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Preparing Materials for the Web |
Here are instructions for preparing projects which contain both text and graphic images for a web site.
First: Copy to a blank disk the
folders containing Graphic Converter and BBEditLite. These are shareware programs;
please observe the rules for shareware.
Graphics
Every graphic image in your project must be either in "gif" or "jpeg" ("jpg" on IBM platforms) format. Here's how to convert an image to the proper format.1. Locate the icon for the image, then locate the icon for the GraphicConverter program. Drag the image icon on top of the GraphicConverter icon. This will open the file in Graphic Converter.
2. Choose "Save as" from the "File" menu. There is a popup menu for "format." Select "gif" or "jpeg" from this menu. It will automatically add the tag ".gif" or ".jpeg" to the end of your file name.
3. Double check the name of your file to be sure that:
There are no spaces or capital letters in it. File names should be all lowercase letters.
The name of the file ends with ".gif" or ".jpeg" (".jpg" for PC files).
The file is being saved to the proper place on your disk.
4. Save the file by clicking "Save."
Text
Every text file in your project must be properly formatted for HTML; file names must end in ".html" or ".htm" to work properly.- HTML files are plain text files. You can work on them in any word processing program as well as any web authoring program, on any platform, including Macs, PCs, UNIX, and others. You can create an html file in a word processing program, save it as plain text with a file name ending in "html" or "htm", and display it on the web.
- Your first ("home") page must be named "index.html" to work properly.
- File names should not contain
anything but numbers and letters of the alphabet. They must not use any
spaces. To separate words, you can use an underscore:
big_dogs.html - If you keep all of the file names in lowercase letters, you will have an easier time with your links.
There are some simple tags you can learn to do basic html documents, and there are web authoring programs that make creating web pages much easier. The basic free program we use in class is BBEdit Lite. A program currently used by many web developers is Dreamweaver, developed by Macromedia. It is a powerful program with many features, but it does take a little patience to learn. There is an excellent tutorial. This program is available for Macs and for PCs and can be found on the class computers.
Questions? Email Peg Syverson: syverson@uts.cc.utexas.edu
