An apology. I started this page for my own reference, but published it in the hope that it may help others. The style is likely to be rather vague.
I notice that some freeweb users are having problems starting their sites or getting them running. Some of them do not understand about index.htm. I hung on for months without starting my geocities site http ://www.geocities.com/kelada2000. I then noticed that cdroms generally have a page named index.htm , used to link to other pages. I tried this. I started a page in windows notepad, saved it as index.htm, linked four more pages to it and uploaded them to geocities. At first I couldn't see my pages because geocities had supplied a template page for use in their wizard and called it index.html . I renamed that page and my pages appeared online - I had myself a web site. The moral is - you should start your site with a page named index.htm or index.html. Html trumps htm and index trumps any other word. Some people use words like default, main or home, but it is likely the search engine will not find these and you would have to include them as part of your web address.
I don't get on with WYSIWYG or wizards, as they are slow and I don't understand them. What I do is to write a template file in notepad, view it in Internet Explorer and edit it by viewing the source code in notepad, from within Explorer. This enables me to work quickly, and to incorporate filters, transitions and images. Unfortunately, this way of working does lead to a plain site with no changes of font, and, as a beginner, I make many mistakes. Having said that, some of the later editing of this page has been done within Netscape Composer, and it has served well. Composer appears to be intolerant of Microsoft dhtml code.
Problems with the Free Web server
I've noticed several problems, and those who's sites are more technical than mine have noticed others.
I'm not the only one to lose tags. In principle it might be possible not to use a head and body except, possibly, for one thing. DHTML has a feature called outerText which, if used, removes anything not in the head. If there is no head, surely the page would be lost? I'm a beginner but even I have used innerText, another dhtml feature.
For those of a technical bent. Note how I dropped the silver and blue Roland S-50 logo into the Roland page, using my own method, which appears to work and is an improvement on Microsoft's pixel count. Done my way, you can vary the text from smallest to largest without distorting or displacing the logo. Note the curious width and height settings - one pixel. This is to overcome a shortcoming in Internet Explorer.
Note that I only put fades on the local character and Chesnut Sunday pages. These parochial pages have few or no links. If you put a fade on a page which contains a dozen links, your viewer is likely to be driven barmy by viewing your fade a dozen times.
HTML PAGE template to start you off.
************************************************************** ***********************Template starts here************************
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>These words appear in the bar at the top of the page.</title>
<!-- do not alter the word document in the following tag -->
<meta name="resource-type" content="document">
<meta name="description" content="write a description of your page here, please">
<meta name="keywords" content="a, list, of, keywords, and phrases, separated, by, commas">
<style>Your css styles go here.</style>
</head>
<body>
Your page of text goes here and is the only thing which should be seen on the monitor screen.
This page template starts with a declaration of the document type. I use 4.0 transitional, which tells the browser to expect a mixture of HTML 4.0 style and deprecated HTML 3.2 tags.
We then declare that HTML is starting.
The head section contains our instructions to the server and should be invisible, except for the title, which appears in the top bar of the browser.
It is not clear whether meta tags still attract the search engines but it has been suggested elsewhere that we do not put anything here which might try to fool the robots.
The body should contain your text.
The gadget at the bottom of the page - two paragraphs separated by a non-breaking space - is a technical trick. It adds white space at the end of the page, allowing your viewers to scroll your last lines of text past any commercial banner lying at the base of the page.
To use the template, copy and paste the text to windows notepad, delete the text between the body tags, put in your own text and save it as .htm or .html.
Your initial page should be named index.htm or index.html.
<p> <p>
</body>
</html>
**************************That ends the template********************
***************************************************************
Floating a column of text in the centre of the browser window
On my geocities site:-
http://www.geocities.com/kelada2000 - the Yahoo pop-up occupies the right-hand quarter of the screen, unless clicked out. I wished to find code which would allow me to retain the format of the page, even when crushed by the pop-up. I hit on the following code which I am trying on both my infinites.net site and my geocities site.
<DIV align="center">
<TABLE>
<TR>
<TD>
<TD WIDTH="500">Body of text and images go here.
<TD>
</TABLE>
</DIV>
That code gives me a 500 pixel column that floats at the centre of the page, even when the browser width is reduced.
Here is a simpler method that may work:-
<TABLE WIDTH=500 ALIGN=CENTER>
<TD>
YOUR TEXT AND IMAGES GO HERE
</TABLE>
The <TD> tag is essential or funny things can happen to your layout.
