Help with creating, publicizing, searching for and evaluating
web pages; and including help finding people, their e-mail
addresses, etc.
This page will show links to sites which provide help to new
Internet users, and new Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) users in creating
pages (including both theory and preferred styles), guidelines for
good HTML practices, publicizing web pages (which implies a
knowledge of the search engines and how they work), searching
the web generally for interesting sites [and e-mail addresses], and
applying critical evaluation of Internet resources. The page
has been augmented to also provide searching for people, lost
friends, snail-mail addresses, telephone and fax numbers (including
yellow and blue pages and toll-free numbers).
See also a page for HELP
using Mosaic or Netscape the first few times to search the
web. Give your new users this link and save yourself a lot of very
elementary questions.
See also a page for Help with
E-mail and Mailing Lists for new Internet E-mail Users.
Sections include: What is E-mail? Line-length; attachments;
signature files; costs, privacy; copying messages and fragments;
mailing lists caution; finding and subscribing to mailing lists.
Sections also deal with Auto-Responders, Mail Robots, Mirrors.
E-mail Zines (Magazines), sending FAXes via E-mail, access to FTP,
Archie, Gopher, Veronica, Usenet, WAIS, Finger, Whois, and even
the World-Wide Web (all via e-mail).
Hosting
Facts (about) also posts a
helpful page: "Web
Development & Design 101 - an Introduction to web
development & design in 8 chapters." They take a
neutral approach to answering three questions: (1) "What’s the
purpose of having a website? Does everyone really need one? (2)
If so, how do you build a quality website? Or in other words,
how do you learn basic web development and design that would
allow you to build that quality website yourself? And (3) More
importantly, can you build a quality website on your FIRST try?
Or do you need years of experience behind you, before you can
hope for any result above dreadful?" A worthwhile read while you
are considering your creative endeavor.
Vodien
(their blog
topics) in Singapore posts "Learning
Computer Language: HTML Resource," which provides a
good introduction for those wanting to learn more about the
hypertext markup language (HTML) used to create and maintain
most web pages. I found their article helpful in that it started
at the beginning. They include links for further study such as:
HTML Tags for Beginners, Global Structure of an HTML Document,
Learn Basic HTML and Structure of an HTML Document. SafeKidsUsa
suggested this listing. Thanks for the tip.
Marcaria.com (about)
posts "Learn
About Domains & HTML" with lots of links to useful
resources. Mia and her team at a summer camp learning HTML
coding suggested it. Thanks Mia. All the best to you and your
team.
Keri, who is teaching elementary Computer skills and English in
Huntsville, Alabama suggests a useful reference page: Home
Learning: Computer Programming Resources. It starts by
defining HTML and provides links to basic help websites at
colleges and universities. It also defines other terms and
provides further links at reliable websites to help those
starting out. Thanks for the tip, Keri.
Megan, a ninth grade technology student, has identified A Detailed
HTML Overview posted on IT Hare {about; Real
People Behind the Hare}. It consists of links, mainly to
University Computer Technology departments' offerings in a
variety of subject areas, some of which return error 404. Most
are still posted at those URLs; and what's there is pretty good.
Megan also suggests Website
Design for Your Online Business, posted by Maryville
University {about;
online
home page}. It consists of links to guides in several
subject areas, all starting from the beginning. Thanks for the
suggestions, Megan.
.
Eric Tilton's page "Composing Good HTML," particularly its
section "Document Style Considerations" provides some
interesting insights about the use of HTML to provide a
device-independent way of describing information. Tilton
emphasizes the importance of marking up a document so that your
information is labeled as what it is instead of as how
it should be displayed. Paradoxically, the page does not have a
table of contents (!).
.
Our "Web Page Style
Standards, Guidelines and Suggestions" page describes
something of writing for the Information Age, and may be helpful
for those preparing web pages for the first time, especially
when done in behalf of a government agency, or other public
information source.
Jeffrey Zeldman (wiki
entry) has been talking about web standards for a very
long time. I haven't seen his tutorial for beginners; but if
you Google "Jeffrey Zeldman web standards" <without the
quotes>, you will see a raft of helpful notes, interviews,
books, etc., that are worth knowing about.
.
Another extensive site for web developers and authors is
Andrew King's Webreference site, including news,
articles, services and more.
.
The World-Wide
Web home page (9 Kb) provides an index to Specifications
and Development Areas for HTML, a general section on web
software and other interesting stops.
.
Jakob
Nielsen has some terse advice for writing for the Web: "Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web)." He
adds other insights about nested headings, and writing in
"coherent chunks," too. [See also: Alertbox
(Jakob's bi-weekly column on Web usability)].
.
