Table of Contents
Preface Acknowledgments
Part I: Building a Wicked Cool Web Page
Chapter 1: So What's All This Web Jazz?
- What Is the Web Anyway?
- Linear media
- Hypermedia
- Cool spots on the Web
- Introduction to Internet Explorer
- Launching Internet Explorer
- Changing the default page
- All about URLs
- URLs to the Rescue
- Reading a URL
- FTP via URL
- Anonymous FTP
- Nonanonymous FTP
- Ports
- Using FTP URLs
- Special characters in URLs
- E-mail via URL
- Telnet via URL
- Usenet news via URL
- The heart of the Web: HTTP URLs
- Basics of HTML Layout
- HTML and browsers
- If you open it, close it
- Breaking at Paragraphs and Lines
- Building Your First Web Page
- Launching your HTML editor
- Saving your file as HTML
- Opening the file in Internet Explorer
- Improving the HTML and viewing it in the browser
- Breaking Your Document into Sections
- Adding a Title to Your Page
- Adding Footer Material
- Defining Section Heads
- Using the Horizontal Rule
- Introducing XHTML
- First, a Little History
- Helping Readers Navigate with Bold and Italic
- Underlining, Monospace, and Other Text Changes
- Specifying Font Sizes, Colors, and Faces
- Applying Logical Styles
- Putting It All Together
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- Types of CSS
- Inline CSS
- One definition, many references
- Sharing a single style sheet
- The Components of CSS
- Classes and IDs
- Subclasses
- Adding comments within CSS
- Compatible style blocks
- Text Formatting with CSS
- Bold text
- Italics
- Changing Font Family, Size, and Color
- Typefaces and monospace
- Changing font size
- The color of text
- Additional Neato Text Tricks in CSS
- Small capitals
- Stretching or squishing letter spacing
- Stretching or squishing words
- Changing line height
- Text alignment
- Vertical text alignment
- Text decorations
- Changing text case
- Putting it all together
- Definition Lists
- Good List, Bad List
- Unordered (Bulleted) Lists
- Ordered (Numbered) Lists
- List Formats
- Bullet shapes
- CSS control over lists
- Counting the CSS way
- List-style shortcuts
- Character Entities in HTML Documents
- Nonbreaking Spaces
- Comments within HTML Code
- Pointing to Other Web Pages
- Referencing Non-Web Information
- Referencing Internal Documents with Relative URLs
- Organizing a Web Site
- Defining Web Document Jump Targets
- Adding Jump Links to Your Web Pages
- Jumping into organized lists
- Linking to jump targets in external documents
- Changing Link Colors
- Image Formats
- Including Images in Web Pages
- Text Alternatives for Text-Based Web Browsers
- Image Alignment Options
- Standard alignment
- More sophisticated alignment
- Background Colors and Graphics
- Where Can You Find Images?
- Creating your own
- Clip art or canned image libraries?
- Scanned or digital photographs
- Working with digital photographs
- Grabbing images off the Net
- Art today
- The shock zone
- But wait! There's more . . .
- Transparent Colors
- Animated GIF images
- Image-Mapped Graphics
- Building an image map
- Audio, Video, and Other Media
- Movies all night
- Streaming audio and video
Part II: Rockin' Page Design Strategies
Chapter 8: Tables and Frames
- Organizing Information in Tables
- Basic table formatting
- Advanced table formatting
- Table Attributes That Aren't 100% Portable
- Modifying edges and grid lines
- Tricks with Table Layouts
- Tables within Tables
- Grouping Table Elements for Faster Rendering
- Grouping Tables to Speed Up Display
- Pages within Pages: Frames
- The basics of frames
- Specifying frame panes and sizes
- More fun with frames
- Inline Frames
- An Introduction to HTML Forms
- Asking for feedback on your site
- Adding drop-down lists and radio buttons
- Tweaking the select element
- Fancy Form Formatting
- Easy Searching from Your Page
- Another Look at Hidden Variables
- How CGI Scripts Work
- The World's Simplest CGI Example
- Sending information via the environment
- Sending and Reading Data
- Receiving information from forms
- Learning more about CGI programming
- The button Input Type
- Using Labels to Organize User Focus
- Dividing Forms into Fieldsets
- Tab Key Control on Input
- The accesskey Attribute
- Disabled and Read-Only Elements
- An Overview of JavaScript
- Variables
- Where do you put JavaScript?
