Lab 1: Glossary, web browsing and making web pages

Getting the course software sorted out

Part of todays lab requires that you to use the software that comes with the textbook. You can use this software at home even if you have a linux or Mac computer. However, you will see that you need to have something called the 'java runtime environment'. You almost certainly do, however, again it can be downloaded for free, and the details of where to get it are in the preface. I recommend that you save it onto a flash drive. Your first task is to sort this out. We are going to use this for the next few weeks -so try to bring it with you.

Doing lab 1 from the lab book

Pages 1-12 in the lab book is very simple if you have any computer experience. Please go through it. It introduces you to menus, the lab software and web browsers.

Making a Web Page

We are going to do the following:

Learn to use an editor program called "notepage" to create text files.
We are going to learn a little about hypertext markup language (HTML) so that we can create a web page
We are going to learn to save our web page as a file with a file extension of .html.
We will use our browser to view the file that we have created.
We will learn the sequence: edit and save (in notepad) and then refresh (on the browser).
Finally, you will send me an e-mail with the webpage as an attachment. I will (eventually) put it up on the web and the whole world will be able to see your page.

Using Notepad

We are going to use a simple program that comes free with Microsoft Windows called 'notepad'. Notepad is an 'editor'. That is to say it creates 'files' of text. Unlike a wordprocessor it doesn't embed invisible characters or sequences of characters that have special meanings for formatting. If you Look at the words "Nigel Stuart's Web Page" you will see that they are between an H1 tag and a /H1 tag. This creates a first order header. Change the text in the middle. It could be your real name, a pseudoname or some topic that you would like to create a web page about.

Saving Your work

From the file menu in Notepad, select save as.
In the 'save in' box, move to where you would like to save it. It is very important that you know where this is. Ideally it would be a flash drive, or a network drive.
Next we have to chose a filename. You need to chose something simple. Put it in "double quotes like this". It must finish with .html. So something like "jo.html" would be good.

Viewing your work

At the top of the browser window is the URL bar. If instead of typing a URL here you type c:\ -or whatever the letter of the drive was that you stored the file on. it will let you navigate to the html file that you just stored. The modified page should appear in the browser.

Edit, Save, Refresh

You can now work on the webpage, making changes and additions. You can then save the page from the file menu (not save as). Then to view the changes you must get the browser to 'refresh' which is done by clicking on the button tot the right of the URL bar with 2 green arrows on.

Make Changes and Additions!

Change the title, and all the text so that it says things that you want it to say. Then e-mail me the file. We can keep working on it and add pictures and things next week.
A Simple Web Page