The Freeweb editor is likely to add <TBODY> and <TR> tags to this code.
For a table to replace the <BODY> tags it would need to be 100% width in order to accept a full-screen background.
An advantage of using a fixed width is that you can position your images where you want them by using hspace and vspace. I find that fixed width sections look better with a small font size.
I used this code on my Old Hampton Wick page:-
<table> <tbody valign=top> <tr> <td width="50%"> my first list went here, separated by line breaks </td>
<td width="50%" style="text-align:top;padding-left:10px"> my second list went here, similar to first </td> </table>
The table was within a division, with margins and border.
I used it to present two lists of page links.
As a beginner I was unable to find a style to replace the tag:-
<tbody valign=top>
When we upload images or files from a pc to the web, they may not appear on the web site.
Here are three possibilities:-
These things are important because the internet is based on Unix.
We are told that it is web etiquette to state the size of our images in the html, so that the browser can format the text without them. If all images are the same size, it is tempting to set the size using internal style, in the head of the document. If we do this, the size will be applied to the small graphics that make up the Freeweb banner, and it will fill the screen, obliterating our page.
An alternative is to use the windows notepad replace feature to replace <img with <img width="mywidth" height="myheight". Thus each image is sized separately but automatically. If style is used, it would be necessary to use class to identify the images. I have done this on my Thames Path page. I replaced <img with
Click on an image to enlarge it
The idea here is that you should have a small image on your web page and, when the viewer clicks on the picture, they see an enlarged version. Doubtless, this can be done using a script, but there are simpler ways.
<a href="myLargeImage.jpg"><img src="mySmallImage.jpg"></a>
href refers to an image instead of a page and the usual link text is replaced by your small image. You click on the small image and the large one opens in a new web page. The viewer clicks on the return arrow on the toolbar to return to their previous position on the previous page. This is the method I would recommend.
Note that the following two examples only work on my infinites.net site! They are not set up to work on this site!
<a href="previousPage.htm"><img src="myLargeImage.jpg"></a>
The previous page will need to contain this code:-
<a href="LargeImage.htm"><img src="mySmallImage.jpg"></a>
The drawback is that this returns you to the top of the previous page.
<a href="previousPage.htm#myMarker"><img src="myLargeImage.jpg"></a>
Just above the small image on the previous page you will need to insert this code:-
<a id="myMarker"/><p>
The paragraph tag is likely to be needed to give a bit of white space, but may already be present, before or after text. This method will not return you to the exact spot, as the first and simplest method will, but it will be the next best thing. You could put the marker anywhere in text and it wouldn't show, but it would be at the top of the screen. It can be fiddly to adjust the position.
Say you have a plain index page, with text, and linked to a page with a large image. It may be possible to preload the image into cache memory, while the viewer reads the first page, before the second page is loaded. This can be done by including the image in the html for the index page but presizing it to one pixel, using this code:-
<img src="myImage.jpg" height="1" width="1">
Can't find site in search engine
Our sites are of absorbing interest to us but others may find them boring. I put hours into my site, including cycling here and there, taking photos and having one bike stolen. I have history all around me, yet few people find my site and most view only one or two pages. One or two neighbours find the site interesting. We can, though, try to improve our chances.
The search engines will principally look for pages named index.htm. They will find your page. This may take a month and they may not want it. They will check links to other pages, originality of content, relevance of content and unnecessary duplication of information, among other things. Your page should be reasonably verbose, so that the search engine can find interesting words. It may ignore so-called keywords. Search engines are programmed to reject subterfuge calculated to trick them. You should have a reasonably verbose page description - see my template - and should start your page using verbose and interesting language. These are the things that the search engine will place in the browser listing.
If possible, avoid automated site submission. Addpro and Addme are good ones but search engines do not like them and put you to the bottom of the pile. The correct way is to submit by hand. The best sites are Google and Yahoo:-
Yahoo will require you to join up and log in.
On submitting your site, you will be asked to copy some text, to ensure that you are not a robot.
Having followed the procedure, you will be sure that you have been taken up by the two major search engines. They may reject you but, at least, they will consider you. Notice, I am being verbose.
Listing will take several weeks because there are paying customers ahead of you.
