Subject: comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html FAQ --
From: John Pozadzides <[email-masked]>
Date: 2 Mar 2000 00:00:12 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html,comp.answers,news.answers

Maintainer: [email-masked]
Archive-name: www/authoring-faq
Copyright: Copyright.+(1996-98. Web Design Group)
Posting-Frequency: Every 14 days

The Web Design Group

                               Web Authoring FAQ

          ------------------------------------------------------------

This list of Frequently Asked Questions is maintained by the WDG and was last
updated on November 29, 1999. It may be found at the following URLs:

  * <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/> (index of HTML version)
  * <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/all.html> (single-file HTML version)
  * <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/all.txt> (single-file text version)

If you would like to contribute to this FAQ, please send mail to
<[email-masked]>. All contributors will be listed at the bottom of the FAQ.

Index

 1. Getting Started
     1. What is everyone using to write HTML?
     2. Where can I find a list of all the current HTML tags?
     3. How can I show HTML examples without them being interpreted as part of
        my document?
     4. How do I get a so-and-so character in my HTML?
     5. Should I put quotes around attribute values?
     6. How can I include comments in HTML?
     7. How can I check for errors?
     8. What is a DOCTYPE? Which one do I use?

 2. Web Publishing
     1. Where can I put my newly created Web pages?
     2. Where can I announce my site?
     3. Is there a way to get indexed better by the search engines?
     4. How do I prevent my site from being indexed by search engines?
     5. How do I redirect someone to my new page?
     6. How do I password protect my web site?
     7. How do I stop my page from being cached?
     8. How do I hide my source?
     9. How do I detect what browser is being used?
    10. How do I get my visitors' email addresses?
    11. Why is my custom 404 message not displayed?

 3. Web Design
     1. How do I include one file in another?
     2. Which should I use, &entityname; or &#number; ?
     3. Should I use lower case or upper case for tags?
     4. For what screen size should I write?
     5. Why does my page display fine in browser X but incorrectly or not at al
l
        in browser Y?
     6. Why does the browser show my plain HTML source?
     7. How do I freeze the URL displayed in a visitor's browser?
     8. How do I make a table which looks good on non-supporting browsers?
     9. Can I nest tables within tables?
    10. How do I center a table?
    11. Can I use percentage values for <TD WIDTH=...>?

 4. Hyperlinks
     1. Should I end my URLs with a slash?
     2. How do I link to a location in the middle of an HTML document?
     3. How do I link without using the full URL?
     4. How do I create a link that opens a new window?
     5. How do I create a link that opens a new window of a specific size?
     6. How do I get a button which takes me to a new page?
     7. How do I get a back button on my page?
     8. How do I create a link that sends me email?
     9. How do I specify a subject for a mailto: link?
    10. How do I link an image to something?
    11. How do I eliminate the blue border around linked images?
    12. How do I link different parts of an image to different things?
    13. How do I turn off underlining on my links?
    14. How can I have two sets of links with different colors?
    15. How can I make links change when the cursor is over them?
    16. Why are my hyperlinks coming out all wrong or not loading?
    17. Why does my link work in Internet Explorer but not in Netscape?

 5. Other Media
     1. How do I let people download a file from my page?
     2. Why did my link to a _______ file only download a bunch of characters
        instead?
     3. How do I force a download?
     4. How do I make animated GIFs?
     5. How can I create a thumbnail image that is linked to the full-sized
        image?
     6. Why am I getting a colored whisker to the left or right of my image?
     7. How can I display random images?
     8. Why are my images coming out all wrong or not loading?
     9. How do I prevent people from saving my images?
    10. Can I put markup in ALT text?
    11. How do I get an audio file to play automatically when someone visits my
        site?
    12. How can I strip all the HTML from a document to get plain text?

 6. Presentational Effects
     1. How can I make a custom rule?
     2. How can I make a list with custom bullets?
     3. Where can I get a "hit counter"?
     4. How do I display the current date or time in my document?
     5. How do I get scrolling text in the status bar?
     6. How do I right align text or images?
     7. How can I specify fonts in my Web pages?
     8. How do I indent the first line in my paragraphs?
     9. How do I indent a lot of text?
    10. How do I do a page break?
    11. How do I have a fixed background image?
    12. How do I have a non-tiled background image?
    13. How can I have a custom icon when people bookmark my site?

 7. HTML Forms
     1. How do I use forms?
     2. How do I get form data emailed to me?
     3. How do I make a form so it can be submitted by hitting ENTER?
     4. How can I make a form with custom buttons?
     5. Can I have two or more Submit buttons in the same form?
     6. How can I allow file uploads to my web site?
     7. How can I use forms for pull-down navigation menus?

 8. HTML Frames
     1. How do I make a link or form in one frame update another frame?
     2. Why do my links open new windows rather than update an existing frame?
     3. How do I update two frames at once?
     4. How do I get out of a frameset?
     5. How do I make sure my framed documents are displayed inside their
        frameset?
     6. Is there a way to prevent getting framed?
     7. How do I specify a specific combination of frames instead of the defaul
t
        document?
     8. How do I remove the border around frames?
     9. How do I change the title of a framed document?
    10. Why aren't my frames the exact size I specified?
    11. Are there any problems with using frames?

1. Getting Started

1.1. What is everyone using to write HTML?

It seems that everyone has a different preference for which tool works best for
them. You may find lists of HTML authoring tools at:

  * http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Software/Internet/World_Wide_We
b/HTML_Editors/
  * http://www.winfiles.com/ (search "HTML Editors")
  * http://www.tucows.com/ (Win 95, Win 3.x, Macintosh, OS/2)
  * http://www.shareware.com/ (search "HTML editor")

Keep in mind that typically the less HTML the tool requires you to know, the
worse the output of the HTML. In other words, you can always do it better by
hand if you take the time to learn a little HTML.

1.2. Where can I find a list of all the current HTML tags?

The current W3C Recommendation is HTML 4.0. HTML 4.0 extends HTML 3.2 to includ
e
support for frames, internationalization, style sheets, advanced tables, and
more. HTML 4.0 is not well supported by current browsers, but many of its
features can be used safely in non-supporting browsers.

Recommended materials on HTML 4.0:

  * http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/ -- the official HTML 4.0 Recommendation
  * http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/ -- a handy reference, with notes
    on using poorly supported features safely

Recommended materials on HTML 3.2:

  * http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32 -- the official HTML 3.2 Recommendation
  * http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/ -- a more readable version of the
    above
  * http://www.hut.fi/~jkorpela/HTML3.2/ -- Jukka Korpela's "Learning HTML 3.2
    by Examples"

Some materials on browser-specific versions of HTML:

  * http://www.blooberry.com/html/supportkey/a.htm -- Brian Wilson's checklist
    of browser support for HTML tags and attributes
  * http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/htmlguid/index.htm -- a list of
    all available Netscape HTML tags
  * http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/html/reference/elements.asp#ie40_
html
    -- a list of all available Microsoft HTML tags

1.3. How can I show HTML examples without them being interpreted as part of my
document?

Within the HTML example, first replace the "&" character with "&amp;" everywher
e
it occurs. Then replace the "<" character with "&lt;" and the ">" character wit
h
"&gt;" in the same way.

The next Q&A addresses the more general issue of representing arbitrary
characters in HTML documents.

1.4. How do I get a so-and-so character in my HTML?

The safest way to do HTML is in (7-bit) US-ASCII, and expressing characters fro
m
the upper half of the 8-bit code by using HTML entities. See the answer to
"Which should I use, &entityname; or &#number; ?"