- Events
- Expressions
- Looping mechanisms
- Subroutines, built-in and user-defined
- Built-in functions
- Testing Browser Compatibility
- Graphical Rollovers
- Creating a new image container
- Assigning a URL to the new image container
- Changing values on the fly
- Telling the time
- Time of day, the friendly version
- Locale-specific date and time
- A built-in clock
- Testing Form Values
- Creating a test condition
- A Temperature Converter
- Other Scripting Solutions
- Visual Basic Script
- Java
- Referencing Java applets
- Online Java applets
- ActiveX
- XSLT
- Flash
- Boxes and Containers
- The Different Parts of a Container
- Margins
- Borders
- Multiple value options
- Border-style values
- Padding
- Container Dimensions
- Setting the container height
- Text and container flow
- Container Positioning
- Absolute positioning
- Relative positioning
- So what's the point?
- Fixed positioning
- Hide Containers with the Visibility: Attribute
- Controlling visibility with JavaScript
- The display: attribute controls visibility and flow
- Stacking: Using z-indexes for a 3D page
- Using JavaScript to change z-index values
- What Is a Weblog?
- Working with a Weblog
- Installing a weblog
- Configuring a weblog
- Adding a weblog entry
- The World of RSS
- Creating Valid XML / RSS Feeds
- Validating an RSS feed
- Exploring further
Part III: Expanding Your Page into a Web Site
Chapter 14: Web Sites versus Web Pages
- Working with Subdirectories
- The subdirectory structure of AnswerSquad
- An even bigger site: Intuitive.com
- Protecting Web Sites and Directories
- Server-Side Includes
- Useful server-side include options
- config
- include
- echo
- fsize
- flastmod
- exec
- SSI environment variables
- Building a Web site using SSI
- What Makes a Site Usable?
- Amount of information presented
- Organize information on the page
- Standardize the screen layout
- Presentation of text and graphics
- Choice and uses of color
- Navigating Your Web Site
- Tracking navigation
- Site search engines
- Site maps
- Using Cookies to Remember User Information
- Validating HTML and XHTML Web Pages
- Specifying a character set
- Validating an HTML page
- Validating XHTML Pages
- Validating CSS
- MIME types and brick walls
- Uploading CSS specifications by file
- Creating Valid Mobile Web Page Layouts
- A deck of cards
- WAP versus WML
- So what does WML look like?
- Producing Crawler-Friendly Sites
- Creating meaningful titles
- Using keywords in your title
- Using the <meta> tag
- Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com)
- Nostarch Press (http://www.nostarch.com)
- Intuitive Systems (http://www.intuitive.com)
- The Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/)
- Contentious (http://www.contentious.com)
- Other uses for the <meta> tag
- Content rating with PICS
- Keeping crawlers away
- The Dark Side of Crawlers
- Registering with Web Index and Search Sites
- Joining a directory site
- Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com)
- The Open Directory Project (http://www.dmoz.org/)
- Signing up for a crawler or robot site
- Google (http://www.google.com)
- Lycos (http://www.lycos.com)
- AltaVista (http://www.altavista.com)
- Tying in with Related Sites Using a Web Ring
- The Basics of Banner Advertising
- Text Advertising Options and Pay Per Click
- Smart text advertisements
- Publicizing Your Site
Closing Thoughts
Appendix A: Step-by-Step Web Site Planning Guide
Appendix B: Finding a Home for Your Web Site
Index