You can go to your site because you know its' address. Then, when your pages are listed, you will be able to find them by searching for phrases that you know are contained in your pages. The trick is, will other people find your site? in order that they should, there must be something, within the wording of your page, which other people are likely to enter into the search engine. Even then, you cannot be certain of an advatageous listing because there are other people ahead of you. You should not be too pessimistic about this because you should be advertising your site to people by word of mouth.
Following the usual three-week wait, my geocities site started appearing at the bottom of page two in the browser. This is the lowest position acceptable to a commercial site but ok for an amateur and beginner like myself.
Suddenly, it shot high in the list, sometimes even into first place, then disappeared into oblivion. I can only suppose why this should be so.
- style sheets reference from WDG.
- download html and other stuff here.
- a download from barebones which uses internal links.
- online html tutor stuff from site-experts.
- reference to resources from highdots.com.
- css2 reference online from w3schools.
- cascading style sheet reference from w3schools.
- many downloadable tutorials.
- cascading style sheet reference.
- useful straight forward listing of css and links to other stuff
An advantage of pages using internal links, such as the one from barebones and the one you are viewing, is that they can be copied as one unit, as they do not link to associated pages. Stephen Le Hunte's HTMLib 4.0 appears to be no longer available.
It can be useful to have an area of white space at the bottom of each web page. It gives a look of completeness and allows your viewers to scroll your text past any banners at the base of the screen. WYSIWYG code writers often add this code as standard. The required code is:-
The code adds two paragraphs separated by a non-breaking space. This may not work when viewed with Netscape. One possibility here is to use F11 to view the page full-screen. Note that the freeweb server may prefer the following code, which is more correct:-
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
If you behave yourself like this, the Freeweb server may even give you your margins back.
I was pleased to receive the following constructive criticism of my site, which I felt, looked old-fashioned:-
*******************************************************
Well, in my opinion looking old fashioned doesn't matter - personally I don't worry about that, I put more store on accessibility (i.e. making sure that partially sighted users can read it clearly, and that the code is all standards-compliant). You could do a lot to improve this - for example you have some text which is very pale and doesn't show up against the background, and you need to make sure that you give "alt" text for pictures, etc. for users on dial - up who have pictures turned off, or users with text - speaking browsers. On the home page there are a few problems specifically with layout. I've only looked using Firefox so far, but I find that when the window is re-sized the picture of Kingston Bridge overlaps some of the text. In some circumstances it also overlaps the animation. You should always check your site in different sized windows. The "Fireworks" and "Puzzle" rectangles look like buttons, but do not act as buttons. There are lots of different font sizes but it is not at all clear what the structure of the page is - which are the headings, subheadings etc? This needs to be clear to the user. The "Richmond Open House" and "Kingston Open House" pages are much clearer. The title on the "Hampton Wick" page (with the air ambulance) overlaps the text. I've tried this in Internet Explorer and in there the title is correctly positioned (and also has a nice shadow). This suggests that you've used a non-standard way of decorating the text and locating it, which works in IE but not Firefox. Prompted by this, I've just checked the main page in IE, and I see that it is rather better there. But surprisingly, the photograph has completely disappeared. I've looked at your source code and I see you make a lot of use of an element called "comment". This isn't a valid element in HTML4.01, and this explains a lot of the differences between the IE view and the Firefox view of the site. Another thought: you've used a mixture of HTML style attributes like "bgcolor" and CSS styles. It would be best to get all your styling into CSS if you can.
Sorry to sound negative, just trying to give some comments that might be helpful. Ignore me if you prefer!
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One thing I knew about was the mixing of html attributes and css style. I've noticed that strange things can happen under these circumstances. I hadn't considered the use of other browsers. I installed the three - Netscape, Firefox and Opera - and have reservations about all three. nonetheless, I was able to modify my pages to make them readable on all four browsers. In doing so I weakened the performance on IE6.
I have a problem - all my work has to be done offline, then uploaded using a floppy disk. I am unable to try other browsers online. One problem here is that different browsers may use different margins, bearing in mind the now well-known loss of margins in the Freeweb server. I found that I had to increase the width of some of my fixed-width tables and there were problems with text flow.