Working with 8-bit characters can also be successful in many practical
situations: Unix and MS-Windows (using Latin-1), and also Macs (with some
reservations).

The available characters are those in ISO-8859-1, listed at
<URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/charset/>. On the Web, these are the onl
y
characters widely supported. In particular, characters 128 through 159 as used
in MS-Windows are not part of the ISO-8859-1 code set and will not be displayed
as Windows users expect. This includes the em dash, en dash, curly quotes,
bullet, and trademark symbol; neither the actual character nor &#nnn; is
correct. (See the last paragraph of this answer for more about those
characters.)

On platforms whose own character code isn't ISO-8859-1, such as MS DOS, Macs,
there may be problems: you'd have to use text transfer methods that convert
between the platform's own code and ISO-8859-1 (e.g Fetch for the Mac), or
convert separately (e.g GNU recode). Using 7-bit ASCII with entities avoids
those problems, and this FAQ is too small to cover other possibilities in
detail. Mac users - see the notes at the above URL.

If you run a web server (httpd) on a platform whose own character code isn't
ISO-8859-1, such as a Mac, or IBM mainframe, it's the job of the server to
convert text documents into ISO-8859-1 code when sending them to the network.

If you want to use characters outside of the ISO-8859-1 repertoire, you must us
e
HTML 4.0 rather than HTML 3.2. See the HTML 4.0 Recommendation at
<URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/> and the Babel site at
<URL:http://babel.alis.com:8080/> for more details. Another useful resource for
internationalization issues is at
<URL:http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/%7Eflavell/charset/>.

1.5. Should I put quotes around attribute values?

It depends. It is never wrong to use them, but you don't have to if the
attribute value consists only of letters (A-Za-z), digits, periods and hyphens.
This is explained in the HTML 2.0 specs.

Be careful when your attribute value includes double quotes, for instance when
you want ALT text like "the "King of Comedy" takes a bow" for an image. Humans
can parse that to know where the quoted material ends, but browsers can't. You
have to code the attribute value specially so that the first interior quote
doesn't terminate the value prematurely. There are two main techniques:

  * Escape any quotes inside the value with &#34; so you don't terminate the
    value prematurely: ALT="the &#34;King of Comedy&#34; takes a bow". (&quot;
    is not part of the formal HTML 3.2 spec, though most current browsers
    support it.)

  * Use single quotes to enclose the attribute value: ALT='the "King of Comedy"
    takes a bow'.

Both these methods are correct according to the spec and are supported by
current browsers, but both were poorly supported in some earlier browsers. The
only truly safe advice is to rewrite the text so that the attribute value need
not contain quotes, or to change the interior double quotes to single quotes,
like this: ALT="the 'King of Comedy' takes a bow".

Note that XHTML 1.0 (a reformulation of HTML 4.0 as an XML 1.0 application)
requires attribute values to be quoted.

1.6. How can I include comments in HTML?

A comment declaration starts with "<!", followed by zero or more comments,
followed by ">". A comment starts and ends with "--", and does not contain any
occurrence of "--" between the beginning and ending pairs. This means that the
following are all legal HTML comments:

  * <!-- Hello -->
  * <!-- Hello -- -- Hello-->
  * <!---->
  * <!------ Hello -->
  * <!>

But some browsers do not support the full syntax, so we recommend you follow
this simple rule to compose valid and accepted comments:

    An HTML comment begins with "<!--", ends with "-->" and does not contain
    "--" or ">" anywhere in the comment.

See <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/misc/comment.html> for a more
complete discussion.

1.7. How can I check for errors?

Various software is available to find errors in your web documents
automatically. HTML validators are programs that check HTML documents against a
formal definition of HTML syntax and then output a list of errors. Validation i
s
important to give the best chance of correctness on unknown browsers (both
existing browsers that you haven't seen and future browsers that haven't been
written yet).

HTML linters (checkers) are also useful. These programs check documents for
specific portability problems, including some caused by invalid markup and
others caused by common browser bugs. Linters may pass some invalid documents,
and they may fail some valid ones.

All validators are functionally equivalent; while they may have different
reporting styles, they will find the same errors given identical input.
Different linters are programmed to look for different problems, so their
reports will vary significantly from each other. Also, some programs that are
called validators (e.g. the "CSE HTML Validator") are really linters/checkers.
They are still useful, but they should not be confused with real HTML
validators.

When checking a site for errors for the first time, it is often useful to
identify common problems that occur repeatedly in your markup. Fix these
problems everywhere they occur (with an automated process if possible), and the
n
go back to identify and fix the remaining problems.

While checking for errors in the HTML, it is also a good idea to check for
hypertext links which are no longer valid. There are several link checkers
available for various platforms which will follow all links on a site and retur
n
a list of the ones which are non-functioning.

You can find a list of validators, linters, and link checkers at
<URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/links/validators.htm>. Especially recommended is
the use of an SGML-based validator such as the WDG HTML Validator
<URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/> or W3C HTML Validation Service
<URL:http://validator.w3.org/>.

1.8. What is a DOCTYPE? Which one do I use?

According to HTML standards, each HTML document begins with a DOCTYPE
declaration that specifies which version of HTML the document uses. The DOCTYPE
declaration is useful primarily to SGML-based tools like HTML validators, which
must know which version of HTML to use in checking the document's syntax.
Browsers generally ignore DOCTYPE declarations.

See <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/doctype.html> for information
on choosing an appropriate DOCTYPE declaration.

Note that the public identifier section of the DOCTYPE declaration is case
sensitive. Some versions of Netscape Composer are known to insert the lower-cas
e
"-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en", rather than the correct mixed-case
"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN".

2. Web Publishing

2.1. Where can I put my newly created Web pages?

Many ISPs offer web space to their dial-up customers. Typically this will be
less than 5MB, and there may be other restrictions; for example, many do not
allow commercial use of this space.

There are several companies and individuals who offer free web space. This
usually ranges from 100KB up to 1MB, and again there are often limitations on
its use. They may also require a link to their home page from your pages. The
following have pointers to providers of free web space:

  * <URL:http://www.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Internet_Services/
Web_Services/Free_Web_Pages/>
  * <URL:http://www.freewebspace.net/>

There are also many web space providers (aka presence providers) who will sell
you space on their servers. Prices will range from as little as $1 per month, u
p
to $100 per month or more, depending upon your needs. Non-virtual Web space is
typically the cheapest, offering a URL like:
http://www.some-provider.com/yourname/ For a little more, plus the cost of
registering a domain name, you can get virtual web space, which will allow you
to have a URL like http://www.yourname.com/.

If you have some permanent connection to the Internet, perhaps via leased line
from your ISP then you could install an httpd and operate your own Web server.
There are several Web servers available for almost all platforms.

If you just wish to share information with other local users, or people on a LA
N
or WAN, you could just place your HTML files on the LAN for everyone to access,
or alternatively if your LAN supports TCP/IP then install a Web server on your
computer.

2.2. Where can I announce my site?

  * comp.infosystems.www.announce -- a moderated newsgroup specifically geared
    toward this subject. You need to obtain its FAQ list before posting to it.
  * http://www.submit-it.com/ lets you submit site information to 10 different
    major index sites for free. If you wish to pay you may submit your site to
    more than 400 sites.
  * http://ep.com/faq/webannounce.html is the How to Announce your New Web Site
    FAQ.

2.3. Is there a way to get indexed better by the search engines?

There is no single technique, but a number of factors can help.

  * Search engines index the textual content of your site, so use a meaningful
    <TITLE>, use meaningful headings (<H1>, <H2>, and so on), and provide
    meaningful ALT text for images.

