covered HTML 3.2. The new edition also adds about 150 pages of new material and examples for HTML 4, and the CDROM is cooler: it's Mac and PC and has lots of cool stuff thereon.
My Mom thinks it's a good book, so what else can you ask for? :-)

Robert Beverly What can you do with HTML 4 that you couldn't do with HTML 3.2?

Dave Taylor Style sheets, dynamic html, layers, much more sophisticated tables, cooler frames designs, better precision control of information placement on page just to start. :-)

Robert Beverly wow ok

Brian What software packages would I need to create web pages? Can I just write scripts and load them, and do I need something more?

Dave Taylor What I really like about the Web is that you can create excellent pages with the free applications already on your PC or Mac. For example, I teach an advanced design class at San Jose State University where we do everything in NotePad (included free with Win95).
Oops: I'll add one thing: get a good graphics editor. I *love* PhotoShop, but it's super-complex.

Robert Beverly What exactly is "dynamic html"? I've heard of it, but am not sure about the nature of it.

Dave Taylor Dynamic HTML is a marketing term (really!) for layers + JavaScript, as far as I can tell. The problem is that IE supports slightly different JavaScript than Navigat or, and the two have significantly different models for layers (one page of material is literally atop another: you can see it with the annoying menus on the Netscape site if you 're running the very latest version of Navigator)

Robert Beverly I yield the floor to Brian.

Brian I have Photodex's CPIC - is this a good example of software I can use for scripts?

Dave Taylor I have to admit that I've never even heard of Photodex's CPIC (or Photodex thems elves) so I can't answer that, I'm afraid.

Jeff Shuster Anne, Dave's last response to Robert answered my question.

Anne/Moderator We should probably start wrapping things up here anyway!
If there are any last questions for Dave, please type a single ? and we'll take them in order

Steven A. Fenters Thanks, Dave. Is there a way to have a browser print just one page as if you had set it up in a word processor or say Pagemaker?

Dave Taylor If you're really trying for control over printouts, your best bet is to look into Adobe Acrobat and its PDF (page description format) language. You can get more information on the Adobe site (www.adobe.com)

Joy W. I'd like to create some animations for my Web pages. Do you know if there is an animation software package available?

Dave Taylor Animations with animated GIFs, Flash, Shockwave, or Java applets?

Joy W. Yes.
Ooops. GIFs.

Dave Taylor different answers for each.. . Ahh... I use "GIF Builder" on the Mac and there are also some good PC GIF animation tools that are... included on the CDROM with my new book! :-)

Anne/Moderator Dave, did you have a question?

Dave Taylor I wanted to invite everyone with a web site of any sort to type in their URL so it sneaks into the transcript... :-)
http://www.intuitive.com/taylor/
is mine
Robert Beverly http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rbeverly

Curtise McKenzie http://tenbrooks11.lanminds.com

Anne/Moderator http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/apapina
Are you going to link to us all? (G)

Robert Beverly http://www.rootsweb.com/~vawise

Anne/Moderator BTW, Dave's book as well as all books in our conference series are available at http://www.glenbrook.com/bookstore How's that?

jen Do you mention in your book which features of 4 work with which browsers?

Dave Taylor Jen, yes I do. As of the writing, at least. Web browsers evolve quickly!

jen Thanks!!

Jeff Shuster How much is the book?

Dave Taylor It's 29.99 minus 20% through Glenbrook or my own site, and who knows how much your local bookstore will charge! :-)

Anne/Moderator Dave, thank you so much for your time today! We've really covered a lot in the last hour Do you have any final words of advice for us?

Dave Taylor Remember that *fast* and elegant pages with *content* are really what makes a cool web site, not utilizing every possible interface element. Go forth and multiply! (well, webify) :-)

Jeff Shuster Thanks Dave!

Mary thanks

Robert Beverly Yes, thank you.

jen Thanks..... !!!!

Dave Taylor oh - feel free to email me questions any time. I don't always get to them the same day, but my mailbox is always open. taylor@intuitive.com

Anne/Moderator If anyone is interested in a full course on web page creation and design download WEB101.TXT from this forum We're up to lesson 13 now, I believe Dave is your local, friendly professor :)

Dave Taylor bye all! it's been fun and thanks for the fish. :-)

For more information about this or other conferences in our series, please email anne@glenbrook.com. This interview is © 1998 Glenbrook Systems, Inc. & Intuitive Systems. All Rights Reserved. Void where prohibited. Your mileage may vary. Don't fold, spindle, or mutilate. What does spindle mean in this context, anyway?

... back to Intuitive Systems ...

