In order to create your own HTML Documents for the World Wide Web with this program you'll need:
Ñ A color monitor
Ñ System 7
Ñ You must have the font Espy Sans (included in this archive) installed for this utility to work. Espy Sans is the latest System font from Apple and was designed for maximum readability on a computer screen. I understand it will soon be the main Mac System font as it replaces Chicago in future System updates. (That's why I'm developing with it.)
About The World Wide Web
------------------------
If you already understand how the Web works you can jump to the next section.
It will help to have a basic understanding of the Web, what HTML is, and the recommended structure of an HTML file:
The Web is made up of clients and servers. When you surf the World Wide Web, you're a client. You use a browser (such as Netscape) to read documents that are fed to you from a server. The server can be a Mac, but is more likely to be a UNIX or DOS machine. If you don't have a server yet, there is plenty of information on leasing server space at:
Your next step toward being a webmaster is creating HTML documents and modeming them to your server via ftp.
Files are sent by the server when requested by the client browser, usually in the form of an HTML document. Your browser interprets the incoming information and displays it as a Web page. In order for the Web to work, clients and servers need to speak the same language. You see bold text on your screen when your browser interprets the bold tag sent by the server and makes that text bold. What is the language of love between servers and clients? HTML, of course. HTML 1.0 (Hypertext Markup Language) is a specification of commands and their syntax for communicating on the World Wide Web. More simply put, it is a collection of "tags" that your browser understands. When the server wants you to make a line of text bold it will enclose that text within this tag:
<B>This is the text that will be bold</B>
Notice the difference between the tag that opens the statement and the tag that closes the statement. With few exceptions, tags are made up of an opening tag < > and a closing tag </ > with the text in between the tags being affected. A real live HTML document is nothing more than a plain text file with certain selections of text bracketed by tags. You probably didn't think it was that easy.
But wait there's more...
Every HTML document starts with the <HTML> tag and closes with the </HTML> tag. Within that set of tags is all the text of your page. That text is also divided into two parts--the <HEAD></HEAD> and the <BODY></BODY>. The HEAD is for important items that are not displayed to the browser in the normal reading area of your browser's window. The HEAD is a special place for certain tags like the <TITLE></TITLE> tag. Its text appears in the browser window's title bar for that document and also as the name for its bookmark. You could create a bare bones Web page with the following structure:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>document title</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
displayed text...
</BODY>
</HTML>
There are quite a lot of tags that you can use when building your pages and more are being invented with each new published spec sheet on HTML. I think there is now an "adopted by all" version of HTML 3.0--at least we hope we're all using the same spec sheet. I've included all the basic 1.0 tags as well as a few others in The Web Ginder so you can experiment and learn on your own. That's the nickel tour of Web authoring and I'll only charge you a dollar.
What The Web Grinder Does
---------------------------------
New Features in version 2.5:
Ñ A totally new interface with a convenient button panel and extra-large edit window.
Ñ New user-customizeable Image and Link menus. Keep your most often used images and links readily accessible.
Ñ New "Colors" menu supports HTML color specs for background, text, and links.
Ñ Displays text and background colors in the edit window. (You won't see the link colors until you browse)
Ñ Now supports the "CENTER" tag as well as all the basic formatting tags.
Ñ It keeps a log of processed files with date/time stamp, word count and character count.
Ñ It works as a simple text editor for creating totally new documents or putting the final touches on a nearly complete document.
Ñ Bulleted lists, numbered lists and all the standard tags are available with a click of the mouse. Hilight the text you want to tag and select the tag from the "Format" menu.
