Tag Archive | technology

HTML – Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0

Apr11

webWeb Versions

The Web has versions? Yes, believe it or not.

When you create a webpage your using HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to tell a browser how to display the text and images to your visitors.  You can learn more about its history and creation on Wikipedia which has a pretty complete entry for HTML.

Basically HTML had its prototypes developed at The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 1980. Physicist Tim Berners-Lee has been credited with starting the whole thing off. By 1989, he began work on a browser technology to easily display the evolved versions of his prototype language and HTML was developed. Berners-Lee and CERN data systems engineer Robert Cailliau collaborated on a joint request for funding, but the project was not formally adopted by CERN. The first publicly available description of HTML was a document called “HTML Tags”, first mentioned on the Internet by Berners-Lee in late 1991. Continue reading →

HTML 106 – Special Characters

Apr11

asciiUsing Special Characters

In your web page design it maybe necessary for some part of your textual information to include special characters, such as the copyright or trademark symbol.

These special characters are referred to as ASCII Characters. The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) was developed from telegraphic codes. Its first commercial use was as a seven-bit teleprinter code promoted by Bell data services.

ASCII includes definitions for 128 characters: 33 are non-printing control characters (many now obsolete)[7] that affect how text and space are processed and 95 printable characters, including the space (which is considered an invisible graphic) – Wikipedia ASCII.

Today’s HTML and Blog editors allow you to simply copy the symbol and paste it into your text. Back in the day, you could only add these characters by knowing the special ASCII Code. You can find codes for the Office, Business, Math, Currency, Astrological and Weather symbols and even Chess and Playing Cards. Continue reading →

HeartBleed – Update

Apr9
running

Services Are Back Up And Running

Yesterday I shared a technogeek notice about the internet wide security bug known as HeartBleed. “Catastrophic is the right word. On the scale of one to 10, this is an 11,” blogged Bruce Schneier an internationally renowned security technologist, called a “security guru” by The Economist. This was truly a serious issue.

This bug was part of the security protocol that is widely used by a large part of the internet community world wide and it was a fairly serious issue. It affected you whither or not you realized it.

This afternoon I’m beginning to receive notifications from the several host providers I work with explaining there was an issue and they have patched the bug to close the security hole. Of course they said it with a lot more techno-gargen, but the point is, they fixed it on their servers. Continue reading →

Internet Wide Security Issues: HeartBleed

Apr8
Transaction Security

Transaction Security

Doing Any Business/Transactions Online

You may have noticed your internet connection is slow today, or you’re having problems sending eMail this week. You’re not the only one. That’s because there’s a bug in a piece of software that is widely used by many companies across the board for internet connectivity. It’s called OpenSSL.

It’s important to understand how THIS AFFECTS YOU as a casual user of the internet and why it’s so serious.

OpenSSL manages security behind the scenes for your secured connections while you’re surfing on the internet and doing your day to day business or personal activities. That’s social media, logging into your own blog, even your email servers probably run on OpenSSL.

It most probably also affects your Bank Account, and potentially any secured transaction you use online, from paying a bill, looking at your checking account balance, or buying that perfect Teapot on eBay. Even paying for an app on your phone could be impacted. It’s that wide spread. Continue reading →

HTML 105 – Using Graphics

Apr6

imgconstructionPulling In Visitors

A picture can speak 1,000 words. Graphics can add a lot of flair to your web site. They put your words into images and grab the attention of the reader. How many articles have you clicked on, because the picture was intriguing?

Too many graphics can also be a deterrent to visitors. The more graphics you have, the longer your web page takes to load. In a world of instant gratification, if users have to wait, they cancel your page and go on to something else. You must use your own judgment to find that happy medium.

You also don’t want to use graphics that are too large for you article. I don’t mean taking up white space, and condensing your paragraphs to a tiny column next to the image. I mean taking up disk space which affects load time when you’re page is accessed through a browser. Remember not everyone is on a high speed internet connection. But even if they were, you don’t want people waiting for your page to load, because the image files are too large. Continue reading →

HTML 104 – Creating Links

Apr6

linkconstructionWebsite Navigation

If you’re on the web, you already know what a LINK is. It’s highlighted words, phrases or images that take a reader to another page, on your website or blog, or to another website entirely.

They can be used to add information to an article, to categorize information, group services or products for a company, or a variety of other points of interest.  They can even be used to set up any easy method for visitors to send you email.

Links are pretty simple things to code, but they do have a few parameters that are worth noting. Continue reading →

HTML 103 – Setting Font Styles

Apr3

fontconfigsFont Color and Size

Everyone wants to highlight words or sentences in their text when writing the Great American Blog Post or New Article on their website. Businesses want to grab attention for sales or marketing campaigns to highlight key components of their new product or services.

For websites using HTML editors, these types of configurations are often built into the tool that allows you to increase font size, change colors for certain words or designate certain font sets be used for browsers that support them.

Blogs provide these abilities to, but sometimes what’s in the “Kitchen Sink” tool set lacks some of these potential settings. So it’s good to know what you can do with the behind the scene code, that you may not be able to do from the upfront Visual editor.

In the HTML 101 – The Bare Minimum Basics I shared how you can modify the code behind your page. But to share a bit of that here so you don’t have to go back and look it up, let me duplicate a piece of that article here. Continue reading →

HTML 102 – Setting Backgrounds

Apr3

bgconstructionPersonal vs Business

Backgrounds can be a wonderful way to spruce up a personal web page or create a specific look for a business. Backgrounds can be solid colors or graphics.

Graphics can be used in three different ways.

  1. Tiled Graphics – Vertical and Horizontal
    Small graphics can be used to set a common background that is tiled across the screen both vertically or horizontally. The width and height of these graphics are often small, but they can be any size. They’re usually smaller than 1366 wide x 768 high.
  2. Tiled Graphics – Vertical
    A wide graphic can be used that defines a common width, but is tiled vertically. The typical width of these graphics are 1366 wide, but the height can vary.
  3. Anchored Graphics
    A full size background image can be used to fill up the entire screen, and allows the text and graphics on your page to scroll over that image. This is a common practice for blogs, but there are many websites who use this method as well. The typical size for these graphics are 1366×768. Continue reading →

HTML 101 – The Bare Minimum Basics

Apr3

htmlSimple HyperText Markup Language

HTML or HyperText Markup Language is the main markup language for creating web pages and other information that can be displayed in a web browser.

If you’re creating a website or even a blog, knowing some of the basics of the code can help you alleviate a lot of frustration when you’re trying to format your text and it simply won’t work properly! Grr!

The best thing to do in these cases, is not get frustrated, but look at the code behind the text. Whither you’re using a HTML editor, or adding a new post or page to your blog, both editing systems will have a way to look at the code. When you have a general idea of what you’re looking at, you can find the issue and make attempts to fix it. Continue reading →

Web Design Tools

Apr2

webtoolsWhat Tools You Need

No matter what kind of site you’re going to be putting up on the internet, there are tools you’re going to need to make it easier to post articles and pictures.  You may want an HTML editor to help you design web pages, or you’ll need an FTP package to help you transfer files to your web space.

All websites and blogs will use graphics, so a good graphics editor will also come in handy. But which ones do you need and which ones are free and easy to use? I have a few suggestions. Continue reading →