“HTML 4 for the World Wide Web”

July 29, 1999

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Liz Castro: Treefrogirl, you can also check out my Web site (and my book); they'll help you a lot with HTML.

CCCola: Liz Castro, do you have your website URL?

Jeremy901: I have a WebTV and I am having trouble putting music and pictures in my mail using HTML. I have had so many people tell me different ways to do it and none seem to work. Any advice?

Liz Castro: Well, it's hard to tell what the problem is without seeing your code. People often spend a lot of time learning about complicated tags but then they spell the things wrong. That's what I'd check first. It seems obvious, but really 95% of the HTML problems I've seen are about spelling. Incredible, no? OK, maybe 93%. For music, you want to make sure that you're using code that works on both Netscape and Explorer. For images, make sure that you've got the image in the right format (either gif or jpeg), and that you've uploaded all the files properly to the server and that you've got the URLs right (that is, that they point to the files they're supposed to.) It's hard to say more than that without seeing the code.

BMXStunt: I have read your other books but what does this book have that could knock the others right out of the sky?

Liz Castro: You mean besides the included bazooka?

BMXStunt: Yeah.

Liz Castro: It has a really clear, concise interface with one topic per page to make it easy to find what you're looking for. It doesn't have a lot of fluff - no long anecdotes about my childhood although I do make you suffer through a (very) few pictures of my cats. Next, it covers everything you need to know. Every HTML tag is in it. And then it has an awesome index so you can find it all. Oh yeah, and lots of cross-referencing to make it even easier to find related topics.

Talus22: How can I make my page content butt up against the left and top part of the page without leaving the half inch gap that usually happens?!

Liz Castro: Talus22, sounds like you need marginwidth and marginheight, and also LEFTMARGIN and TOPMARGIN. Check out page 92.

Rachelsangels: What is book about?

Liz Castro: HTML 4 for the World Wide Web- Visual QuickStart Guide.

Virtig01: What do you know about ASP?

Liz Castro: Well, that it's Microsoft's proprietary technology for creating dynamic content. It seems like another attempt by Microsoft to stake out turf on the Web.

Virtig01: A bad thing…

Liz Castro: Yeah, I'm more partial to Perl and more open technologies and standards so that pages work on any browser.

Virtig01: And SHTML?

Liz Castro: SHTML? I'm afraid I haven't even heard of that.

Shawksie: Or maybe DTML?

Liz Castro: Do you mean DHTML, Shawksie? That I know. It stands for Dynamic HTML and is just a quick way of saying that you're using HTML, JavaScript and CSS (style sheets) at the same time to create your page.

JASPAUL: Is there a way to let me know when someone visits my homepage? It seems no one wants to sign my guestbook.

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