I consider this opportunity to work with you an honor. We are going to break new ground together because this is one of the first courses of it kind being offered in the world. You are pioneers.
Has the Internet been a powerful tool for communication? Undoubtedly. But while e-mail remains the true "killer app'", the most used application of this communications medium, daily more and more people are turning to Web publications to get their news.
In this lecture, we'll begin with the basics:
- What is a Web page?
- How does the Web work?
Each week you'll find a lecture like this one posted on this Web site. With each of these lectures will be a series of readings, our syllabus, which you'll find links for in the lectures. You will be expected to have reviewed these readings and be able to discuss them in our "live", real-time sessions using Yahoo! Instant Messenger (TM) in the Internet cafe where we'll all "meet" every week.
These live sessions will be our classroom laboratories, where we'll discuss issues and I'll be able to give each of you personal attention as we discuss your work.
MY INTRODUCTION: As you can see at the top of this page, my name is Rod Amis. I'm communicating with you from New Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States. Thus, when we meet each week, though it's afternoon there, I'll be enjoying my morning coffee in my home office (something we shall discuss more as we talk about telecommuting and how the Web has made that form of work possible for many people).
I've been a working journalist now for about thirty years. I started out in print journalism, of course, as there was no Web thirty years ago. When computer technology and the World Wide Web (WWW) came along, I was as excited as a child in a candy shop and leapt here "with both feet." The Web site on which you're reading this lecture is my publication, began as a print 'Zine in 1990. It has been here on the Web since 1996. In fact, we "launched" ( a Web term with putting up a site or pages for public viewing) the same month as the New York Times Online. (Registration is required for the NYT site, but it's free. During this course I plan to offer you a number of free resources on the Web that will make your building of your own Web sites ---Yes, you will be building Web sites for this course, my friends! --- and research for news stories much easier.)
I'm an avowed believer in internationalism. As a former Watson Fellow, one of my formative experiences was visiting Cairo, Egypt, after getting my undergraduate degree, on a Writing grant. [The Watson Grant is a bequest in honor of Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM. It is given to the top people in their field at various US universities.] That gave me a chance to meet and work with a number of the staff at that country's flagship newspaper Al Ahram.
It was my pleasure, last year, to visit Belgrade (Beograd) as the guest of Third Eye's (Trece Oko) editor, Dragan Vicanovic. Mr. Rastislav Durman, who worked with IREX was instrumental in bringing me to you. He has written for this publication of mine in the past and is a good friend who I am honored to know.
It's my hope that you will leave this course offered by the Novi Sad School of Journalism as excited about the possibilities of this new medium as I am myself.
During this series of lectures, you'll find a number of links. It's not required that you click them all (with the exception of syllabus items) but it will be helpful if you do. I don't require that learn everthing about using your browser (a tool for viewing Web sites) but the more you know about browsers the better you'll be able to understand the design of Web pages and how to make your own more "intuitive". By that term, I mean easy for people --- no matter what their familiarity with this medium --- to use and get all the information they want.
If there is one thing I've learned in my years as a Web editor and designer, it is that you should make your pages consistent with your goals and as easy for your visitors/users/readers to use as possible. They should never see or have to think about the work you do to make the presentation easy for them.
The page you're reading today is very simple, by design. It's very basic HTML (HyperText Markup Language) the first and foremost language in which Web page are designed. As we progress through this course, you'll be introduced to more complex Web tools like Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript, XML (Extensible Markup Language) and DHTML (Dynamic HyperText Markup Language.) You'll also learn about Internet security, an important issue. Firewalls for both your personal computer and for your sites and the difference between the Internet and an intranet (an in-house version of the Web usually deployed by corporations.)
We have a lot of material to cover in a very short time. So let's get started.
What is a Web page?
What you're reading right now is a Web page. It's an object created using HTML. Go to your browser taskbar at the top of the page right now and click on the "VIEW" word, and choose the option "SOURCE".This shows you the basic coding I used to design this page. Everything from the meta tags --- notes which search engines like Yahoo!, Google, and HotBot, et alia, use to list pages from Web sites like this one --- to font choices, blockquotes, and the basic code that highlights text with italics and bold. (In future lectures we'll discuss meta tags and how to use them to have your Web pages archives. They are an important promotional tool.)
While you're viewing the source code for this Web page, do this:
Under the "FILE" option in your browser, go to the "SAVE AS" option and save this page. You can use it to analyse how a Web page is built.As you can see from this page, HTML is not very complex. In fact, it's easy! As Justin Hall, who designed the original WIRED magazine Web site says: even a child can do it.
So I think "surfing" Justin's site is a good place for you to start. You can find it here: Publish Yo'Self! [NOTE: This is a syllabus item. REQUIRED READING for our first class session.]
What Justin does at that site, and the attendant links, are very simple and basic. Simplicity in design has its place. If you're familiar with the Web, of course, you've seen much more compelling and sophisticated presentations, including the use of Flash software, a product of Macromedia. We'll cover Flash and other multimedia tools like streaming audio and video as we move along in the course. Here's a preview of a "ghost site" from one of the early Flash pioneers, a young man named Gabo who lives in Puerto Rico. (You'll need to download the Flash software to view this link.)
But let's get back to basics. To see something beyond Justin Hall's idea of the Web, you should go to two other sources: [NOTE: These are syllabus items. REQUIRED READING for our first class session.]
Both of these sources will familiarize you with the complexity of what creating a Web page is about.Review of these two sites will put a lot on your plate and, I hope, give us food for our first "live" discussion of Web publishing.
How does the Web work?
The best place to learn this is by going to the international organization that all Web designers and publishers, by consensus, have agreed is our arbiter: The World Wide Web Consortium, usually referred to as the W3C. We'll refer back to this page throughout this course. This is where standards we all use are tested and formulated.Finally, there is the issue of "usability". By that term, I mean making the Web, a product of various softwares, accessible to as many people as possible. A wonderful source for this consideration is Sun Microsystems' Senior Engineer Emeritus's site Useit.com. [NOTE: This is a syllabus item. REQUIRED READING for our first class session.] We shall be referring back to this site during this course, as well. Please sign up for Mr. Nielsen's updates via e-mail.
You have a lot to read before our first session, don't you? 
So I think we should stop here.
Until next session, my best wishes to each of you. Welcome to The Future.
Rod
© 2002, GENERATOR 21.
e-mail your comments. Send your remarks to rod@g21.net.