The Soap Box Speach

First - a short treatise on Internet Responsibility:

Let me begin by saying, that there is a time and a place for everything. The internet is certainly the place, although I'm not sure it's the time. There are a lot of things out there that might not ought to be. On the other hand, the internet is a wonderful venue for one to express oneself.

The internet started out as the ARPANET. It was designed for use by universities, hospitals, and government agencies as a means of transmitting vital knowledge. In a sense, it had the potential of becoming the world's biggest library. When Q-link, a nationwide Commodore based service that was populated by simple folk, turned into AOL and joined forces with the ARPANET, the result was the internet as we know it today. All the knowledge of the scholars, the commerce of business, and the stupidity of simple folk like me - all joined out there for what? To "reach out and touch someone" as the old telephone commercials used to say.

Now we have the power to reach out and touch people like we never have. One might say - we have the ultimate power to reach people. But with ultimate power comes ultimate responsibility, and we have a responsability to those who view our pages. Think of this for a second. When I wrote this page, I wrote it on my computer. I bought my computer, and I paid my electric bill. You are now looking at it on your computer. You bought your computer, and paid your electric bill. What we do with our stuff is our business, right? Not exactly. This page is stored on someone else's comuter out on the internet. It sits on a hard drive, on a webserver that an internet service provider purchased. He pays his electric bill. It then travelled through hundreds - perhaps thousands of other computers before it reached yours. They all paid their electric bills. Thousands of dollars were spent so that you could see what I have written.

Doesn't it make sense to ask this question:

Is what you've written WORTH spending thousands of dollars on? Only if the return of your web page is worth more than thousands of dollars. If the story that you tell warms the hearts of a thousand children - KUDOS! If the ice cream you sell puts a smile on everyone's face - let me have some! If you know a secret about the government that would make the news stand on it's ear - then shout it from the rooftops. There are way too many pages wasting the internet that say, "Hi, I'm joe, I'm 16, I like rap music and my dog has fleas." What would be better is a page from the same 16 year old teaching how to do a 180 degree curl on a skateboard - with picutures! What the internet needs are content filled pages that are useful and helpful to society. Tell the world what you know. Pass on what you've learned. Share Yourself. Knowledge is a reproductive fruit that is worth more than all the gold in the world.

I'll get off my soapbox now.

Technique:

There are many different techniques that "webmasters" use to make their pages look neat and organized. Among them are TABLES, FRAMES, and just plain good HTML practices. Remember lesson 4? While you now know enough to write a simple web page, it would be wrong of me to send you off into the wild blue wander without giving you a sense of style, a sense of flair, a sense of hope?

Rule number one - learn from others!

If you see a web page out there, and like what it looks like - take a look at the HTML code that the author of that page wrote!

How do we do that?

It's easier than it sounds. When you're out there browsing, and see a great page, simple click on Edit, View Source ( Assuming you have Internet Exploder ). Other web browsers have a similar way to look at the source code. This can be a good learning tool as you begin to write source code. Remember - though - don't STEAL someone elses work. while it is acceptable to look at, learn from, glean and extrapolate from other people's wisdom - copyright laws apply to source code too. Don't steal (cut & paste) other peoples code. The reason for taking this course in the first place is so YOU can learn to write code, not so you can take someone elses and claim it for your own.

'Nuff Said.

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This Course was written by Ray Dall © All Rights Reserved.
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And for what it's worth... this page was last updated HexDate 01-11--7D1

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