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By: Anonymous
ANATOMY OF A WEB PAGE A web page is an electronic document written in a
computer language called HTML, short for Hypertext Markup Language. Each web
page has a unique address, called a URL, short for Uniform Resource Locator,
which identifies its location on the network. A website has one or more
related web pages, depending on how it's designed. Web pages on a website are
linked together through a system of hyperlinks, so that you can jump between
them by clicking on a link. On the Web, you navigate, popularly knowing as
surfing, through pages of information based on what interests you at that
particular moment. Home Page When you browse the World Wide Web you'll see the
term home page quite a lot. Think of a home page as the starting point of a
website. Like the table of contents of a book or magazine, the home page in
most cases gives an overview of what you'll find at the website. A website can
have one page, many pages or a few long ones, depending on how it's designed.
If there isn't a lot of information, the home page may be the only page. But
usually you will find at least a few other pages. Web pages vary wildly in
their design and content, but most use a traditional magazine format. At the
top of the page is a masthead or banner graphic. Then there's a list of items,
such as articles, often with a brief description. The items in the list are
usually hot, meaning that they are linked to other pages in the website or to
other websites. Sometimes these links are highlighted words in the body of the
text or are arranged in a list, just like an index. They can also be a
combination of both. A web page can also have images that link to other
content. Designing the structure of your Web site Designing your Web site
begins with planning the purpose of the site, what the content will be, and
how you want it to be structured. A well-designed Web site can make it easy
for your audience to navigate and get the information you want them to
receive. It can also make it easier for you to manage and update later on.
Planning the purpose and content of the site Perhaps the most important
consideration is figuring out how your site will serve your intended audience.
Your site may provide entertainment, or a special service, such as access to
reference materials, advertising, or sales of goods and services. Your site
could include a questionnaire that solicits information from your viewers.
Knowing what information your viewers want and how often you should update
that information will help you maintain your site so that it's fresh and
useful. The more you know about your audience, the better you can serve them
with your site. Outlining the structure of the site When you plan your site,
you may want to experiment with several designs for organizing information,
and consider multiple ways people can navigate to the individual pages in your
site. Most people will experience your site one page at a time with the home
page as the starting page. The home page will often have some sort of table of
contents that describes what's on the site. Sketching an outline or flow chart
of your site can illustrate the home page and how it will link to the other
pages in the site. You can resolve any design issues and change the overall
structure of the site before you create the actual pages and links in Home
Page. It's always possible that someone may arrive at another page in your
site first. For example, someone using a search engine such as Yahoo or Alta
Vista may search for a keyword that appears somewhere within your site, but
not on the home page. For this reason, it's a good idea to include a link on
all of the pages in your site that goes back to the home page. Deciding what
to include in your Web pages Home Page provides several ways to display
information in your Web pages. The options you use depend on the type of
information you want to include. Deciding what to include in your Web page can
also depend on who your audience is and which browsers they'll be using. Older
browsers that don't support the current version of HTML won't necessarily
support all of the latest options, such as tables, frames, text fonts and
color, or plug-ins for databases, movies, sound, and applets. Using common
elements to create a theme Repeating common elements in your site can be
effective for tying information together and communicating the main message of
your site. Using logos, slogans, mottos, and special graphics are good
examples of this. You can also take this a step further and use art for the
background of your pages, special images for buttons, and color schemes for
text and images. More subtle effects for creating a unifying theme across your
Web pages include naming your links consistently, having special placement of
text and images, and using bold and italics in your pages. You can create your
own Home Page libraries to save these special design effects and common
elements and then use them for each new page you create. In addition, you can
save any page you create as an HTML template, and use this template to create
more pages for your site. Including text and images in your pages Text and
images are the basic visual elements you see in most Web Text and images are
the basic visual elements you see in most Web sites and are supported by all
versions of HTML. Home Page provides ways to use text and images to build a
Web site easily. In Home Page, you can type text as you would in a word
processor, and the appropriate HTML is inserted for you. If you want to
include some special characters, such as the copyright symbol, in your site,
you can use Home Page to format the symbols as HTML so that they appear in all
browsers. You can also bring text you created in another application into a
Web page and easily apply HTML formatting styles to it. When you use images
other than JPEG or GIF, Home Page converts them, if possible, to GIF format,
one of the standard image formats recognized by Web browsers. Home Page
includes libraries of GIF images you can use in your pages. You may decide to
use images instead of text for your links in a table of contents or
navigational list, so that you associate information graphically to other
pages in your site. When selecting images for your site, keep in mind that
larger, complex images that incorporate many colors and textures, can
significantly add to the download time of a page. You can easily get an
estimate for download time of your pages using the Document Statistics
feature. Using tables or frames for page layout In addition to using tables
for organizing information into rows and columns, you can hide the borders and
use tables to design the page layout. You can simulate tabs and margins in
HTML by placing text and images in table cells that are uniformly spaced
apart. You can then use this table for all pages in your site. A frame page is
another useful way for controlling how information is displayed in your site.
You can use frames to display simultaneous views of your Web pages, so that
your viewers can navigate through your site in the same window. The
disadvantage in using frames, however, is that not all browsers support
frames. If you decide to use frames, consider setting up alternate pages for
those browsers that don't support them. Horizontal rules also offer
alternative ways of controlling the layout of your Web page. Horizontal rules
are objects you can use to divide your pages into sections. You can align them
to the right, left and center of the page and change their length, width, and
shading. Including forms or a database on your site Home Page 3.0 supports
making your Web site interactive through the use of forms in your pages. You
can use forms to solicit information from your viewers, whether you are
prompting them to sign a guest book, to fill out a questionnaire, or to search
your database of goods so they can place an order. To use forms, you will need
a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) script to process data back and forth between
your viewer's browser and the Web server where your site is published. Home
Page also lets you link to a FileMaker Pro 4.0 database in your page, so that
you can use the integrated Web server capabilities of FileMaker Pro, instead
of a CGI script, to process form data. Use the FileMaker Connection Assistant
and FileMaker form libraries to create form pages that readily connect to the
database. WEB BROWSERS A web browser is the software program you use to access
the World Wide Web, the graphical portion of the Internet. The first browser,
called NCSA Mosaic, was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications in the early '90s. The easy-to-use point-and-click interface
helped popularize the Web, although few then could imagine the explosive
growth that would soon occur. HOW THE WEB WORKS The World Wide Web is by far
the most popular part of the Internet. Once you spend time on the Web, the
graphical portion of the Internet, you will begin to feel like there is no
limit to what you can do. The Web allows rich and diverse communication by
displaying text, graphics, animation, photos, sound and video. The glue that
holds the Web together is called hypertext and hyperlinks. This feature allow
electronic files on the Web to be linked so that you can easily jump between
them. On the Web, you navigate through pages of information based on what
interests you at that particular moment. This is commonly known as browsing or
surfing the Net.
_Bibliography _
Library &Information Science: Citation Guides for Homepage Documents.
International Federation of Library Associations. August 12, 1998. 9 Nov. 1998
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