  * Many search engines ignore frames, so avoid them, and be sure to provide
    useful NOFRAMES content if you do use them.

  * Most earch engines ignore image maps, forms, and JavaScript, so make sure
    that navigating your site doesn't depend on them. Provide normal links for
    site navigation.

  * Avoid using META refresh, because many search engines penalize sites that
    use it (META refresh has been used to trick search engines).

  * The indexing programs of some search engines (including AltaVista and
    Infoseek) will also take into account <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="...">
    tags that appear in the <HEAD> part of your documents. However, META
    keywords have been used to trick search engines, so many will ignore your
    keywords list if you repeat a given keyword too often. At this writing, "to
o
    often" means "more than 7 times" to some popular engines, but that may
    change in the future as indexing programs are changed to defend against
    trickery.

  * If you include a <META NAME="description" CONTENT="..."> tag in the <HEAD>
    part of your documents, then some search engines will use the content of
    this tag as your site's description when displaying search results. This
    won't affect your ranking in searches, but it can help search engine users
    understand what your site offers when a search does find your site.

Note that the CONTENT attribute of the META keywords and description tags may
contain up to 1022 characters, but no markup other than entities.

You might want to preview your site with a text-only browser like Lynx, to get
an idea of how your site appears to search engines. Search Engine Watch at
<URL:http://searchenginewatch.com/> is a Web site dedicated to search engines
and strategies for Web page authors.

2.4. How do I prevent my site from being indexed by search engines?

See <URL:http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/exclusion.html>.

2.5. How do I redirect someone to my new page?

The most reliable way is to configure the server to send out a redirection
instruction when the old URL is requested. Then the browser will automatically
get the new URL. This is the fastest and most efficient way, and is the only wa
y
described here that can convince indexing robots to phase out the old URL. For
configuration details consult your server admin or documentation (with NCSA or
Apache servers, use a Redirect statement in .htaccess).

If you can't set up a redirect, there are other possibilities. These are
inferior because they tell the search engines that there's still a page at the
old location, not that the page has moved to a new location. But if it's
impossible for you to configure redirection at your server, here are two
alternatives:

  * Put up a small page with text like "This page has moved to http://new.url/
    -- please adjust your bookmarks."

  * A Netscape and MSIE solution, which doesn't work on many other browsers (an
d
    screws up the "back" button in Netscape) is:
    <META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="x; URL=new.URL">
    which will load the new URL after x seconds. This should go in the HEAD of
    the document. But if you do this, also include a short text saying "Documen
t
    moved to new URL so-and-so" for other browsers. (The screwing-up bit refers
    to the fact that if you press "Back" after you have been redirected, you
    will be taken to the document with the META refresh. Then the refresh will
    be activated, and so you'll jump to the page you just tried to leave.)

2.6. How do I password protect my web site?

Password protection is done through HTTP authentication. The configuration
details vary from server to server, so you should read the authentication
section of your server documentation. Contact your server administrator if you
need help with this.

For example, if your server is Apache, see
<URL:http://www.apache.org/docs/misc/FAQ.html#user-authentication>.

2.7. How do I stop my page from being cached?

Browsers cache web documents; they store local copies of documents to speed up
repeated references to documents that haven't changed. Also, many browsers are
configured to use public proxy caches, which serve many users (e.g., all
customers of an ISP, or all employees behind a corporate firewall). To
effectively control how your documents are cached you must configure your serve
r
to send appropriate HTTP headers. The configuration details vary from server to
server, so check your server documentation.

The Expires header is understood by virtually all caches. The cached document
will be retrieved again automatically once it has expired. The Expires header
must contain an HTTP date, which must be Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), not local
time.

HTTP 1.1 introduced the Cache-Control header, which provides more flexibility
for telling caches how to handle the document. For more information, see the
HTTP 1.1 draft (see <http://www.w3.org/Protocols/>).

The Pragma header is generally ineffective because its meaning is not
standardized and few caches honor it. Using <META HTTP-EQUIV=...> elements in
HTML documents is also generally ineffective; some browsers may honor such
markup, but other caches ignore it completely.

Further discussion can be found at <http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/>.

2.8. How do I hide my source?

You can't. The HTML source is necessary for the browser to display your
document; you must send the complete, unencrypted source to the browser. Even i
f
a particular browser doesn't have a "View Source" feature, there are many that
do, and someone can always retrieve the document by hand (using telnet) or from
the browser's cache.

There are tricks that make it more difficult for some readers to view or save
your source (e.g., tricking newbies into thinking there's nothing there by
adding dozens of blank lines to the beginning of the document). However, just a
s
with tricks that try to protect images from being saved, these tricks have very
limited effectiveness and can cause various problems for law-abiding users.

2.9. How do I detect what browser is being used?

Many browsers identify themselves when they request a document. A CGI script
will have this information available in the HTTP_USER_AGENT environment
variable, and it can use that to send out a version of the document which is
optimized for that browser.

Keep in mind not all browsers identify themselves correctly. Microsoft Internet
Explorer, for example, claims to be "Mozilla" to get at Netscape enhanced
documents.

And of course, if a cache proxy keeps the Netscape enhanced document, someone
with another browser will also get this document if he goes through the cache.

For these reasons and others, it is not a good idea to play the browser guessin
g
game.

2.10. How do I get my visitors' email addresses?

You can't. Although each request for a document is usually logged with the name
or address of the remote host, the actual username is almost never logged as
well. This is mostly because of performance reasons, as it would require that
the server uses the ident protocol to see who is on the other end. This takes
time. And if a cache proxy is doing the request, you don't get anything
sensible.

But just stop to think for a minute... would you really want every single site
you visit to know your email address? Imagine the loads of automated thank you'
s
you would be receiving. If you visited 20 sites, you would get at least 20
emails that day, plus no doubt they would send you invitations to return later.
It would be a nightmare as well as an invasion of privacy!

In Netscape 2.0, it was possible to automatically submit a form with a mailto a
s
action, using JavaScript. This would send email to the document's owner, with
the address the visitor configured in the From line. Of course, that can be
"[email-masked]". This was fixed by Netscape 2.01.

The most reliable way is to put up a form, asking the visitor to fill in his
email address. To increase the chances that visitors will actually do it, offer
them something useful in return.

2.11. Why is my custom 404 message not displayed?

Recent versions of Internet Explorer default to "friendly" HTTP error messages.
When a special HTTP response (e.g., a 404 response) is shorter than 512 bytes,
the browser substitutes its own message for the one delivered by the server. As
a user of Internet Explorer, you can disable this feature in the "Advanced"
options panel. As a web author, your only recourse is to make the error page
larger.

3. Web Design

3.1. How do I include one file in another?

HTML itself offers no way to seamlessly incorporate the content of one file int
o
another.

True dynamic inclusion of one HTML document (even in a different "charset") int
o
another is offered by the OBJECT element, but due to shortcomings of browser
versions in current use, it seems unwise to rely on this yet for essential
content. The same can be said for IFRAME.

Two popular ways of including the contents of one file seamlessly into another
for the WWW are preprocessing and server-side inclusion.

Preprocessing techniques include the C preprocessor and other generic text
manipulation methods, and several HTML-specific processors. But beware of makin
g
your "source code" non-portable.

The HTML can only be validated after pre-processing, so the typical cycle "Edit
,
Check, Upload" becomes "Edit, Preprocess, Check, Upload" (here, "Check" include
s
whatever steps you use to preview your pages: validation, linting, management
walk-through etc.; and "upload" means whatever you do to finally publish your
new pages to the web server).

