MOUSE CLIX

By: Hobie Lunin

Look Ma! I'm on the web!

Think it might be fun to have a page on the web? It takes some time and concentration but it's all worth it, especially if you can bring some joy and fun to others. In my own case, my first page was a collection of old family photos. My cousins, who are on-line, had lots of fun guessing who was in some of the pictures that I posted. Today there are more than 250 photos on that site and all the fun we had looking at them and commenting via e-mail resulted in a very successful family reunion held last summer. Your pictures from this past holiday may be just the thing you need to get started. One option is to go to www.tripod.com and register (free) and indicate you want to start a web page. You will have many choices of format as they have a large collection of "templates" to help you get started. It's a "fill in the blank" page that requires no knowledge of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) the underlying code on web pages. Tripod is a "Host" for your website and keeps your website on their server (hard drive) for access by anyone who has the address (URL)

After a while you may want to make something unique on your page and so you will want to get a book or two for reference like "HTML for dummies." This will allow you to make some changes from the original template. But before you get that far, you may want to have some photos in your site. To get photos into your computer, you will need a scanner or the pictures put on floppy for you by a camera shop. Most film processors can return them on floppy disk or CD-ROM. When you get to a place on your web page where you want a photo, there will be a link for you to click and then the program will ask you whether you want to "upload" a photo. The program will give you a chance to "browse" through your files looking for it. Save yourself some time by knowing before hand exactly where that file is located. Also, make sure that the format of the photo is ". jpg" as it is universally accepted on most web sites. The 3 letters are the extension of the file name and designate the special format of the photo.

You should get the photo in the best shape possible (like crop and contrast) before you upload it to your website, as you can't change it while it is there. What you can change is the size as it appears on the screen. You can upload some graphics that you have made and saved to a ".gif" format for use on your page. You will find that the host sites have a library of various graphics that you can use without charge for your website. They will also explain how you can get e-mail directly from the site and also how to put in a counter so you know how many "hits" you are getting.

Until you decide you want to pay for your own domain name, e.g., www.hobie.com (if it was mine), you may just want to go to a site that has the shortest name. The reason I like Tripod is that the URL is short, one of my sites being http://mouseclix.tripod.com. Getting a free web site comes with the price of an ad banner on each page you start. They will either imbed the ad at the top of your page or make it on a little page that hangs over the top portion until you click on anything in the page including the scroll bar. Then it will go away. There are many sites on the web that can help you with HTML code should you want to learn it and other sites that will check your page out for code accuracy. Even though you can make up a complete site without ever learning anything about HTML, there is at least one thing that you should be aware of. There are more browsers out there then just "Microsoft Internet Explorer", like "Netscape" and "Opera" to mention only two. There has been very little cooperation between some of these companies in terms of code interpretation so that your page may look slightly different depending upon what browser is being used. By having a free check done on your page you can learn what places will be a problem from browser to browser. You may want to make some changes to accommodate these anomalies. After you have made a few pages, you may want to start one from scratch. Then you can tell your host to give you a "blank" page and you can put in the HTML that you want. You will want to have that "dummies" book at hand when you do that.

One last thing. You can copy something from someone else if you feel the urge. To do this, get the page on your screen (the one you want to copy from), click on View, then on Source and you will see the source code for the entire page you are looking at. You can then copy and paste it or part of it, to a file in your computer, like Wordpad. Then you can copy it back out to your website when you are ready to use it. It is important to ask first, get an OK, and acknowledge that persons work somewhere on your own site.

Good luck, and don't forget to tell Mom, you're on the Web!

Next time in Mouse Clix: Maintenance of your computer.

Hobie Lunin is a Computer Instructor and Consultant. He will answer questions via e-mail at hlunin@email.com. Previous articles and other information are available at: http://mouseclix.tripod.com