Jakob
Nielsen also has some very good advice about Cascading
Style Sheets. His paper "Effective Use of Style Sheets" describes a
few dos and don'ts and provides links to related resources. [See
also: Alertbox
(Jakob's bi-weekly column on Web usability)].
The Yahoo Best of the Web in Web Design and
Development contains lists of web sites in various categories
which several thousand web users thought were the best they had
encountered. There are some interesting sites that are probably
good examples to follow; and the best navigational-aid sites
might help directly if you are having trouble in your searches.
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_____________________________________________
- Help in Publicizing
Web Pages:
As you contemplate publicizing your web pages, be aware that there
are always people who will use your web pages for other than the
purposes you intend. When I was first doing this, I made the mistake
of providing a new page's URL to a service that said: "submit your
page to dozens and dozens of search engines HERE." I didn't see any
evidence that the page was subsequently submitted to even a few
search engines; but I did notice that I started to receive dozens
and dozens of spam e-mail messages right away. Apparently, the URL
had been used to harvest the feedback e-mail addresses and sell them
to spammers. I have not found that problem with sending my URLs to
the reputable search engines (see searching,
below).
Most search engines have one-page-at- a-time submission forms
for new web pages.
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- Help in Searching for Web Pages:
A good Searching Guide is Jack Solock's "Searching the Internet - Parts I &
II" (43 Kb; our repost). He provides searching guidance,
and links to the search forms and the searching help pages for
half a dozen of the most popular search engines. He also
provides discussion of search catalogs and search directories;
subject catalogs, annotated directories, and subject guides.
This site is a big help for people new to web searching.
Sandra has suggested a web page that has good content to
consider: Resource
Review Guide to Online Research posted by SafeStars (about).
She says "[t]he page talks about search engines like Academic
or Scientific search engines, Open Access Journal Databases
and how to use Search Operators. It also mentions tips on how
to know if the site or link is a credible or trusted source
and discusses on how to prevent plagiarism, ..." etc. Thanks,
Sandra.
.
The Google
search site, of course, is the gold standard for many
people.
The 5search
site filters and provides other aids
in suggesting safe and secure websites to visit. It also does
NOT store your IP address (Wiki description), assisting with privacy
concerns.
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_____________________________________________
- Help in Critical
Evaluation of Internet Resources.
Back in the day (2018) an interesting article was written by
Gloria Origgi and originally published on aeon.co, that was more
recently posted as "Say
Goodbye to the Information Age: It’s All About Reputation Now."
In the early days of the Internet, the "Information Age" was
thought by many to be not just the age of much greater
quantities of information, but often good information. One found
information that one could rely on, at least as a reasonably
honest statement of opinion, if not being altogether factual in
every particular. But now (2020s) everybody has an agenda, or a
monetizing objective, or otherwise wants to be an influencer. We
need to look at sources much more critically now, make at least
informal background checks on authors, editors and supporters,
etc. We each need to have our "trusted sources;" and we need to
re-verify them constantly, being at first skeptical of both the
information and its sources.
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_____________________________________________
- Help in Searching
for E-mail Addresses:
... and Telephone Numbers and Snail-mail Addresses,
... and People, and Lost Friends, etc.
InfoSpace is
claiming to be the "most comprehensive " place to search out
names, telephone numbers and snail-mail addresses. To locate
phone numbers and addresses of people in Canada, try People Finder [cookies (cookie caution)].
.
MIT's "Usenet Addresses" site allows you to
search a database of e-mail addresses and names which have been
culled from usenet traffic in the past. It seems fairly quick
and complete.
.
The USA People Search page (How to Find
Someone's E-mail Address) seems pretty good, too, with its own
suggestions.
.
Yahoo has inaugurated a "People
Search" [cookies (cookie caution)]
web site where you can search for snail-mail addresses and
telephone numbers by name. Conversely, if you have a telephone
number, you can search for the name of the person who has that
number. The information is complied from white pages information
and other publicly-available information sources through
Database America. So far as I can tell, the names, addresses and
phone numbers are presently only in the U.S.
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_____________________________________________
Title: HTML; Hypertext Markup Language; HTML
Theory and Practice; Help; Getting Started with Creating your
own Web pages; Searching the Web; Publishing on the Web;
Publicizing your web site; Searching for E-mail addresses;
Critical Evaluation of Internet Resources; Searching for
snail-mail addresses, telephone and fax numbers.Contact for further information about this
page: Chet Meek. The primary URL for this page is at:
http://www.GoChet.ca/h_html.htm Page last updated: 14 April 2020 (Sm
2.33.n ff, w/SC; Win7pOn). Page
created: 20 July 1995.
Table of Contents for this Page:
). Page
created: 20 July 1995.