Using the "Compile" feature:
1. It takes the first line of a plain text file and turns it into the <TITLE> of an HTML document.
2. It specs the rest as <BODY> with the second line as the visible headline enclosed with the <H1> tags.
3. The third line of your text is spec'd as the byline/subhead and is spec'd as <H3>.
4. A pair of <P>'s (new paragraph tags) are placed at the end of each paragraph.
5. The closing tags are appended to the end of the file.
Tips and Techniques
---------------------------------
Ñ If you want to use the "Compile" feature, YOU MUST TYPE YOUR TEXT FILES EXACTLY LIKE THE EXAMPLE BELOW or you'll get unexpected results. Follow this template, typing a RETURN key only where you see the word RETURN:
Your title...RETURN
Your headline...RETURN
Your subhead or byline...RETURN
RETURN
Body text, blah, blah, blah...RETURN
RETURN
New paragraph blah, blah, blah...RETURN
RETURN
New paragraph blah, blah, blah...RETURN, etc.
Ñ If you spec any colors, then compile or use the BODY tag, then change any color...you must reapply the BODY tag or the color change won't take effect. All the color specs for the document are contained as hexidecimal values in the opening BODY tag. If you dare, you can edit these values directly. They are made up of 3 number pairs representing hex values for Red, Green, and Blue intensities respectively, grouped as a 6 digit number: "#RRGGBB" You must be careful to choose values within the standard 8-bit system palette or your colors won't be accurate on other computers. (Just use my color picker by choosing color changes from the menu...it's way easier!)
Ñ Don't try to format your text with RETURNs, spaces, and tabs. As Jean-Luc Picard says, "That kind of control is an illusion." You'll be serving your page to many different computers that have different fonts with different character spacing, word spacing, and character width. Just type your RETURNs when you want to make a new paragraph. Let the word rap fall where it may.
Ñ It's better to tag all italics, links, file references, etc. first and compile last, except lists and "CENTER"--do them last.
Ñ A special note about bulleted/numbered lists--don't use bullets (option-8) in your text. HTML automatically puts bullets in place when the text is spec'd as a bulleted list. Numbered lists are the same...the numbers are automatic. Type lists with two returns separating the items:
List Item blah blah blah RETURN
RETURN
List Item blah blah blah RETURN
RETURN
List Item blah blah blah etc.
VERY IMPORTANT: Make sure to search and replace all smart quotes and apostrophies in a word processor before you run the file through the Grinder. Macintosh curly quotes are not the same character on other platforms so don't use them.
I will try to add a search and replace dialog in the next version of The Web Grinder¬, but for now...shut up...it's free! If I make this thing too good I'll have to charge you for it.
Testing Your New Pages
---------------------------------
Ñ You may not know this but you don't have to browse the Web with your browser, you can browse your hard drive, too. Just use the "Open File..." command in the file menu of Netscape or a similar command in the file menu of most any browser. Open the pages you create with The Web Grinder¬ to see how they'll look when they're served on the Web.
Ñ It's a good idea to test your pages with several different browsers to see what various users will see. I find that I can make a killer page in Netscape that looks like crap in another browser supplied by one of the online services. I hope that all browsers in the future will catch up with Netscape...at least with the basics like text wrapping around images.
Ñ When I'm "webmastering" I usually have three browsers, The Web Grinder¬ and Simpletext, all running at the same time. Until I get The Web Grinder¬ to perform like it should as a text editor, I'll keep using Simpletext.
This version of The Web Grinder¬ is free with a catch--you must e-mail a message to me telling me the features you'd like to see in future versions. If you don't, you'll have very bad luck or something.
I hope The Web Grinder¬ helps you get your work done because there's so much work to be done.
Happy grinding,
Jim Love
Owner, Author
River Rock Sight & Sound
Internet: river_rock@interramp.com
AOL: River Rock
eWorld: River Rock
River Rock Web site: http://www.automatrix.com/~level11/riverrock.html
The Web Grinder¬ ⌐1995 Jim Love, River Rock Sight & Sound. All rights reserved.
The Web Grinder¬ is freeware. Created and developed by Jim Love. Jim Love and River Rock Sight & Sound assume no liabilities or responsibilities either express or implied and make no guarantees or warrantees either express or implied for this product. Use of this product constitutes agreement with these terms.