A much more powerful and versatile pre-processing technique is to use an SGML
processor (such as the SP package) to generate your HTML; this can be
self-validating.

Examples of server-side inclusion are Server Side Includes "SSI" (Apache, NCSA
and some other web servers) and "ASP"; processing occurs at the time the
documents are actually retrieved. A typical inclusion looks like

<!--#include virtual="/urlpath/to/myfile.htm" -->

but be sure to consult your own server's documentation, as the details vary
somewhat between implementations. The whole directive gets replaced by the
contents of the specified file.

Using server-side inclusion (a potentially powerful tool) merely as a way to
insert static files such as standard header/footers has implications for
perceived access speed and for server load, and is better avoided on heavily
loaded servers. If you use it in this way, consider making the result cacheable
(e.g., via "XBitHack full" on Apache; setting properties of the "Response"
object in ASP). Details are beyond the scope of this FAQ but you may find this
useful: http://www.pobox.com/~mnot/cache_docs/

Proper HTML validation of server-side inclusion is only possible after
server-side processing is done, e.g. by using an on-line validator that
retrieves the document from the server.

3.2. Which should I use, &entityname; or &#number; ?

In HTML, characters can be represented in three ways:

 1. a properly coded character, in the encoding specified by the "charset"
    attribute of the "Content-type:" header;
 2. a character entity (&entityname;), from the appropriate HTML specification
    (HTML 2.0/3.2, HTML 4.0 etc.);
 3. a numeric character reference (&#number;) that specifies the Unicode
    reference of the desired character. We recommend using decimal references;
    hexadecimal references are less widely supported.

In theory these representations are equally valid. In practice, authoring
convenience and limited support by browsers complicate the issue.

HTTP being a guaranteed "8-bit clean" protocol, you can safely send out 8-bit o
r
multibyte coded characters, in the various codings that are supported by
browsers.

A. HTML 2.0/3.2 (Latin-1)

By now there seems no convincing reason to choose &entityname; versus &#number;
,
so use whichever is convenient.

If you can confidently handle 8-bit-coded characters this is fine too, probably
preferred for writing heavily-accented languages. Take care if authoring on
non-ISO-8859-based platforms such as Mac, Psion, IBM mainframes etc., that your
upload technique delivers a correctly coded document to the server. Using
&-representations avoids such problems.
B. A single repertoire other than Latin-1

In such codings as ISO-8859-7 Greek, koi8-r Russian Cyrillic, and Chinese,
Japanese and Korean (CJK) codings, use of coded characters is the most widely
supported and used technique.

Although not covered by HTML 3.2, browsers have supported this quite widely for
some time now; it is a valid option within the HTML 4.0 specification--use a
validator such as the WDG HTML Validator at
http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/ which supports HTML 4.0 and understand
s
different character encodings.

Browser support for coded characters may depend on configuration and font
resources. In some cases, additional programs called "helpers" or "add-ins"
supply virtual fonts to browsers.

"Add-in" programs have in the past been used to support numeric references to
15-bit or 16-bit code protocols such as Chinese Big5 or Chinese GB2312.

In theory you should be able to include not only coded characters but also
Unicode numeric character references, but browser support is generally poor.
Numeric references to the "charset-specified" encoding may appear to produce th
e
desired characters on some browsers, but this is wrong behavior and should not
be used. Character entities are also problematical, aside from the
HTML-significant characters &lt;, &amp; etc.

C. Internationalization per HTML 4.0

Recent versions of the popular browsers have support for some of these features
,
but at time of writing it seems unwise to rely on this when authoring for a
general audience. If you'd like to explore the options, you can find
comprehensive background documentation and some practical suggestions at

  * http://www.czyborra.com/
  * http://www.hut.fi/u/jkorpela/chars.html
  * http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/

3.3. Should I use lower case or upper case for tags?

Tags are case insensitive, so it doesn't matter. This is just a matter of style
.
(You may have noticed that this FAQ is not absolutely consistent in
capitalization.) Many people prefer upper case, as it makes the tags "stand out
"
better amongst the text.

Attribute names can also be upper or lower case, as you prefer. But some
attribute values are case sensitive. For example, <OL TYPE=A> and <OL type=A>
are the same, but <OL TYPE=a> is different from both of them. (For clearer
communication, it's worth getting the terminology right. In this example, OL is
the element, TYPE is the attribute name, and A and a are the attribute values.
The tag is <OL TYPE=A>.)

Entity names like &nbsp; are sometimes incorrectly referred to as tags. They ar
e
all case sensitive. For example, &Eacute; and &amp;eacute; are two different an
d
valid entities; &NBSP; is invalid.

Note that XHTML 1.0 (a reformulation of HTML 4.0 as an XML 1.0 application)
requires element and attribute names to be in lower case.

3.4. For what screen size should I write?

HTML does not depend on screen size. Normally, the text will be wrapped by the
browser when the end of its display area is encountered. (Note that graphical
browsers are often used with windows that are smaller than the full area of the
screen.)

Preformatted lines (text within <PRE> elements) should only ever exceed 70
characters if the nature of the content makes it unavoidable. Longer lines will
cause ugly line breaks on text-mode browsers, and will force horizontal
scrolling on graphical browsers. Readers strongly dislike horizontal scrolling,
except where they can realise that the nature of the content made it inevitable
.

Images cannot be wrapped, so you have to be careful with them. It seems that 40
0
or 500 pixels is a reasonable width; anything above 600 will mean a certain
percentage of users will have to scroll to see the rightmost bit. This
percentage increases with your image width. Keep in mind that not everyone runs
his browser at full screen!

(WebTV users have no ability to scroll horizontally, so anything beyond 544
pixels will be compressed by their browser. Some other devices may be even more
limited.)

3.5. Why does my page display fine in browser X but incorrectly or not at all i
n
browser Y?

There are several possibilities.

First, you may have some incorrect HTML. Browsers vary in their ability to gues
s
what you meant. For instance, Netscape is much more fussy about tables than MS
Internet Explorer, so a page with incorrect tables may look fine in MSIE but no
t
display at all in Netscape. See the answer to "How can I check for errors?" for
tips on finding your HTML errors. (In fact, even correct nested tables may not
display correctly in Netscape. See "Can I nest tables within tables?" below for
what you can do about that.)

Second, you may have valid HTML that different browsers interpret differently.
For instance, it is not clear from the spec what should be done with a string o
f
&nbsp; characters. Some browsers will collapse them for rendering as a single
space; others will render one space per &nbsp;.

Third, your server may be sending incorrect MIME types for some of your files.
Internet Explorer incorrectly ignores server-provided MIME types, so it
sometimes "does the right thing" when the server is misconfigured. Other
browsers correctly heed the server-provided MIME types, so they will reveal
server misconfigurations.

Other possibilities are a bug in one or the other browser, or different user
option settings.

See also the answers to "Why are my hyperlinks coming out all wrong or not
loading?" and "Why are my images coming out all wrong or not loading?"

3.6. Why does the browser show my plain HTML source?

If Microsoft Internet Explorer displays your document normally, but other
browsers display your plain HTML source, then most likely your web server is
sending the document with the MIME type "text/plain". Your web server needs to
be configured to send that filename with the MIME type "text/html". See the
answer to "Why did my link to a _______ file only download a bunch of character
s
instead?" for more details.

3.7. How do I freeze the URL displayed in a visitor's browser?

This is a "feature" of using frames: The browser displays the URL of the
frameset document, rather than that of the framed documents. (See the answer to
the question "How do I specify a specific combination of frames instead of the
default document?").

