*** ANSWERMAN INTERNET EXTRA *** For the week of September 30, 1996 This is the weekly newsletter for the community of Internet users on America Online. Come see what's new at keyword ANSWERMAN. To unsubscribe from this newsletter, scroll down to the end of this message for instructions. *This week, AnswerMan's Focus is Making a Web Page.* =*=*= IN THIS ISSUE =*=*= AnswerMan's Update -- The great cyberspace doodle pad? Purple's Picks -- Hypertext Hype Upcoming Weekly Focus & Chats -- What's on Tap in AnswerMan? The End -- How to contact us or unsubscribe =*=*= WHAT YOU CAN DO THIS WEEK WITH ANSWERMAN =*=*= Go to keyword: For: ANSWERMAN See AnswerMan members' Web pages, and more! AM FOCUS Visit this week's focus sites: make a Web page AM CHAT Read transcripts of Internet chats that you missed AM GLOSSARY Get definitions for hundreds of Net jargon terms NET HELP Decode those cryptic Internet error messages =*=*= ANSWERMAN'S UPDATE -- The great cyberspace doodle pad? =*=*= Is it an electronic business card, a newsletter, a billboard, or just a doodle pad? Truth is, a Web page can be any of these things. If you've been thinking about creating a Web page, why not try your hand at it this week? It is a way to create your own little spot in cyberspace, and it's a lot of fun, too. There are two ways to create a Web page with AOL. You can make a Web page quickly and easily with Personal Publisher, or you can get more creative with HyperText Markup Language. (Either way, it doesn't cost you a thing to make a Web page. As an AOL member, your Web page costs nothing extra, and can be up to 2 megabytes in size.) Personal Publisher 2 (keyword PP2) makes it downright simple to make a Web page. Personal Publisher 2 takes advantage of the new AOL browser. You can add colorful backgrounds, clickable images, and more. Use the simple templates to create a personal home page, a business page, or a greeting card. Or, you can go straight to the editing mode and create your own custom site, all without knowing Hypertext Markup Language. The other option, learning Hypertext Markup Language, allows even more creativity, but has a bit of a learning curve. (Don't worry -- it's not difficult!) In her column below, CJ Purple describes several sites that can get you up to speed with HTML in no time. After you've created your Web masterpiece, or if you just want to glean some inspiration, go to keyword ANSWERMAN and press the Member Web Sites button. There you'll see a list of Web sites created by fellow AnswerMan users. I never cease to be amazed at the creativity of the Web community. See what they've done, then add your site to the list for others to enjoy. =*=*= PURPLE'S PICKS -- Hypertext Hype =*=*= by Sarah Nehrer (CJ Purple) Who can believe it's already October! That means only two more weeks of this column (at most) before I go out on maternity leave for a few weeks. But don't worry, another friendly and knowledgeable CJ will be filling in while I'm gone. This week's focus topic is HTML - Hypertext Markup Language - or the stuff you need to know in order to write your own Web page. Luckily for us, there are a number of really great introductory guides on this relatively simple language available on the Web itself. I'll mention a few of them here for your information, but a more complete list can be found at http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Software/Data_Formats/HTML/Guides_and_Tutorials/ (if the ones I talk about today don't meet with your satisfaction). The first and most famous is A Beginner's Guide to HTML (http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html). It is the most accessed document from the National Center of Supercomputing Applications -- the folks who i one large file or in three smaller files in sequence. It is an introductory level tutorial. A Beginner's Guide to Homepage Programming (http://members.aol.com/teachemath/class.htm) has four sections for your learning pleasure: creating a Homepage - the ins and outs of HTML; a list of terms and definitions; homepage template - which allows you to fill in your own information into a template and use it as your own homepage; and publishing a homepage - how to upload your finished product onto the Web. An Intermediate Guide to Homepage Programming is also available from this site, at http://www.azstarnet.com/~teachem/intehtml.htm. Bare Bones Guide to HTML (http://werbach.com/barebones/) lists every tag in the official HTML 3.2 specifications, as well as Netscape extenstions. This guide is available in English, French, Japanese, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Chinese, Turkish, Korean, Finnish, Russian, Danish and Swedish! You can read it either in a plain text version or in a formatted one. Creating HTML - A Simple Guide (http://www.netusa1.net/~jbornema/html.html) covers HTML 3.0 and Netscape extensions and has a downloadable version as well as one that can be read online. This site also has links to several HTML editors. Speaking of editors, if you really don't have the time, inclination, desire, etc. to learn HTML, there are several programs out there that will write your page for you without requiring HTML knowledge. These are known as HTML editors. (AOL's version is Personal Publisher 2, which CJ Grizzly will speak about in Sunday's Answerman chat.) For a list of editors available on the Web for Windows, DOS, Macintosh and more, go to http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/HTML_Editors/. A word of warning, some of these sites promote commercial products rather than freeware/shareware. Finally, while anyone can write a Web page, only some can write a *good* Web page. :-> For help on style issues, try these sites: HTML Bad Style Guide (http://www.earth.com/bad-style/ for what *not* to do on your page; and Doctor HTML (http://imageware.com/RxHTML/) which checks spelling, image syntax, document structure, table structure, and forms structure and gives you an image analysis, a hyperlink analysis, a command hierarchy and a summary. Good luck writing those Web pages! =*=*= THE WEEKLY FOCUS & CHAT =*=*= Every week, AnswerMan focuses on a particular facet of using the Internet. Here's what's going on this week. Live chat on Sunday, October 6 at 6PM ET: Personal Publisher 2 and HTML. There are two ways to stake out your own plot in Cyberspace on AOL: you can make a Web page quickly and easily with Personal Publisher, or you can get more creative with HyperText Markup Language. This hour, special guest CJ Grizzly will show you how to use AOL's brand new Personal Publisher 2 for a no-fuss Web page. In the following Q&A session he'll answer questions about both Personal Publisher and HTML. And, here are the Weekly Focus topics we'll be covering in the near future: Oct 7 - Oct 13: E-mail Oct 14 - Oct 20: Comics & humor sites Oct 21 - Oct 27: Usenet Oct 28 - Nov 3: Music sites =*=*= THE END =*=*= That's all for this week. Got comments about this newsletter? We want to hear them! Send 'em to AnswerMan. The e-mail address is AnswerMan@aol.com. There are two easy ways to unsubscribe yourself from the AnswerMan mailing list. You can use either. #1: send an e-mail message -- To: LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Subject: UNSUBSCRIBE Body: UNSUBSCRIBE ANSWERMAN #2: If you are a Windows AOL user -- Go to keyword ANSWERMAN Press the 'Internet Extra Newsletter' button Press 'Unsubscribe'. Copyright 1996 by America Online. All rights reserved. Made from 100% recycled electrons.