To begin with, unlike Word Processing, where the 8.5 x 11 page is the standard, and fonts are of specific designated sizes, and everything can be layed out precisely ... information on the WWW is a different beast. Different computer screens have different resolutions, users can tailor viewing window widths, and browsers are free to interpret HTML "code" in very different manners. This is particularly true for text and heading sizes, colors, and blank space.

In addition, nearly every browser supports non-standard extensions to HTML that permit various features not presently supported by the widely accepted standard. Generally, this doesn't hurt much, the browsers typically are able to ignore what they do not understand.

The bottom line is that there is no true WYSIWYG in the internet world yet, at least not using HTML, the primary language in which web pages are constructed. This means that while general layout and formatting can be done, it doesn't really pay to take this to too much detail, since you have to live with some variation in the browsers anyway.

A few distinctive features of web based information need to be considered:

• Web Pages are not constrained to the linear order to which printed material must adhere. The medium is much freer. Any word or combination of words can be associated with another page via a link. The people viewing your pages have the freedom to follow links in any order that suits their needs.
• This means that many web pages are most effective when they partition information into bite size chunks of no more than a few screens. For example, my Beyond Imagination site has over 1000 pages, but the Home page is only about four screens.
• This doesn't mean you can't have longer works on the WWW. I have several books. By their very nature, these are primarily linear documents. Even then, however, they can be broken down into chapters or sections that constitute meaningful partitions.
• Care must be taken to ensure the viewer of your pages has an easy, consistent, and intuitive means to navigate. This means putting in links to make it easy to get to key places in your web page structure. Yes, the "back" function of the browser can get one to familiar ground, but good page/site design should minimize how much this browser function has to be used. The bottom line is to avoid things that get people lost!

Now, let's examine the building blocks from which you can create and arrange information on your pages.

TEXT FORMATTING OPTIONS

GRAPHICS OPTIONS

HORIZONTAL RULES

HYPERTEXT LINKS

Hypertext links allow you to associate any piece of text or graphic with either another point in the current document or with another resource on the net. These are usually displayed as colored text or as graphics with a thin colored box around them. The links are selected by placing the mouse pointer over them and clicking. The location name shows up at the bottom of the browser screen when you place the cursor over the hyperlinked text/graphic.

You've seen several examples of this on these pages. There are many more at the Beyond Imagination site itself. The Beyond Imagination Home Page, for instance, is primarily hypertext links to various Works, information, and recommended sites/pages.

WHITE SPACE AND PAGE LAYOUT

Unlike word processors which have tabs and permitted you to space text. HTML is oblivious to extra spacing. For instance, there are 10 spaces before the "F" in this sentence. The browser only reacts to the first one. Similarly, there are two "returns" between "." and the "S". They are completely ignored.

HTML does permit paragraph breaks. You see them above. But adding more of these paragraph breaks does not result in blank lines on the screen.

There are ten such breaks between this paragraph and the previous one. I know, it doesn't look like it, but you can view source to see that this is indeed the case.

The bottom line from this is that when you really need WHITE space you may have to do some extra work and resort to a variety of tricks to get it.

BACKGROUNDS AND COLORS

The Beyond Imagination Pages have samples of this. And the Recommended Links have even more. The bottom line is yes, you can control backgrounds, background color, text color, link colors. The bad news is that this can easily get you into trouble since different browsers do not render these colors in the same way.

Some things to avoid include:

• Backgrounds that make it difficult to read the text on your pages. You want the reader to get the information. The background provides the setting but it is useless if it hides or obstructs the message.

• Color combinations that make it difficult to read text or links. Dark text on dark backgrounds in particular require much care and must be tested on multiple browsers to ensure they come across properly.

• Color combinations that are jarring, feel strange, or feel unbalanced. These all get in the way of conveying your message or information.

• Link colors similar to text colors, or visited link colors similar to unvisited ones. The whole point of allowing separate colors for text, links and visited links was to provide feedback to the viewers as to where they can go and where they have been. If pages are heavily hyperlinked it is too much to expect the viewer of your pages to keep tract of this.

Personally I found the contrast of black text on a white background more appealing. This can be reversed for a striking contrast, but then one must be very careful in the selection of link colors.

The actual codes for colors are six digit Hexadecimal numbers. "913DE0" for instance is the purple color that I use for links. Fortunately, there are tools on the WWW that allow you to select colors from a color wheel and automatically do the conversion to HTML code for you. They even permit playing with combinations of background, background color, text color, and link colors so that you can create the effect that you want.

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Beyond Imagination

Copyright © 1996, Wayne Hartman, Revised -- (22 Jun 96)