One potential embarrasment was that my comments showed. I was using <comment> whereas I should have used the older form <!--
People continue to point out that my code is flawed. I thank them for taking this trouble and make these excuses:-
Here in the UK, at least, the Wikipedia, online encyclopedia offers us an excellent way of publicising our material. We can find a page related to our subject and edit the links section to provide a link to our content. This should be of benefit because it means we will be linked to by people browsing our specific subject. It also benefits the encyclopedia by enhancing their content. In my case, I am supplying up to date photos, relating to their pages. I recently fell foul of their mediator, who accused me of spamming, though this matter may now have been resolved. It does appear that my Wikipedia links have been copied by an information service, which is flattering. One advantage of using Wikipedia is that you can effectively choose your audience and results are instant and guaranteed. Of course, your content needs to relate to theirs. I receive regular visits to my Brooklands Race Track page via Wikipedia. If you are linking a page like this, do include your statcounter code on that page, so statcounter can spot it and record the hits. I made the mistake of only including the code on one or two pages. Statcounter is intelligent and will analyse your hits, rather than just record them. You may notice that on this site, one of my counters records thousands and one hundreds. this is because one records page turns and the other, individual site access. Statcounters work by accessing a numeric graphic via a url. Each time a hit is recorded, the number on the graphic is incremented.
The software enables you to set up various graphic tabs and lists, similar to those seen in Visual Basic and on professional websites. You can set them up within the user interface or edit the html yourself. They are not dissimilar to the links based on images that I have demonstrated above. On this page I have borrowed code from CSS Tab Designer 2 but kept their external style sheet instead of generating the html code. I chose a simple style that doesn't require gifs. As you can see, it was experimental.
Download latest video/audio codecs.
more codecs
free downloads
Greenstreet PowerText 3D v2.00 Apparently not now available from Greenstreet and there may not have been free versions. Similar to MS Wordart but can be saved to a jpg file. I have used it on my homepage. Laboriously, I converted to GIF using Irfan and made the background transparent with Photoshop. Normally, PowerText seems to use a white background.
Font Magic An excellent free alternative to PowerText. It uses bitmaps to create texture, so you should be able to add your own. Font Magic uses OpenGL, which will normally be present on your PC, as 3D screensavers are often based on it.
First Page 2006 An excellent html-based website tool. The appearance is similar to Homesite, as the tool is not WYSIWYG. UK viewers may remember a previous version on the free ISP disk from Waitrose Supermarkets.
EditPad Lite text editor Useful addition to MS Notepad.
jgsoft
IrfanView superb, small, picture viewer, including scroll through thumbnail pictures and editing. Everyone should use it, no computer should be without it, one of the best pieces of freeware in the world. I installed the IrfanView plugins and found that the audio player would play ogg vorbis, but not AAC.
Nokia PC Suite. 17MB but well worth it - easy, fast, ripping direct from CD tracks to AAC files. Contains an AAC music player, Media Player etc. You don't need a Nokia Phone to use it. Forget mp3 and ogg vorbis, AAC is used by the Apple i-pod. Less than 1MB/min at 160Kb/sec - 'nuff said.
DVD Genie , switch regions for several major software DVD players.
Firefox Browser. Consider viewing your site in this browser as it is sympathetic to disabled users.
Free website maker, Nvu, recommended by a Freeweb user.
Free website maker, Namu6, though personally I can't understand how to use it.
Superb free CD burner . CDburnerXP Pro
another free CD burner . Burn4free. Be careful with this one - I lost my previous tracks!
softlookup
FreeRIP , does a good job on mp3 and ogg vorbis, straight from CD to file.
Deliplayer 2, an audio player that plays mp3 and ogg vorbis, and maybe FLAC, but not AAC, and has reverb and equaliser built in, if you can find them (the modus-operandi is not obvious). Hint - right click and open window.
ogg vorbis for windows
flac lossless audio codec
flac installer
multifrontend for audio codecs.
various front ends
ogg vorbis codec.
poweramp audio player
plugins for winamp
flac for winamp
AVG anti-virus . Brilliant freebie from the Czech Republic. Also try here.
HTfireman was a 1.7MB, obscure, CD burner that could recognise drives not seen by other burners, and downloaded slowly from an American college. Seems to have gone in favour of a 7MB retail version.
CUseeMe: useful video conferencing software, but cannot now find a source. Useful because White Pine put v.4 serial numbers into the public domain and they work with v.5. (from cuseeme.com, who later issued version 6 with no trial version). CU stood for Cornel University - a play on words.
constructive comment and corrections please to [email protected]