The Cole Digest, February 14, 1996

Sorry we missed being sent out last week; I baubbled the ball.

We're with Christopher Ryan of the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina and he is explaining how to build a simple research system off the World-Wide Web for use in a newsroom. Two weeks ago, he talked about the hardware and software; this week, he shows you how to write some simple HTML to build a "gateway" to the wonders of the Web.

For our next step, you will need to learn the basics of the hypertext markup language. Yes, it's a programming language, but it's so simple that you can learn it in a weekend and look like a computer wizard.

Here's a simple hypertext markup language document:

<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>My Home Page</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY><H1>My Home Page</H1> <HR><UL> <LI>This is an Internet World-Wide Web link to the<A HREF="http://www.house.gov">U.S. House of Representatives</A>. <LI>This is a link to <A HREF="http://law.cornell.edu/supct/">U.S. Supreme Court Rulings</A> from Cornell University. <LI>This is a link to <A HREF="http://c.gp.cs.cmu.edu:5103/prog/ webster/">Webster's Dictionary</A> on-line. </UL> </BODY> </HTML>

Most of the commands in this document are instructions to format the page display. For example, <H1>My Home Page</H1> tells the World-Wide Web browser program to display the words "My Home Page" as a large headline.

The other important commands are called anchors. They point to sites on the Internet using a type of Internet address called Uniform Resource Locators (URLs).

For example, the command<A HREF="http://www.house.gov">U.S. House of Representatives</A> tells the World Wide Web browser program to display the words "U.S. House of Representatives" on the screen and establish a link from those words to the House computers, which are located on the Internet at the address http://www.house.gov.

Save the hypertext document on your computer's hard drive with a name like "homepage.htm" and configure your World-Wide Web browser program to use this document as your "home page." The home page is the first place that the browser program goes on the Internet when you start the program.

Important: You will have to use a special command to tell your World-Wide Web browser program to look on your computer for the home page. For example, if the home page document is called homepage.htm and is in the c:/netscape/files directory, the command is file:///c:/netscape/files/homepage.htm (some browsers use the command file://localhost/c:/netscape/files/homepage.htm).

Macintosh users have a special problem: Since spaces can be embedded into Mac disk and file names, how do you indicate that? Tell the computer about the space by using hexidecimal.

If your disk drive is called Macintosh HD and your folder is called World-Wide Web, replace those spaces with %20, so that the home page directory command would look like this: file:///Macintosh%20HD/World-Wide%20Web/homepage.HTML.

This file also could be stored on a server if you wanted; just indicate the full file name for the server as above.

You're done!

To use your brand-new, custom-written home page, run the network software and establish the PPP or SLIP Internet connection. Then start the World-Wide Web browser program. The next page shows what the screen will look like using the sample hypertext document listed earlier in this article.

Just click on the words "Webster's Dictionary" to connect to an electronic version of the dictionary on the Internet.

To track down Internet sites that are useful in your newsroom, I'd suggest finding the Internet address for your local university and explore its public files. It likely will have a section called Internet Resources or Cool Links that contains connections to Internet sites of interest to your community.

When you find an Internet site relevant to your news coverage, use the bookmark or hotlist feature of your World-Wide Web browser to record the address. Then you can type the addresses into your custom-written hypertext documents.

Another strategy is to browse some of the Internet directories, such as the Yahoo site at the address http://yahoo.com, or the Whole Internet Catalog at http://nearnet.gnn.com/wic/newrescat.toc.HTML.

All of this is a lot of work for one person, but it makes the Internet readily accessible to the rest of the newsroom. And as you find new and useful sites on the Internet, it is a simple matter to write their addresses into your home page.

What's more, it is so much fun that you'll find yourself 'Net surfing for all-too-many hours!

Thanks Christopher; I know you've helped a lot of people out there.

Onward.

\dmc

[THE COLE DIGEST is written by consultant David M. Cole, editor and publisher of the industry newsletter THE COLE PAPERS. The DIGEST is made available to PressLink subscribers every Wednesday at no extra charge. Send comments by e-mail to cole@plink.geis.com. The COLE DIGEST is the property of The Cole Group, a California sole proprietorship. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written permission of The Cole Group is prohibited. Copyright (C) 1996, The Cole Group. Opinions expressed are those of The Cole Group, unless otherwise noted.

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