Articles From Bud E. Smith
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Article / Updated 09-29-2023
There are plusses and minuses of adding sound to your Web page, but if you decide adding sound is of value to your Web page visitors, HTML offers two competing ways to add it: with the <bgsound> tag and with the embed tag. The <bgsound> tag works well and has useful options for controlling sound, but it’s not supported by all browsers. This example uses the <embed> tag, which is not officially supported by the HTML standard at all, but it works in most browsers. <embed> has options for different media players, such as Windows Media Player or Apple QuickTime. Follow these steps to add sound to a Web page in a text editor: Open your Web page in Notepad. Let your Web page’s user know they can stop sound from playing in your Web page by clicking the Stop button in their browsers. Enter the <embed> tag and a link to the sound file you want to use. An example looks like this: <embed src=<i>“pathname/filename”</i>>, <i>“pathname/filename”</i> is a link to the sound file. The simplest way to be sure you have the link right is to place the sound file in the same folder as the Web page; that way the link is simply the filename. Click File→Save and reopen the file. The sound should play. Test the link right away to be sure it will work. If the sound doesn’t play, experiment to make sure you have the path right and that sound plays on your machine. To make sure you have the link right, put the file in the same folder as your Web page and simplify the link. To make sure that sound playback works on your machine, navigate to the file in Windows Explorer and click it. It should play. If not, identify and fix the files affecting sound playback on your machine.
View ArticleArticle / Updated 11-21-2019
When you're creating Web pages, you use HTML — a lot! The following sample shows the HTML formatting and codes you use to create headings and titles, lists, lines, and images as well as boldface and italicized type, not to mention how to include a link. <html> <!-- Text between angle brackets is an HTML tag and is not displayed. Most tags, such as the HTML and /HTML tags that surround the contents of a page, come in pairs; some tags, like HR, for a horizontal rule, stand alone. Comments, such as the text you're reading, are not displayed when the Web page is shown. The information between the HEAD and /HEAD tags is not displayed. The information between the BODY and /BODY tags is displayed.--> <head> <title>Enter a title, displayed at the top of the window.</title> </head> <!-- The information between the BODY and /BODY tags is displayed.--> <body> <h1>Enter the main heading, usually the same as the title.</h1> <p>Be <b>bold</b> in stating your key points. Put them in a list: </p> <ul> <li>The first item in your list</li> <li>The second item; <i>italicize</i> key words</li> </ul> <p>Improve your image by including an image. </p> <p><img src="http://www.mygifs.com/CoverImage.gif" alt="A Great HTML Resource"></p> <p>Add a link to your favorite <a href="https://www.dummies.com/">Web site</a>. Break up your page with a horizontal rule or two. </p> <hr> <p>Finally, link to <a href="page2.html">another page</a> in your own Web site.</p> <!-- And add a copyright notice.--> <p>© Wiley Publishing, 2011</p> </body> </html> All this HTML translates to a Web page that looks something like this:
View ArticleStep by Step / Updated 03-27-2016
If you have decided to include a sound file for download on your Web site, you don’t have to settle for sound files that are already out there. You can create your own MP3 file. It’s very satisfying to create and deliver your own MP3 file. This example uses a voice file, because that’s the easiest to create for the most people and more often useful in a typical, rather than a specialist music, Web site. MP3 is so good with music that it’s a bit of overkill for voice files, which can be encoded and played back with less-powerful compression algorithms. But so many people have set their systems up to play MP3 files these days — on their PCs and on music players such as the Apple iPod — that you may as well go with the flow. If you have a Mac, it includes well-regarded built-in software to accomplish these tasks called iLife; please refer to the iLife documentation for steps. Follow these steps to create an MP3 file under Windows:
View Step by StepStep by Step / Updated 03-27-2016
If you create a video clip, the easy way to post it on your Web site is to first upload it to YouTube, which offers tools for compressing and cleaning up your video. Uploading a video clip to YouTube easy once you have your Google ID. Sign into YouTube using your Google ID, and follow these steps to put a clip on YouTube:
View Step by StepStep by Step / Updated 03-27-2016
After you register for a Google account, you can use Google Page Creator to build your own Web pages. Google Page Creator gives you a lot of options; the following steps take you through some of the most important ones:
View Step by StepStep by Step / Updated 03-27-2016
As a leading WYSIWYG Web pages tool, CoffeeCup HTML Editor has all the important basic features that you need to build basic Web pages. Using these features, you can create and edit Web pages without seeing HTML tags, drag and drop links to other Web locations without typing the URL or pathname, cut and paste graphics into your Web page, resize graphics, and add alternate text, and create and edit tables and forms. To check for an updated version of CoffeeCup HTML Editor, go to the CoffeeCup HTML Editor site. To run CoffeeCup HTML Editor, you need a computer running Windows XP or Windows Vista. It doesn’t run on the Macintosh or Linux/Unix operating systems. After you download it, follow these steps to start CoffeeCup HTML Editor and get oriented to using it:
View Step by StepStep by Step / Updated 03-27-2016
One way to create and edit Web pages on your own computer is to use a text editor, such as NotePad, which lets you format your page using HTML tags. Using NotePad to work in HTML, you enter your text, add HTML tags for markup, save the file, and then open it in Internet Explorer or another Web browser. What you see when you view your HTML code in IE will truly be what users will get when they view the same Web page in the same Web browser. When following the steps here, and in other uses of Notepad, don’t open WordPad instead of Notepad. WordPad stores its own hidden formatting codes among the text characters you type, just like Word (but without most of the nice features). Follow these steps to get started using Notepad as an HTML-editing tool:
View Step by StepStep by Step / Updated 03-27-2016
Including lists on your Web pages is good design. Lists are interesting to look at, easy to scan, and inspire you to write short, punchy phrases. Follow these steps to create a list in Notepad:
View Step by StepArticle / Updated 03-26-2016
Perhaps you want your own Web site to advertise a business or product, but you think you have to spend money to hire a professional Web designer and coder. You could invest a lot of money in a Web site, but you can also create a simple site without spending much money at all. Given the many ways you can work, and the way different Web sites and different tools handle some of the process for you, it’s important to understand the underlying steps that define Web publishing. The steps may have different names, or be intermingled with each other, but they’re always basically the same. Here they are: Create the HTML text file that’s the basis for your Web page. Create or obtain the graphic images you’ll use to spice up the appearance of your page. Create a link to the graphics in your HTML text file so they appear where you want them to. Preview your Web page on your own machine. Find Web-server space. Transfer the HTML text file and the graphics files to the Web server. Check that your new Web page works correctly now that it’s online. If you use an easy-to-use tool such as Google Page Creator, the steps given here are combined and most of the details are handled for you. These steps are usually simple if you’re creating a basic Web page. However, they do get more complicated sometimes, especially if you’re trying to create a multipage Web site. When you create a Web page that has complex formatting, or that mixes text and graphics, you’ll want to test it in the most popular Web browsers. You should download Microsoft Internet Explorer, the America Online client, the Firefox browser, the Opera browser, the Safari browser, and/or other tools.
View ArticleArticle / Updated 03-26-2016
Using HTML lists is a great way to present information to readers on your Web pages. Lists make information on your Web page easy to parse. Here are some other reasons to use lists on your Web pages: Lists are interesting to look at: Web pros are always telling people to use lots of white space to vary the appearance of their pages so they’re not just featureless blobs of text. Lists do this; they break up text. Lists are easy to scan: People are more likely to scan text on the Web than to read it carefully. Lists make the writer get to the point: When you write a list, you may end up editing a page of boring, monotonous text down to three or four points in a bulleted list, which greatly benefits your readers. HTML and Web-page editing programs based on HTML (such as CoffeeCup) offer three kinds of lists, but only two are used much: Bulleted lists: Bulleted lists are by far the most widely used kind of list on the Web. Bulleted lists are flexible and fun, and easy to read. You start a bulleted list with the tag, which stands for unordered list. You end it with the tag. Each list item is preceded with , which stands for list item. List items don’t have to have an ending tag, though you can add one (it’s >). After your text, the browser expects to see either another tag, for the next list item, or the tag to end the list. You can convert many long blocks of text into a bulleted list and make the text shorter, easier to read, and more interesting. If you have to move existing text to the Web, consider converting parts of it to bulleted lists as a quick way to make it more Web friendly. Numbered lists: Numbered lists are very useful, but are found much less often on the Web. Numbered lists begin with for ordered list, end with , and, like bulleted lists, use the tag to mark the beginning of each list item. Any time you have a list that has an order of importance, or a sequence in time make it a numbered list. Definition lists: These lists give a term and then a definition for the term. They’re rarely used. A definition list starts with and ends with . Each term is preceded by , for definition term, and each definition is preceded by , for definition data. Use definition lists where you can, or use bold text and bulleted or numbered lists to create your own definition-type list. Lists within lists: You can insert or nest one list inside another. The nested list can be the same kind of list, or a different kind, than the list that contains it. In the limited view offered on most users’ screens, users have a hard time keeping track of where they are in the overall list if you start throwing sublists at them as well.
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