Anne/Moderator	Welcome to the Internet Publishing Forum Today we welcome Dave Taylor, author of "Creating Cool HTML 4 Web Pages" In his book, Dave brings you up to speed with the latest HTML tags, showing you how to create engaging Web pages that communicate your message as well as your style. He also shows how to use graphics, animation and other special effects to help make your pages stand out. Dave has authored numerous Internet related books, including two previous editions of "Creating Cool Web Pages with HTML." In addition, Dave is the author of the free Web Page Creation and Design course currently being offered here in the Internet Publishing Forum If you have a question for our guest, please type a single ? and we'll take your questions in order! Dave, is there anything you'd like to add?
Dave Taylor	sounds good for now!
jen	The pages that have different colors in different areas....are they done with tables or is that Cascading Style Sheets?
Dave Taylor	(Now I'm ready. I've got my background music started: Peter Gabriel "Shaking the Tree" :-) Most likely those are done with tables. A typical use is to have the entire page defined as a zero-border table then each table 'cell' is assigned a different color. This can be very effective. Another strategy: a huge background graphic that has different colors in different areas and another zero-border table to precisely place things over the different colors. (precision placement, however, is much more powerful with style sheets)

jen	What exactly are style sheets and are they only usable with IE 4 and Communicator browsers?
Dave Taylor	style sheets are a super-complex addition to HTML added in Internet Explorer 3.x, then adopted by the W3C (world wide web consortium, the group that sets the HTML standards) for HTML 4.0. Style sheets let you define formatting in a separate language, so instead of using, say, <FONT SIZE=4 COLOR=red>text</FONT> you would instead define this more like <DIV STYLE="font color=red size=14/16">text</DIV> which looks more complex, but notice that it's given us some capabilities that are not part of regular HTML: we're specifying an EXACT point size (14) and the leading (the inter-line spacing) of 16 points. So if you wanted to have a paragraph of text double spaced, for example, you'd use: <P STYLE="font: size=14/20">lots of text</P> which would give you 14 point text within a 20 point line spacing.

Robert Beverly	Sorry. I just realized that my question may not be related to this topic. It's about cookies. I'll refrain, unless otherwise instructed.
Dave Taylor	cookies are a good question if you'd like... it's covered in the book! :-)
Robert Beverly	ok. I hate them. I don't trust them. Is it really true that they are completely harmless?
Dave Taylor	I use cookies extensively on my sites to allow personalization and to add 'memory' to our interaction. I have never found a site that was greviously misusing cookies in all my surfing, and 99% of the time it's something like "LastVisit=25Mar98" or similar. You can see more about cookies, including reading some privacy articles, at http://www.intuitive.com/articles/cookies/
Robert Beverly	If someone WERE to want to use them in a nefarious manner, is it possible?
Dave Taylor	Not that I know of. The worst you can do with cookies is keep track of where someone has visited on your site. That's the key: you can't get cookies from other sites however you finagle it.

Mary	I am a newbie to web pages. I have created a web page with a background, some gifs and some links. What is javascript? How does it compare to perl? When is it a good idea to use them
Dave Taylor	An interesting question, Mary. The lay of the land is thus: JavaScript (and Visual Basic, if you must) are scripting languages for within a web page so they're sent along with the HTML and interpreted by the browser. That's how I get the 'rollover' effects on my home page (www.intuitive.com). Perl, C, C++, etc etc are languages that execute on the server and can output HTML pages. That's how search engines typically work, for example. Java is a hybrid: it can be compiled into little programs called 'applets' that are then sent along with the web page (but not in a human-readable form) and it can also be used for programming the server too. Does that clarify things?

jen	What is your opinion on the Java versus Microsoft Active X debate?
Dave Taylor	blech. I think that Java is overhyped, but Active X is supported by significantly less browsers and apparently has more security problems. I use neither, actually, but if I had to pick one, I'd go for Java.
jen	Thanks!!

Natassha	I 'm taking a class on HTML at school and we are just starting to do pages with graphics. When I do mine and test it, the graphics and page look fine. But when I check it on the web, my graphics are missing. What can I be doing wrong?
Dave Taylor	are you uploading the graphics to your web server along with the HTML files?
Natassha	yep
Dave Taylor	what kind of server are you running? (i.e, Mac/PC/Unix)
Natassha	a vax system
Dave Taylor	so that'll be running Ultrix, DEC's version of Unix... you need to double -check the case of the filenames (e.g,. if you reference <IMG SRC=GRAPHIC.GIF> on your PC it'll work even if the file is actually called "graphic.gif", but when you upload it to a Unix server, you must ensure that the case is consistent. A second possible problem, btw, is that you're uploading the graphics in 'text' mode rather than 'binary' mode: double check your upload/FTP utility.

jen	What is the difference between server side and client side includes?
Dave Taylor	Sheesh, Jen, you're hoggin' the mike! :-) Server-side includes let you do nice things server to the browser. You can include files, for example, with <!--#include file="header.html"--> depending on what's supported. Client-side includes I haven't heard of, and I think you're talking about client-side and server-side image Maps anyway. Right?
jen	Yes...... I think you are right!! Thanks

Mary	what's a good way to do a table so that one of the fields can link to another web page, basically a good table design tool
Dave Taylor	(Jen: client-side image maps are vastly superior...bail on server-side image maps) Mary, that's pretty straightforward... <TABLE> <TR> <TD><a href=newurl>some text</a></TD> </TR> </TABLE> would give you a single cell with a link within. Is that what you mean?
Mary	I am not sure, I'll try it tho. Thanks :)

