Html for Fun and Profit/Book and Cd Rom [Textbook Binding]

Mary E. S. Morris (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0133592901 | ISBN-13: 978-0133592900 | Publication Date: December 31, 1969

This book/disk package is a comprehensive tutorial about the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) which is Mosaic's standard format for the Internet's World Wide Web. The included CD-ROM contains all the programs and utilities needed to create a Mosaic server; compiled shareware for Solaris 1.x, 2.x (and x86), Windows NT, Windows and Macintosh; platform browsers, HTTP daemons, filters, and traffic logging scripts and tools. Hundreds of pages of HTML examples with templates are included among the book's exercises, as well as on CD-ROM. It is designed for anyone planning to be an Internet information provider or who plans to write documents for Mosaic.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This practical book teaches the basics of HTML without causing undue strain to your fingers, keyboard, or patience. The included CD-ROM offers examples from most of the chapters for HTML authors working with Unix, Windows, or the Macintosh: Just open your favorite Web browser to study the examples, and your usual editor or word processor to look at the HTML hieroglyphics that make the display possible. The first third of the book deals with basic scripting, the middle third with multimedia, tables, and gateways, and the final third with tools and future prospects. Appendixes touch upon Xmosaic, Winmosaic, MacMosaic, a list of HTML tags and characters, pointers to online and printed information, and a glossary. HTML for Fun and Profit makes the process of learning more about HTML less tedious and more engaging.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

Preface

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the language of the World Wide Web, the fastest growing part of a very quickly evolving phenomenon called the Internet. This new edition of HTML for Fun and Profit covers basic HTML authoring and emphasizes the use of CGI scripts and forms to create customized and interactive web pages. Information is also included on some of the newest features, like cascading style sheets, that have at last brought HTML into the real publishing world.


Third Edition Preface

The third edition now includes a Microsoft Windows 95 web server. In addition, the text contains many updates to reflect the most recent version of the HTML standard, version 3.2, client-side processing, and a wide variety of other new enhancements to web page makeup, such as cascading style sheets. New media types, such as streaming audio, are covered. The bulk of Appendix B is now included on the CD-ROM as a hypertext document for easier reference.


Who Should Use This Book

If you want to make a home page to list your musical preferences, this book is for you. If you want to make a high-tech career out of building storefronts for the newest commercial ventures, this book is for you also. No matter what your ambitions, if you want to be a producer of information instead of just a consumer on the Web, this book will help you learn HTML and related technologies.
Furthermore, if you're already an experienced web designer and HTML author, this book can take you to new levels of professionalism by introducing you to current standards and practices in this fast-changing field.


How This Book Is Organized

Part I: The Static Web

This section gives you a sound basis for developing most of the information you will be placing on your website. Chapter 1, “Getting Started,” provides an overview of the history of the World-Wide Web and lays out some of the authors' basic assumptions and philosophies. Chapter 2, “The Basics,” introduces the concept of a tag and demonstrates the use of several simple tags. Chapter 3, “Hypertext — Linking Documents,” describes hypertext and document interaction in HTML. Here we'll also cover non-text forms of hyperlinking, such as image maps. Chapter 4, “Multimedia — Going Beyond Text,” explains the full range of data beyond plain text and shows how to incorporate multimedia into your web creations. Chapter 5, “Tables,” teaches how to create basic tables and identifies table components. Chapter 6, “Frames,” covers the most effective ways to use this still-novel way of structuring complex documents.

Part II: The Dynamic Web

This section covers approaches to interacting with your website's users and generating web documents “on the fly” to respond to changes in data or the context in which the user views your site. Chapter 7, “Using the Common Gateway Interface (CGI),” introduces the Common Gateway Interface which enables developers to tie scripts to web pages. Chapter 8, “Server Includes,” demonstrates the use of commands that are included or embedded in web pages to customize web pages. Chapter 9, “Creating Forms,” details the variety of form elements and implements several forms. Chapter 10, “Processing Data from Forms,” discusses input and output handling from the CGI and implements a feedback form. Chapter 11, “Client-Side Processing,” offers basic information about handling user interaction without server intervention through scripting tools such as JavaScript and other means. Chapter 12, “Cascading Style Sheets,” demonstrates the use of style sheets to simplify HTML document maintenance and control and improve your pages' user interface.

