DRIVER'S ED FOR THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY * SPRING 99
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HTML 4.0: Design control,accessibility,and internationalization
Hey, Web authors, have you been watching your language? Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the language used for Web authoring on the World Wide Web has been upgraded and reborn as HTML 4.0.
HTML 4.0 was actually ratified by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) December 18,1997,but it's just starting to make its presence felt as Web authors and browsers begin to adopt the new standard.
HTML 4.0 offers a number of advantages over its predecessors, most notably, the introduction of cascading style sheets (CSS). CSS cleanly separates structure from presentation in displaying Web pages, eliminating the mess that had evolved from the conflict between the two.No longer must you choose
between real structural elements, like H1 and EM,and presentational elements,like BIG and B.New elements are used for structure; presentation is done through CSS. Style sheets allow you to present your page exactly as you designed it in browsers capable of displaying all your presentational formatting without rendering it illegible to browsers with limited display capabilities. You can make global design changes to your site because style sheets act as templates. Style sheets also make your Web pages leaner so that they load more quickly in browsers.
The clean separation of structure from presentation is also behind the second big advantage of HTML 4.0: greatly improved accessibility Structurally well-defined documents can be interpreted by
all kinds of browsers, including text-only, so that your Web page content reaches your entire audience. Enhancements to tables, forms, and other HTML constructs further extend the Web's functionality within alternate interfaces.
HTML 4.0 also offers new internationalization features, enabling the Web to truly be World Wide. Languages, character sets, and text direction can all be specified, ensuring that your content displays properly in whatever language it's written.
For these and other reasons, version 4.0 is a tremendously improved HTML. So what's the catch? Unfortunately, current browsers don't implement HTML 4.0's new features completely, if at all, so the promise of HTML 4.0 isn't yet fully realized.Rather than produce 100 percent HTML 4.0
content right away,you'll have to introduce new markup gradually,trying things out in different browsers as you go. As browsers mature with the new standard,you'll be able to evolve your sites to take full advantage of HTML 4.0.
To learn more about HTML 4.0, check out ACS's Web Authoring classes, described on pages 5 through 7, which have been updated to the new standard, and include a new class on cascading style sheets.
You can examine the HTML 4.0 specification yourself at www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40 or read any of the many books or Web sites dealing with HTML 4.0. ACS has also developed an HTML 4.0 primer at: www.cc.ukans.edu/acs/docs/html primer.shtml.
Adaptive from page 1 campus network.
According to Silkey, the adaptive stations will be restricted to users with disabilities to ensure software stability,
"Once everything is installed and stable, we anticipate that many more users with disabilities will patronize the ACS labs,"Silkey said.
Existing adaptive technology in both ACS labs includes 46 Mac OS computers that have built-in speech synthesis software available in some applications, and Lynx, a nongraphical Internet browser that was developed at KU, available on all lab computers.
Publish your Web page on the Internet
So you've created a Web page in a program like Microsoft FrontPage or from scratch by doing the HTML coding yourself. Now
you're ready to publish it on the Web.
First of all, all of the pages and graphics that make up your site must be stored on a computer running HTTP server software and connected to the Internet and set with the proper access to allow others to view your documents. How you do this depends on the requirements of your Internet Service Provider (ISP), the environment in which you're uploading your documents Mac, Windows etc.), and the software you have available.
If you plan to store your Web pages on your KU Internet account, your ISP is The University of Kansas. The following instructions are for publishing your Web site on one of the ACS multiuser UNIX systems (e.g., FALCON, EAGLE, RAVEN, etc.) or other campus UNIX servers.
The basic steps for publishing your Web page on an ACS multiuser system are:
1. Create a public_html sub-directory in the home directory of your account. All of the documents that will be part of your Web site must reside in the public_html directory within your home directory.
2. Transfer your HTML documents and images to this public_html directory.
3. Change the access permission settings on your public_html directory and all Web files in public_html so that the general public has access to them.
The methods for doing this vary according to where your Web files currently reside (Windows, Mac, or multiuser computer) and what software you have available on the computer you are using. See www.cc.ukans.edu/acs/docs/wkshop/publishweb.shtml.
Lastly, you'll need to know the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of your Web page(s).The URL is the unique address of each Web page that browsers use to locate it on the Internet and what you'll give people who want to see your site.
http://name_of_server/~directory/filename
In its most basic form, the URL of your home page has the following elements:
where name_of_server is falcon.cc.ukans.edu or eagle.cc.ukans.edu or some other HTTP server at KU; directory is your login name, such as imajhawk; and filename is the name of the file you want to access.
For example, if your home page is on FALCON your login name is imajhawk,and your document is homepage.html,your URL is: http://falcon.ou.edu/xhtml?
http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~imajhawk/homepage.html
However, if the page you would like visitors to access first (the homepage) is named index.html, your URL is simply: http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~imajhawk/. The file name, index.html, is optional.
Complete instructions on publishing your Web site are available at www.cc.ukans.edu/acs/docs/wkshop/publishweb.shtml.
Finally, you'll need to review the rights and responsibilities of publishing on the Web at www.ukans.edu/~vcinfo/netguide.html.
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