Sams Teach Yourself HTML 4 in 24 Hours

By Dick Oliver

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Put Your HTML Page Online Today
  • I. Your First Web Page
  • Hour 1. Understanding HTML and XML
  • Hour 2. Create a Web Page Right Now
  • Hour 3. Linking to Other Web Pages
  • Hour 4. Publishing Your HTML Pages
    • Setting Up an Internet Web Site
    • Transferring Pages to a Web Server
    • Making a File Available for Downloading
    • Putting Web Pages on an Intranet
    • Publishing Web Pages on Disk
    • Testing Your Pages
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • II. Web Page Text
  • Hour 5. Text Alignment and Lists
  • Hour 6. Text Formatting and Font Control
  • Hour 7. Email Links and Links Within a Page
  • Hour 8. Creating HTML Forms
  • III. Web Page Graphics
  • Hour 9. Creating Your Own Web Page Graphics
  • Hour 10. Putting Graphics on a Web Page
  • Hour 11. Custom Backgrounds and Colors
  • Hour 12. Creating Animated Graphics
  • IV. Web Page Design
  • Hour 13. Page Design and Layout
  • Hour 14. Graphical Links and Imagemaps
  • Hour 15. Advanced Layout with Tables
  • Hour 16. Using Style Sheets
  • V. Dynamic Web Pages
  • Hour 17. Embedding Multimedia in Web Pages
  • Hour 18. Interactive Pages with Applets and ActiveX
  • Hour 19. Web Page Scripting for Non-Programmers
  • Hour 20. Setting Pages in Motion with Dynamic HTML
  • VI. Building a Web Site
  • Hour 21. Multipage Layout with Frames
  • Hour 22. Organizing and Managing a Web Site
  • Hour 23. Helping People Find Your Web Pages
  • Hour 24. Planning for the Future of HTML
  • VII. Appendixes
  • A. Readers' Most Frequently Asked Questions
  • B. HTML Learning Resources on the Internet
  • C. Complete HTML 4 Quick Reference
  • D. HTML Character Entities

Testing Your Pages

Whenever you transfer Web pages to a disk, Internet site, or intranet server, you should immediately test every page thoroughly.

The following checklist will help make sure everything on your pages behaves the way you expected.

1. Before you transfer the pages, follow all of these steps to test the pages while they're on your hard drive. After you transfer the pages to the master disk or Web server, test them again—if your pages are on the Internet, preferably through a 28.8Kbps modem connection.
2. Do each of the following steps with the latest version of Netscape Navigator, the latest Microsoft Internet Explorer, and at least one other browser such as DOS Lynx or Opera. Testing with an older version of Navigator or Internet Explorer isn't such a bad idea since many people still use outdated versions and some pages will appear differently.
3. Make sure the computer you're testing with is set to a 16-color video mode or, at most, a 256-color mode. (Pages look better in higher color modes, but you want to see the "bad news" of how they'll look to people with cheap video hardware.) Also, try several different brightness settings on your monitor and (if possible) change the color balance of your monitor to make sure your pages still look okay on displays that are more blue or red than yours.
4. If possible, use a computer with 800x600 resolution for testing purposes, but adjust the size of the browser window to exactly 640x480 pixels. On each page, use the maximize button on the corner of the window to switch back and forth between full 800x600 resolution and 640x480 resolution. If pages look good at these two resolutions, they'll probably look fine at larger resolutions, too. (Additional testing at 1,024x768 or 1,600x1,200 resolution can't hurt.)
5. Turn off auto image loading in Netscape Navigator before you start testing, so you can see what each page looks like without the graphics. Check your ALT tag messages and then click the Load Images button on the toolbar to load the graphics and review the page carefully again.
6. Use your browser's font size settings to look at each page in a variety of font sizes, to ensure that your careful layout doesn't fall to pieces.
7. Start at the home page and systematically follow every link. (Use the Back button to return after each link, and then click the next link on the page.)
8. Wait for each page to completely finish loading, and scroll all the way down to make sure all images appear where they should.
9. If you have a complex site, it may help to make a checklist of all the pages on your site to ensure they all get tested.
10. Time how long it takes each page to load through a 28.8Kbps modem, preferably when connected through a different ISP than the one that runs the Web server. Multiply that time by 2 to find out how long 14.4Kbps-modem users will have to wait to see the page. Is the information on that page valuable enough to keep them from going elsewhere before the page finishes loading?

If your pages pass all those tests, you can be pretty certain that they'll look great to every Internet surfer in the world.

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