However, this behavior can be circumvented easily by the user. Many browsers
allow the user to open links in their own windows, to bookmark the document in
a
specific frame (rather than the frameset document), or to bookmark links. Thus,
there is no reliable way to stop a user from getting the URL of a specific
document.

Furthermore, preventing users from bookmarking specific documents can only
antagonize them. A bookmark or link that doesn't find the desired document is
useless, and probably will be ignored or deleted.

3.8. How do I make a table which looks good on non-supporting browsers?

See Alan Flavell's document on tables for a good discussion at
<URL:http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/%7Eflavell/www/tablejob.html>.

3.9. Can I nest tables within tables?

Yes, a table can be embedded inside a cell in another table. Here's a simple
example:

    <table>
    <tr>
        <td>this is the first cell of the outer table</td>
        <td>this is the second cell of the outer table,
            with the inner table embedded in it<br>
        <table>
            <tr>
            <td>this is the first cell of the inner table</td>
            <td>this is the second cell of the inner table</td>
            </tr>
        </table>
        </td>
    </tr>
    </table>

The main caveat about nested tables is that Netscape has problems with them if
you don't close your TD and TR tags meticulously. You're best advised to includ
e
every </TD> and </TR>, even though the HTML spec doesn't require them; otherwis
e
Netscape users may not be able to view your page.

3.10. How do I center a table?

The "correct" way of doing it is <TABLE ALIGN=CENTER>, but this doesn't work in
several popular browsers. Put <CENTER>; around the entire table for these
browsers.

This causes some problems with browsers that do support CENTER but not tables,
such as Lynx. In these browsers, the contents of the cells are now displayed
centered, which is not what is intended. To avoid this, you can put the cell's
contents in <P ALIGN=left> or <DIV ALIGN=left> depending on the amount of text
in the cell.

3.11. Can I use percentage values for <TD WIDTH=...>?

The HTML 3.2 and HTML 4.0 specifications allow only integer values (representin
g
a number of pixels) for the WIDTH attribute of the TD element. However, the HTM
L
4.0 DTD allows percentage (and other non-integer) values, so an HTML validator
will not complain about <TD WIDTH="xx%">.

It should be noted that Netscape and Microsoft's browsers interpret percentage
values for <TD WIDTH=...> differently. However, their interpretations (and thos
e
of other table-aware browsers) happen to match when combined with <TABLE
WIDTH="100%">. In such situations, percentage values can be used relatively
safely, even though they are prohibited by the public specifications.

4. Hyperlinks

4.1. Should I end my URLs with a slash?

The trailing slash is used to distinguish between directory and file URLs. A
file URL is an URL for a file, and a directory URL refers to a directory. For
example, the URL for the WDG's HTML reference is
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/ and the URL for the overview of HTML 3.2
elements is http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/overview.html

If you request a directory URL without the trailing slash, the browser will
actually ask for a FILE with that name. This file doesn't exist on the server,
so the server sends back a message saying that the browser should ask for the
directory. It uses a redirection message for this. The browser then sends
another request, this time for the directory, and finally gets what was asked
for in the first place. This wastes time and network resources.

When you write a document, all directory URLs should end with a slash. Since yo
u
already know you are linking to a directory, why force the user to make that
second request, when it could have been done using only one?

And by the way, it is NOT the browser which appends the slash. The browser
cannot know if what you are asking for is a file or directory, not even when th
e
final part of the URL does not have an extension.
http://www.somewhere.com/src/something/README is a perfectly valid URL, has no
extension in the final part, yet refers to a file and not a directory.

The only apparent exception is when you refer to an URL with just a hostname.
Since it is obvious that when you use http://www.htmlhelp.com you actually want
the main index "/" from our server, you do not have to include the / in this
case. It is regarded as good style to do so, however.

For a full discussion of the proper form of URLs, see RFC 1738 at
<URL:http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc1738.html> and, for relative
URLs, RFC 1808 at <URL:http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc1808.html>.

4.2. How do I link to a location in the middle of an HTML document?

First, identify the destination of the link with a named anchor (an anchor that
uses the NAME attribute). For example:

<H2><A NAME="section2">Section 2: Beyond Introductions</A></H2>

Second, link to the named anchor. The URL of the named anchor is the URL of the
document, with "#" and the name of the anchor appended. For example, elsewhere
in the same document you could use:

<A HREF="#section2">go to Section 2</A>

Similarly, in another document you could use:

<A HREF="thesis.html#section2">go to Section 2 of my thesis</A>

4.3. How do I link without using the full URL?

Links that do not specify the full URL are called relative links. Before the
browser can request the linked document, it must generate the full URL using th
e
relative URL and the URL of the current document.

First, the browser strips everything after the last slash ("/") in the URL of
the current document. Second, it moves up one level in the URL hierarchy for
each "../" at the beginning of the relative URL, removing the leading "../"
strings from the relative URL as it does so. Third, it appends the relative URL
to get the final URL.

Some examples may help make this clear. Assuming that the current document is
<URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/links.html>:

"all.html"
     refers to <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/all.html>
"../"
     refers to <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/>
"../cgifaq.html"
     refers to <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/cgifaq.html>
"../../reference/"
     refers to <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/>

For more details on using and resolving relative URLs, see "Using Relative URLs
"
<URL:http://www.stack.nl/%7Egalactus/html/urls.html.

4.4. How do I create a link that opens a new window?

<A TARGET="_blank" HREF=...> opens a new, unnamed window.

<A TARGET="foobar" HREF=...> opens a new window named "foobar", provided that a
window or frame by that name does not already exist.

Note that links that open new windows can be annoying to your readers if there
is not a good reason (from the reader's perspective) for them.

4.5. How do I create a link that opens a new window of a specific size?

With HTML, there is no way to control the size (or window decoration, or other
features) of a new window. However, in JavaScript you can specify such details
when using the window.open() function.

Start with a normal HTML link (possibly one that opens in a new window as
described in the answer to the previous question). Then use the ONCLICK
attribute to open a window with the desired appearance for those readers with
JavaScript supported and enabled. The following example specifies a window name
d
"popup" that is 300 pixels by 150 pixels.

<A HREF="foo.html" TARGET="popup" ONCLICK="window.open('foo.html', 'popup',
'width=300,height=150'); return false">View Foo</A>

Used in this manner, JavaScript can specify a new window with the desired
appearance, without blocking access when JavaScript is unsupported/disabled.

4.6. How do I get a button which takes me to a new page?

This is best done with a small form:

<FORM ACTION="http://url.you.want.to.go.to/" METHOD=GET>
<INPUT TYPE=submit VALUE="Text on button" NAME=foo>
</FORM>

If you want to line up buttons next to each other, you will have to put them in
a one-row table, with each button in a separate cell.

Note that search engines might not find the target document unless there is a
normal link somewhere else on the page.

A go-to-other-page button can also be coded in JavaScript, but the above is
standard HTML and works for more readers.

4.7. How do I get a back button on my page?

In HTML, this is impossible. Going "back" means that you go to the previous pag
e
in your history. You might be able to create a link to the URL specified in the
"HTTP_REFERER" environment variable in your document, but that only creates a
link to a new location in your history. Even worse, the information in that
variable can be plain wrong. Some browsers incorrectly send the variable when
you use a bookmark or type in an URL manually, and some don't send that variabl
e
at all. This would result in an empty link.

A JavaScript could use "history.back()" to do this, but this only works in
Netscape 2 or higher and MSIE 3 or higher, and even then only if the user has
not disabled JavaScript.

