Some Additional Hints to Creating Web Pages and Sites:

Some Additional Hints to Creating Web Pages and Sites: [379_fa03_web2]

A quick and dirty way to make a web page is to write the file in either Word or WordPerfect and then SAVE AS HTML. Quick because the one-step is all there is to it. Dirty because the code it produces is a mess – making each simple line end (carriage return) into a paragraph break and adding proprietary stuff.

Beginners may like the editors associated with browsers, Composer in Netscape – or FrontPage Express in Internet Explorer. These editors have idiosyncrasies but do produce some HTML code from menus.

Warning! If you do use method 1 or 2, don’t mix and match, but stay with the original editor if you ever need to alter the file. Each program has a proprietary way of looking at HTML codes and will probably delete whatever markup it doesn’t understand (that’s your hard work, buddy).

Hand coding via text editors such as Notepad is preferred by experts. But you may prefer some HTML professional menu-driven editors such as Homesite or Dreamweaver. They produce pure HTML, free of proprietary contamination, meaning it's transparent to human understanding and software editing alike. Although the full version of FrontPage is easy to learn, it produces highly proprietary code (like most Microsoft products), which can make it very hard to use in the long run if its choices happen not to be yours.

Filenames: Unix names are exact and are sensitive to case. Use lower case to keep things simple. Be aware that some upload operations will actually capitalize file names! Unix file names are also sensitive to exact extensions. The two filenames, myfile.htm and myfile.html are not the same. Some editors produce htm files while others produce html files. (If you are limited to 8.3 filenames, as in DOS, you're stuck with htm.) Both extensions are valid for hypertext use. Typically the first or default hypertext file is named index.html or index.htm. Although Microsoft Windows allows spaces in file names and directory (folder) names, Unix does not. Replace spaces in such file or folder names (use underlines or eliminate them entirely) before you upload them to Unix.

Rutgers Security: In the summer of 2003, Rutgers replaced the conventional way of connecting to and uploading files to Pegasus and other networks with more secure methods. Two of the new options were PuTTY instead of telnet for remote connections and Webdrive in place of ftp for remote file transfers. When you login to Pegasus, the H: drive on your PC will be mapped to the Pegasus root directory, so you can work with it as though it were part of your PC, where A: is the floppy disk and C: is the hard drive. Use PuTTY at either the Rutgers labs or at home to connect to Pegasus. In the Rutgers labs use the H: drive (Pegasus) to move files between it and your PC. At home use WebDrive, which remaps the X: drive, to do the same thing. Probably you will need to install PuTTY and Webdrive or similar software on your PC -- you can get them both without charge from Rutgers.

Windows, DOS , and Unix commands:

	Windows	DOS	Unix
Directory	Explorer, details	dir	ls or ls-l
Copy	define	copy file1 file2	cp file1 file2
Paste	drag and drop	not needed	not needed
Rename	right click, Rename	ren file1 file2	mv file1 file2
Mass rename	N/A	ren my* your*	mv my* your*
Delete	right click, Delete	del file1	rm file1 file2 file3 …
Make directory	File-New-folder	mkdir newdir	mkdir newdir
Change dir	Explorer, click	cd \newdir	cd /newdir
Filename spaces	my file (ok)	my file (bad)	my file (bad)
Filename case	Mine = mine? (same)	Mine = mine? (same)	Mine = mine? (not the same!)

Wildcards, slashes, undelete, etc: Both DOS and UNIX use wildcards: the asterisk or star (*) stands for any number of characters and the question mark (?) for any single character. DOS uses backslashes to indicate sub-directories (work\379) while Unix uses front slashes (work/379). Both DOS and Unix use the single dot (.) to mean the current directory and the double dot (..) to mean the parent of the current directory. Windows has undelete (the Recycle bin), and DOS has undelete utilities (Norton), but Unix only has the most recent system administrator's backup tape.