James M Ball	I am totally new to web page creation, where do you suggest I go to start?
Dave Taylor	GREAT QUESTION, JAMES! :-) I suggest you start with my lovely new book! "Creating Cool HTML 4 Web Pages" from IDG Books. You can get a sneak preview: www.intuitive.com/coolweb/ :-)

Anne/Moderator	Dave, why don't you tell us more about your book and how we can get a copy?
Dave Taylor	Um, the book is a major rewrite of the previous best-selling edition, which covered HTML 3.2. The new edition also adds about 150 pages of new material and examples for HTML 4, and the CDROM is cooler: it's Mac and PC and has lots of cool stuff thereon. My Mom thinks it's a good book, so what else can you ask for? :-)

Robert Beverly	What can you do with HTML 4 that you couldn't do with HTML 3.2?
Dave Taylor	Style sheets, dynamic html, layers, much more sophisticated tables, cooler frames designs, better precision control of information placement on page just to start. :-)
Robert Beverly	wow ok

Brian	What software packages would I need to create web pages? Can I just write scripts and load them, and do I need something more?
Dave Taylor	What I really like about the Web is that you can create excellent pages with the free applications already on your PC or Mac. For example, I teach an advanced design class at San Jose State University where we do everything in NotePad (included free with Win95). Oops: I'll add one thing: get a good graphics editor. I love PhotoShop, but it's super-complex.

Robert Beverly	What exactly is "dynamic html"? I've heard of it, but am not sure about the nature of it.
Dave Taylor	Dynamic HTML is a marketing term (really!) for layers + JavaScript, as far as I can tell. The problem is that IE supports slightly different JavaScript than Navigat or, and the two have significantly different models for layers (one page of material is literally atop another: you can see it with the annoying menus on the Netscape site if you 're running the very latest version of Navigator)

Robert Beverly	I yield the floor to Brian.

Brian	I have Photodex's CPIC - is this a good example of software I can use for scripts?
Dave Taylor	I have to admit that I've never even heard of Photodex's CPIC (or Photodex thems elves) so I can't answer that, I'm afraid.

Jeff Shuster	Anne, Dave's last response to Robert answered my question.

Anne/Moderator	We should probably start wrapping things up here anyway! If there are any last questions for Dave, please type a single ? and we'll take them in order

Steven A. Fenters	Thanks, Dave. Is there a way to have a browser print just one page as if you had set it up in a word processor or say Pagemaker?
Dave Taylor	If you're really trying for control over printouts, your best bet is to look into Adobe Acrobat and its PDF (page description format) language. You can get more information on the Adobe site (www.adobe.com)

Joy W.	I'd like to create some animations for my Web pages. Do you know if there is an animation software package available?
Dave Taylor	Animations with animated GIFs, Flash, Shockwave, or Java applets?
Joy W.	Yes. Ooops. GIFs.
Dave Taylor	different answers for each.. . Ahh... I use "GIF Builder" on the Mac and there are also some good PC GIF animation tools that are... included on the CDROM with my new book! :-)

Anne/Moderator	Dave, did you have a question?
Dave Taylor	I wanted to invite everyone with a web site of any sort to type in their URL so it sneaks into the transcript... :-) http://www.intuitive.com/taylor/ is mine
Robert Beverly	http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rbeverly
Curtise McKenzie	http://tenbrooks11.lanminds.com
Anne/Moderator	http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/apapina Are you going to link to us all? (G)
Robert Beverly	http://www.rootsweb.com/~vawise

Anne/Moderator	BTW, Dave's book as well as all books in our conference series are available at http://www.glenbrook.com/bookstore How's that?

jen	Do you mention in your book which features of 4 work with which browsers?
Dave Taylor	Jen, yes I do. As of the writing, at least. Web browsers evolve quickly!
jen	Thanks!!

Jeff Shuster	How much is the book?
Dave Taylor	It's 29.99 minus 20% through Glenbrook or my own site, and who knows how much your local bookstore will charge! :-)

Anne/Moderator	Dave, thank you so much for your time today! We've really covered a lot in the last hour Do you have any final words of advice for us?
Dave Taylor	Remember that fast and elegant pages with content are really what makes a cool web site, not utilizing every possible interface element. Go forth and multiply! (well, webify) :-)

Jeff Shuster	Thanks Dave!
Mary	thanks
Robert Beverly	Yes, thank you.
jen	Thanks..... !!!!
Dave Taylor	oh - feel free to email me questions any time. I don't always get to them the same day, but my mailbox is always open. taylor@intuitive.com
Anne/Moderator	If anyone is interested in a full course on web page creation and design download WEB101.TXT from this forum We're up to lesson 13 now, I believe Dave is your local, friendly professor :)
Dave Taylor	bye all! it's been fun and thanks for the fish. :-)