For a more detailed explanation, please see Abigail's "Simulating the back
button" at <URL:http://www.foad.org/%7Eabigail/HTML/Misc/back_button.html>.

4.8. How do I create a link that sends me email?

Use a mailto: link, for example

Send me email at
<A HREF="mailto:[email-masked]">[email-masked]</A>.

4.9. How do I specify a subject for a mailto: link?

You can't, not in any reliable way. The methods that are frequently posted don'
t
do the job on all browsers (or even all popular browsers), and many of them hav
e
an important drawback: if your visitors are using an older browser such as
Netscape 1.22, their mail will be lost.

If you really need a subject, you can do it by providing a form on your page,
which submits data to a CGI program that emails the form data to you with your
desired subject line. However, the form must have an input field for the
visitor's email address, and you must hope that the visitor enters it correctly
.

Here are some other ways to transmit subject-type information:

  * Create email aliases that are used only for certain mailto links, so you'll
    know that anything sent to a given alias is in response to the correspondin
g
    Web page(s).

  * The mail handlers for many Web browsers include an "X-Url" header that
    specifies the URL of the Web page that contained the mailto link. If you
    configure your mail reader to display this header, you'll see which Web pag
e
    the sender is responding to much of the time.

  * Use <A HREF="mailto:user@site" TITLE="Your Subject">. Most browsers will
    ignore the TITLE attribute, but some minor browsers will use it as a subjec
t
    for the email message. All browsers will send the mail.

  * Use <A HREF="mailto:user@site?subject=Your%20Subject">, which puts "Your
    Subject" (the space is encoded as "%20") in the "Subject" header field of
    the email message in most current browsers. The details of this recent RFC
    can be found at
    <URL:http://info.internet.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc/files/rfc2368.txt>. Note
    however that you will lose mail from users of older browsers, so you should
    consider whether the pre-filled subject is worth lost mail.

4.10. How do I link an image to something?

Just use the image as the link content, like this:

<A HREF=...><IMG ...></A>

4.11. How do I eliminate the blue border around linked images?

Use the BORDER="0" attribute in the <IMG> element. For example:

<A HREF="doc.html"><IMG SRC="doc.gif" ALT="View document." BORDER="0"></A>

4.12. How do I link different parts of an image to different things?

Use an image map. Client-side image maps don't require server-side processing,
so response time is faster. Server-side image maps hide the link definitions
from the browser, and can act as a backup for client-side image maps for the fe
w
very old browsers that support server-side image maps but not client-side image
maps.

The configuration details of server-side image maps vary from server to server.
Refer to your server documentation for details.

Client-side image maps are implemented with HTML. The MAP element defines an
individual image map and the AREA element defines specific linked areas within
that image map. The USEMAP attribute of the IMG element associates an image map
with a specific image. A detailed explanation (with examples) is available at
<http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/special/map.html>. A tutorial is
available at <http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/www/imgmaptut.html>.

4.13. How do I turn off underlining on my links?

If you want to turn off link underlining when you're looking at pages in your
browser, check your browser's configuration options. In Netscape 3, for example
,
see Options | General Preferences | Appearance; in Netscape 4 it's Edit |
Preferences | Appearance | Colors; in Internet Explorer see View | Options |
General.

If you want to prevent links on your page being underlined when your visitors
see them, there's no way in HTML to accomplish this. You can suggest this
presentation using style sheets by defining

a:link, a:visited, a:active {text-decoration: none}

4.14. How can I have two sets of links with different colors?

You can suggest this presentation using style sheets. In your style sheet,
define something like this:

a:link        {color: blue;   background: white}
a:visited     {color: purple; background: white}
a:active      {color: red;    background: white}
a.foo:link    {color: yellow; background: black}
a.foo:visited {color: white;  background: black}
a.foo:active  {color: red;    background: black}

Then use CLASS="foo" to identify the links of the second color in your HTML,
like this:

<A CLASS="foo" HREF=...>...</A>

4.15. How can I make links change when the cursor is over them?

In your style sheet, use the hover pseudo-class to specify a different
appearance for links when the cursor is over them. Specify the hover
pseudo-class after the link and visited pseudo-classes. For example:

A:link { color: blue ; background: white }
A:visited { color: purple ; background: white }
A:hover { color: red ; background: white }

4.16. Why are my hyperlinks coming out all wrong or not loading?

Most likely you forgot to close a quote at the end of the HREF attribute.
Alternatively, perhaps you used a ">" character somewhere else inside a tag.
Although this is legal, several older browsers will think the tag ends there, s
o
the rest is displayed as normal text.

This especially happens if you use comment tags to "comment out" text with HTML
tags. (See the answer to "How can I include comments in HTML?") Although the
correct syntax is <!-- --> (without "--" occurring anywhere inside the comment)
,
some browsers will think the comment ends at the first ">" they see.
Validators will show you any syntax errors in your markup, but checkers such as
Weblint and HTMLchek can show you where you are liable to provoke known browser
bugs. See also the answer to "How can I check for errors?"

4.17. Why does my link work in Internet Explorer but not in Netscape?

Is there a space, #, ?, or other special character in the path or filename?
Spaces are not legal in URLs. If you encode the space by replacing it with %20,
your link will work.

You can encode any character in a URL as % plus the two-digit hex value of the
character. (Hex digits A-F can be in upper or lower case.) According to the
spec, only alphanumerics and the special characters $-_.,+!*'() need not be
encoded.

You should encode all other characters when they occur in a URL, except when
they're used for their reserved purposes. For example, if you wanted to pass th
e
value "Jack&Jill" to a CGI script, you would need to encode the "&" character a
s
"%26", which might give you a URL like the following:
http://www.foo.com/foo.cgi?rhyme=Jack%26Jill&audience=child. Note that the "?"
and other "&" character in this URL are not encoded since they're used for thei
r
reserved purposes.

See section 2.2 of RFC 1738 at <URL:http://www.w3.org/Addressing/rfc1738.txt>
for the full story.

5. Other Media

5.1. How do I let people download a file from my page?

Once the file is uploaded to the server, you need only use an anchor reference
tag to link to it. An example would be:

<a href="../files/foo.zip">Download Foo Now! (100kb ZIP)</a>

It is possible that the server might need to be configured for some different
file types. (See the next Q&A.)

5.2. Why did my link to a _______ file only download a bunch of characters
instead?

If you are trying to link to a particular type of file and it is not returning
your desired response, chances are that the server needs to have the type
configured. Talk to your system administrator about getting them to add the
content type. Here is a list of common types that often need configuring:

Content Type                 Description
Application/msword           Microsoft Word Document
application/octet-stream     Unclassified binary data (often used for
                             compressed file or executable)
application/pdf              PDF Document
application/wordperfect6.0   WordPerfect 6.0 Document
application/zip              ZIP archive
audio/x-wav                  WAV audio format
audio/midi                   MIDI audio format
audio/x-pn-realaudio         RealAudio
image/gif                    GIF image format
image/jpeg                   JPEG image format
image/png                    PNG image format
text/html                    HTML document
text/plain                   Plain text
video/mpeg                   MPEG video format
video/quicktime              QuickTime video format
video/x-msvideo              AVI video format

Another method of ensuring that your file is properly sent to the client is to
compress it into a standard compression format. Virtually all servers are set t
o
handle the .zip extension and it is widely recognized by users.

Some servers (NCSA, Apache, and others) can be configured to support
user-configured content types. Details are server dependent, so consult your
server admin or documentation.

