ACE-NIPS talk handout

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1890s street sign that says Information Highway

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Born ABroad

The World Wide Web and How to Get into It

Note: This presentation is from 1995 and has not been updated (except for external updating URLs).

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This page provides the overheads used in a talk and workshop presented by Cynthia A. Lockley to the ACE-NIPS conference at the University of Maryland University College on 14 June 1996. An earlier version of the talk was presented on 12 December 1995 to the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication. The subject is about technical issues associated with the creation and maintenance of home pages on the World Wide Web with an introduction to the basics of HTML, the Internet, and the World Wide Web. A hands-on workshop provides experience with building your own home page using HTML and graphics.

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Presentation

Cover
Agenda
What is the World Wide Web?
Have you ever encountered the following on the Web? Fatal error 500
To understand this, you need to understand URLs, fatal errors, and forbidden entry
Why should you have a home page?
- Personal benefits and goals
- Work benefits and goals
  A good example of a corporate home page as done by the IBM Corporation
- Negative aspects
How do you create a home page?
Basic HTML tags
Design and human interface considerations
Balance pages with contrast and visual relief. Create visual and functional continuity in your site's organization, graphic design, and typography. A careful, systematic approach to page design can simplify navigation and reduce user errors.
Optimizing graphics
Color Picker Tools:
There is also a good site on the Web for an image map tutorial

Or use a free online Image Map Generator. Be sure to check how your pages look on several browsers and how they print out. Here is a a page with an image map and related links from the State of Maryland website (December 3, 1995) as seen and printed from the IBM WebExplorer browser (the information in the button selections doesn't print):

and here is the same page as seen in Netscape on a Macintosh computer and printed to the same printer (the information in the button selections prints):

This problem was eliminated when the page was redesigned.
Websites for tools and resources
Now that you have a home page, how do you put it on the Web?
You can try wishing for access such as this little girl:

from The New Yorker
How to find an Internet Service Provider (ISP) Revised
- Find Every Internet Provider in Your Area by Zip Code
Design and human interface sites on the Web
Reading material: books and trade journals
Glossaries and computer virus information
Now that you have your home page up and running, you can take a rest

from The New Yorker
Questions and Answers