How To Webconsruction

Steps to composing your own web pages via a free composer program

Open Sea Monkey (or Mozilla)
Select: Window>Composer to open a new html page
Save your page: (using Save the first time or Save As after that--to verify you're saving to desired location)

Create a title (will be visible at the top of your browsed page and when saved as a bookmark)

Your home page should be saved as index.html and may display itself as index.htm (abbreviating html to htm--for a three character file name)
Name all other pages without spaces or punctuation in the style of filename.html (Use capitalization if it helps such as FileName.html)
Save these to a folder on your desktop

Format text size using pulldown menu of formats rather than arrows forcing larger or smaller font size
Select a font (format>font) or combination of safe fonts number of web browsers
Choose text color (by selecting upper left square next to pulldown menu for formats) or a combination of text colors that provide strong contrast
(Avoid using text colors that will be similar to your hyperlink colors)

Choose your table icon and selecting desired number of rows and columns
Allow the table with to be 100% of window--until later when you have more specific effects in mi
Assign a border value between 0 (no border when browsed--even though dotted in layout mode) and 10 (a heckuvalotta border)

Strength: tables organize space
Weakness: tables complicate browsing accessibility, and it's preferable to use cascading style sheets

Locate quality images that you desire
You can insert GIF, JPEG (must have .jpg file extension to appear in browser), BMP, and PNG images into your web page.
Determine whether you need to obtain permission to use the image via fair use considerations
Right click>Get Info to determine whether the image needs to be optimized (saved for web) via any of the Photoshop family of applications
If image is larger than 30 KB, go to Photoshop>Open>Image Size>Save For Web>4 Up>(in upper right, select GIF for graphics or JPG for photos)>select high, medium, or low--in order to get a small image size (30 KB or smaller) and maintain picture quality
Then save your image as a .gif for graphics or .jpg for photos with a W for web in the name (don't save over your best quality image with a lower quality web image)
Create a hyperlink and brief reference to any images borrowed in Copyright Fair Use

Choose: Format>Page Colors and Background
Select a background fitting for you site's color themes and rich in contrast to your text--including hyperlink colors
Consult these cross platform web-safe colors to copy and paste color values into your background color field

Enter links within your site (requires multiple pages in your site) and to another site

Highlight desired text or select desired image and click chain link icon on tool bar
Modify link colors as desired by choosing Format>Page Colors and Background>Use Custom Colors
Keep an eye on high-contrast, readable link/background selections

Publish your page to the web and check it via http://www.d.umn.edu/~(YourX.500UsernameHere)

You have 100 MB of storage space at UMD (aside form your electronic portfolio that has 3 GB worth of storage space
For this reason, expunge old email, burn your myfiles work copies to a compact disk (then trash and empty trash in myfiles), and free up some space for your website, or you'll be getting email from ITSS notifying you of your soon-to-be closed down web access (until you clean up your act)

Using a web browser, check your page and monitor your progress on your quality site.

Get peer feedback on strengths and growth needs, then download pages and modify via Composer (see step 1)
Having trouble modifying your page? Be sure you're in composer mode rather than browse mode in Sea Monkey or Mozilla.