Note that Internet Explorer incorrectly ignores server-provided MIME types, so
it sometimes "does the right thing" when the server is misconfigured. Other
browsers correctly heed the server-provided MIME types, so they will reveal
server misconfigurations.

5.3. How do I force a download?

You can't, because the Web doesn't work that way.

Here's the explanation. When someone downloads a document, the server tells the
browser what type of file it is. The browser then displays it or picks the
appropriate helper application. If the server doesn't know the file type, it
tells the browser that the file is "text/plain", or just plain text (true for
most servers). You may need to ask your server admin to configure this
particular file with the MIME type you want.

"Forcing" a download is not what you are supposed to do. After all, what is mor
e
convenient than having the proper application started when I download a
particular file? Browsing through a download directory can be quite a pain. And
most browsers allow the user to download to disk if they want to.

If the file must be saved to disk, if there is absolutely NO other way to handl
e
it, the MIME type should be "application/octet-stream".

5.4. How do I make animated GIFs?

Check out the following resources:

  * http://members.aol.com/royalef/gifanim.htm
  * http://www.adobe.com/studio/tipstechniques/GIFanimation/main.html
  * http://www.webreference.com/dev/gifanim/

5.5. How can I create a thumbnail image that is linked to the full-sized image?

A thumbnail image is just a copy of the full-sized image that has been modified
to reduce the size of the file. It is linked to the full-sized image with a
normal link:

<A HREF="full-sized.jpg"><IMG SRC="thumbnail.jpg" ALT=...></A>

There are several techniques for reducing the size of the file for the thumbnai
l
image, including

  * resampling/resizing the image to create a physically smaller image;
  * cropping the image to remove less significant parts of the image;
  * reducing the image quality to increase compression ratios; and
  * reducing the size of the color palette (e.g., converting to greyscale).

Thumbnail images can use multiple techniques simultaneously. For example, Jakob
Nielsen advocates "Relevance-Enhanced Image Reduction", which combines
resampling/resizing and cropping.

5.6. Why am I getting a colored whisker to the left or right of my image?

This is the result of including "white space" (spaces and newlines) before or
after an IMG inside an anchor. For example:

<A HREF=...>
<IMG SRC=...>
</A>

will have white space to the left and right of the image. Since many browsers
display anchors with colored underscores by default, they will show the spaces
to the left and right of the image with colored underscores.

Solution: don't leave any white space between the anchor tags and the IMG tag.
If the line gets too long, break it inside the tag rather than outside it, like
this:

<A HREF=...><IMG
SRC=...></A>

Style checkers such as Weblint will call attention to this problem in your HTML
source.

5.7. How can I display random images?

There are two basic approaches. The most cache-friendly method is to use a
normal IMG tag that refers to a CGI script that randomly redirects the browser
to one of several images. There is an example of such a CGI script at
<URL:http://www.foad.org/%7Eabigail/CGI/random_images.html>. See the CGI
Programming FAQ <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/cgifaq.html> for more
information about CGI.

The second method is to generate the HTML dynamically using a mechanism like
Server Side Includes (SSI) or CGI. This method is less cache-friendly, but it
does allow the surrounding markup (e.g., HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes, or the
URLs for linked/image-mapped images) to vary with the image. If your server
supports SSI, the details can be found in your server documentation.

5.8. Why are my images coming out all wrong or not loading?

Most likely you forgot to close a quote at the end of the SRC attribute.
Alternatively, perhaps you used a ">" character in an ALT text or somewhere els
e
inside a tag. Although this is legal, several older browsers will think the tag
ends there, so the rest is displayed as normal text.

This especially happens if you use comment tags to "comment out" text with HTML
tags. (See the answer to "How can I include comments in HTML?") Although the
correct syntax is <!-- --> (without "--" occurring anywhere inside the comment)
,
some browsers will think the comment ends at the first ">" they see.

Validators will show you any syntax errors in your markup, but checkers such as
Weblint and HTMLchek can show you where you are liable to provoke known browser
bugs. See also the answer to "How can I check for errors?"

5.9. How do I prevent people from saving my images?

You can't. The image file is necessary for the browser to display your document
;
you must send it to the browser. Even if a particular browser doesn't have a
"Save Image" feature, there are many that do, and someone can always retrieve
the image file by hand (using telnet) or from the browser's cache.

There are tricks that make it more difficult for some readers to save your
images. However, just as with tricks that try to hide HTML source, these tricks
cause various problems for law-abiding users and can't really prevent thieves
from saving your images.

5.10. Can I put markup in ALT text?

No. Character entities (&copy;, &#nnn; and such) are permitted, though.

If you want to know how to write good ALT texts without markup, please see Alan
Flavell's essay on choosing ALT texts at
<URL:http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/%7Eflavell/alt/alt-text.html>.

5.11. How do I get an audio file to play automatically when someone visits my
site?

Most browsers support the EMBED element for this, provided that the user has a
suitable plug-in for the sound file. You can reach a slightly wider audience if
you use BGSOUND as well. To avoid problems with browsers that support both,
place the BGSOUND in a NOEMBED container:

<EMBED SRC="your_sound_file" HIDDEN=true AUTOSTART=true>
<NOEMBED><BGSOUND SRC="your_sound_file"></NOEMBED>

For more on the EMBED element, see
<URL:http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/htmlguid/tags14.htm#1286379>.
See
<URL:http://msdn.microsoft.com/developer/sdk/inetsdk/help/dhtml/references/html
/BGSOUND.htm>
for more information on BGSOUND. Note that these elements are proprietary and
not in any HTML standard. (The HTML standard way of doing this is not well
supported.)

Be aware that some users find it annoying for music to automatically start
playing. They may not have the volume set properly on their speakers, or they
may be listening to something else. As a courtesy to your users, you may prefer
to offer the sound file as a link:

<A HREF="your_sound_file">Listen to my sound! (5 kB MIDI)</A>

5.12. How can I strip all the HTML from a document to get plain text?

Many browsers have a "Save As..." function that allows you to specify plain tex
t
as the output format. Another approach is to select all the text, copy it to th
e
clipboard, and paste it into an editor.

Lynx users can use "lynx -dump http://..." on the command line to print to file
and append a list of referenced URLs as footnotes. If you want the output file
without the footnotes, use the "p" command to "print" to a text file.

Some HTML authoring tools have an option to strip all HTML as well. Two program
s
of note are

  * HomeSite, available from <URL:http://www.allaire.com/>
  * DiDa, available from <URL:http://www.faico.net/>

If you are looking for another method (in other words you want to make things
more difficult on yourself), you can obtain programs which will strip away all
HTML markup from a document. Try doing a search at
<URL:http://www.altavista.com/> for the phrase "HTML stripper".

6. Presentational Effects

6.1. How can I make a custom rule?

Your best option is likely a centered IMG with a line of "--" characters as ALT
text:

<P ALIGN=center><IMG SRC="custom-line.gif" ALT="--------------------"></P>

For an experimental but somewhat more graceful approach, read about CSS1 and th
e
Decorative HR at <URL:http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/%7Eflavell/www/hrstyle.html>.

6.2. How can I make a list with custom bullets?

There are several methods, none completely satisfactory:

  * Use the list-style property of Cascading Style Sheets. This should be the
    preferred method of using custom bullets, but unfortunately it's not widely
    supported by browsers. However, non-supporting browsers will see a normal
    bullet, so using this method today is not a problem. See
    <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/css/> for more information on style
    sheets.

  * Use a <DL> with <DD> tags with preceding images (with ALIGN and suitable AL
T
    text) and no <DT>; this won't be as beautiful as a "real" list.