Part III: Design, Style, Production, Professionalism

In this section you will move beyond the nitty-gritty details of simply creating web documents into the realm of organizing and presenting your site for maximum impact. Chapter 13, “Style Guide,” outlines common-sense guidelines to make web pages more intuitive to use and more appealing to all audiences. Chapter 14, “Work-Saving Tools,” explains the classes of available tools that make HTML authoring less tedious. Chapter 15, “Testing/Quality Assurance,” describes the steps necessary to ensure that your web site as a whole and its component documents can withstand the rigors of use in the real world. Chapter 16, “Publishing to the Web,” shows you how to move your existing documents to the Web without re-creating them all from scratch. Chapter 17, “Putting Data on the Internet,” discusses the issues involved in putting your data out for public consumption. Chapter 18, “Future Directions,” highlights the trends and directions of the World-Wide Web.

Appendices

Appendix A, “References,” provides a complete list of the tags, environment variables, and special characters listed throughout the book. Appendix B, “More Information,” lists pointers to additional resources. (Most of this material is also provided in hypertext form on the accompanying CD-ROM.)

Typographic Conventions

Table PR-1 describes the typographic conventions used in this book. Table PR-1

Typographic Conventions Typeface or Style Description Examples AaBbCc123 The names of commands, files, tag attributes, and directories; on-screen computer output Edit your .login file. Use ls -a to list all files. system% You have mail. AaBbCc123 What you type, contrasted with on-screen computer output system% su password: AaBbCc123 Command-line placeholder: replace with a real name or value To delete a file, type rm filename. Abc Def Labels which appear in on-screen buttons Click the Submit button to send the form's date to the server. Other notes on this book's formatting conventions:

Screen shots depict Web documents as viewed using the Netscape Communicator browser, Netscape Navigator 4.03.

URLs, those strings beginning with http:// which indicate a Web document's location, may occasionally break at the end of a line. In such cases, to avoid confusion, there will be no hyphen at the end of the line which breaks.

Names of Internet services (e.g., TELNET, Archie, FTP) will be capitalized and displayed in a normal typeface. Many of these services have command or protocol equivalents (e.g., telnet, archie, ftp); these will be displayed in lowercase boldface font.

The terms “web” (lowercase) and “Web” (uppercase) will be used to refer to, respectively, a particular site (as in the phrase “designing your web”) and to the World-Wide Web as a whole (“when browsing the Web”).


Are You Being Served?

If you have done any work at all with HTML already—even simply experimented with some of your browser's capabilities—you know that you can view a local file (that is, a file located on whatever machine you're using) simply by opening it directly. To open a remote file you specify its location using a Universal Resource Locator, or URL, which includes a reference to the identity of the machine on which the remote file resides. (More information about URLs is provided in Chapter 2, and especially in Chapter 3).


Once you've installed the server software provided on this book's accompanying CD-ROM, you have two options to view the sample files discussed throughout the book:

You can open the sample files as you would any local files—that is, by entering in the browser's Location field the path and filename to be browsed. (For example, on a Windows 95 PC, file:///D:\Win95\somesample.html.)

You can start the server software you've installed and open the file to be viewed through the medium of that server. For example, after starting the WebSite 2.0 server for Windows 95, you can enter http://localserver/somesample.html in the browser's Location field.


In most cases, either of these approaches yields the same result in your browser window. Fonts, paragraphs, headings, images, and other elements will appear identically regardless of whether you've opened the sample directly (as a true local file) or as a “pseudoremote” file (by passing it through the server software to your browser).


However, particularly in the case of some more advanced features (such as forms which use CGI programs), you must use the “pseudoremote” option in order to view the page properly. In these cases, the name of the file to be opened will be designated in this book using an http://{server}/ prefix. In all cases where this prefix does not appear, you can safely assume that the sample page can be viewed as either a local file or as a “served” file.


--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Textbook Binding: 288 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall Ptr (December 31, 1969)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0133592901
• ISBN-13: 978-0133592900
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,098,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Misleading Cover page, August 6, 1998

By 

Johan Schultz ([e-mail]) (Hermanus, South Africa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Html for Fun and Profit/Book and Cd Rom (Textbook Binding)

A third edition of a book normally indicates a well written book. Without hesitation I bought this shrink wrapped book, especially because the cover page promises ".... expanded to cover Dynamic HTMl and XML..."

However, dynamic HTML gets a one page futuristic view, while XML is treated on less than a page. DTD is indicated in the index as Data Type Definition, most other sources call it Document Type Definition. I could not find any mention of the Document Object Model.

Surely both DHTML and XML were established well enough to warrant better treatment than this with a cover page mention of the topics. I for sure will be cautious to buy future books from this publisher or authors in shrink wrap form.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Extremely Confusing For First Time Users, August 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Html for Fun and Profit/Book and Cd Rom (Textbook Binding)

This book had me confused by the third page- it is definetely not a book that I would recommend to anybody with no knowledge of HTML to begin with.