  * Use a two-column table, with the bullets in the left column and the text in
    the right. Since browsers show nothing before downloading the entire table,
    this can be slow with long lists.

  * Create the bullet with the indent built in. For example, if you use a bulle
t
    that is 10 pixels across you can make the background 25 pixels (transparent
)
    and put the bullet all the way on the right. This will create a 15-pixel
    indent to the left of the bullet. It will add slightly to the byte size of
    the graphic but since it is all one color it won't add much. This method
    doesn't work well with any list items that are longer than a line (and
    remember that you don't know how long a line will be on the visitor's
    screen).

6.3. Where can I get a "hit counter"?

A hit counter is a small script or program that increases a number every time a
document is accessed from the server.

Why do you want one? If you believe that it will tell you how many times your
documents have been accessed, you are mistaken. No counter can keep track of
accesses from browser caches or proxy caches. Some counters depend on
image-loading to increment; such counters ignore accesses from text-mode
browsers, or browsers with image-loading off, or from users who interrupted the
transfer. Some counters even require access to a remote site, which may be down
or overloaded, causing a delay in displaying your documents.

Most web servers log accesses to documents stored on the server machine. These
logs may be processed to gain information about the *relative* number of
accesses over an extended period. There is no reason to display this number to
your viewers, since they have no reference point to relate this number to. Not
all service providers allow access to server logs, but many have scripts that
will output information about accesses to a given user's documents. Consult you
r
sysadmin or service provider for details.

Counter services and information are available from Yahoo's list of counters:
http://www.yahoo.com/Computers/World_Wide_Web/Programming/Access_Counts/

Log analysis tools and scripts are at
http://www.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Computers/Software/Internet
/World_Wide_Web/Log_Analysis_Tools/

<URL:http://www.markwelch.com/bannerad/baf_counter.htm> is another good source
for counter information.

A discussion of the limitations of web-traffic statistics is at
<URL:http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/docs/stats/>

6.4. How do I display the current date or time in my document?

With server-side includes. Ask your webmaster if this is supported, and what th
e
exact syntax is for your server. But this will display the local time on the
server, not for the client. And if the document is cached, the date will of
course be incorrect after some time. JavaScript can be used to display the loca
l
time for the client, but again, as most people already have one or more clocks
on their screen, why display another one?

If you plan on putting the current date or time on your pages, using a CGI,
JavaScript or VBScript, take an extra breath and consider that it will take
resources, add time to the loading of the page, and prevent good caching. If yo
u
find that you really have a need to use it, for instance to inform readers of
the up-times of an FTP server, then by all means do so. If, on the other hand,
your only reason is 'it looks cool!' - then reconsider.

6.5. How do I get scrolling text in the status bar?

This is not an HTML question; it's done with JavaScript. Check any page which
has this feature, and copy the script from the source.

This script has two big problems. One, usually it uses the decrement operator
(c--) at some point. The "--" sequence in a comment actually closes it on some
browsers, so your code may "leak" on those browsers. The same goes for ">".

Second, keep in mind that many people consider this even worse than <BLINK>, an
d
that it also suppresses the status information which normally appears there. It
prevents people from knowing where a link goes to.

6.6. How do I right align text or images?

You can use the ALIGN=right attribute on paragraphs, divisions, and headers,
just as you use ALIGN=center to create centered paragraphs and such. This will
right align your text (ragged left).

Perhaps what you really want is justified text, in which the left and right
edges are both aligned so that all lines are the same length. (This is sometime
s
incorrectly called "right justify".) There's no way to justify text in HTML 3.2
,
but it can be done in a CSS1 style sheet with "text-align: justify". (Before yo
u
do that, a caveat: though justified text may look pretty, human factors analysi
s
shows that ragged right is actually easier to read and understand.)

For images, you can use <IMG ALIGN=right SRC="..." ALT="..."> before the runnin
g
text. The image will float at the right margin, and the running text will flow
around it. Remember to use <BR CLEAR=right> or <BR CLEAR=all> to mark the end o
f
the text that is to be affected in this way.

6.7. How can I specify fonts in my Web pages?

If you want others to view your web page with a specific font, the most
appropriate way is to suggest the font rendering with a style sheet. See:
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/css/font/font-family.html

The FONT element can also be used to suggest a specific font. Use of the FONT
element brings numerous usability and accessibility problems, see:
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/%7Emudws/font.html

More information about the FONT element can be found at:
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/special/font.html

Either way, authors run the risk that a reader's system has a font by the same
name but which is significantly different. (e.g., "Chicago" can be a nice text
font, or a display font with letters formed by "bullet holes", or a dingbat fon
t
with building images for creating skylines).

Also, authors are limited to choosing a font (or a group of similar fonts) that
are commonly available on many systems. If a reader does not have the font
installed on their system, they will see a default font. Some browsers may use
a
less legible substitute font than their normal default font in cases where "the
specified font wasn't found".

6.8. How do I indent the first line in my paragraphs?

Use a style sheet with the following ruleset:

P { text-indent: 5% }

See <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/css/> for more information on style
sheets.

6.9. How do I indent a lot of text?

Use a style sheet to set a left margin for the whole document or part of it:

  /* Entire document */
  BODY { margin-left: 20% }

  /* Part of a document with CLASS="foo" */
  .foo { margin-left: 15% }

See <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/css/> for more information on style
sheets.

6.10. How do I do a page break?

Page breaks are offered in Cascading Style Sheets, Level 2, but they are not
well supported by browsers. See
<URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/page.html#page-breaks> for information on
CSS2 page breaks.

In general, page breaks are not appropriate on the Web since what makes a nice
page break for you with your font and font size may be a poor page break for me
with my font and font size.

If you need to produce a nicely formatted printed copy of your HTML documents,
you might also consider using special purpose tools rather than your browser's
Print function. For example, html2ps generates nicely formatted PostScript
output from HTML documents, and HTML Scissor uses special HTML comments for
suggesting page breaks.

6.11. How do I have a fixed background image?

Use a style sheet with the following ruleset:

body { color: black; background: white url(foo.gif) fixed }

Note that the fixed property used in the above style sheet is supported by
Internet Explorer 3+, Netscape Navigator 5+, and other browsers. In contrast,
the proprietary BGPROPERTIES=fixed attribute is supported only by Internet
Explorer 3+.

6.12. How do I have a non-tiled background image?

Use a style sheet with the following ruleset:
body { color: black; background: white url(foo.gif) no-repeat }

6.13. How can I have a custom icon when people bookmark my site?

This is a feature introduced by Internet Explorer 5.x. By default, the browser
requests an file named "favicon.ico" at the same base URL as the document being
bookmarked. If it doesn't find this file, then it will try again in the root
directory of your site. Web authors can specify a different path for the icon
file with a <LINK> element like this: <LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON"
HREF="/pathname/filename.ico">

The image should be 16 by 16 pixels, in the Windows icon format. If your
graphics program doesn't support the Windows icon format, you can use a tool
like the free Java-based icon generator at <URL:http://www.favicon.com/> to
convert/create your icon.

For further information, search for "favicon.ico" at
<URL:http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/essentials/versions/ICPIE5.asp>.

7. HTML Forms

7.1. How do I use forms?

The basic syntax for a form is: <FORM ACTION="[URL]">...</FORM>

When the form is submitted, the form data is sent to the URL specified in the
ACTION attribute. This URL should refer to a server-side (e.g., CGI) program
that will process the form data. The form itself should contain

  * at least one submit button (i.e., an <INPUT TYPE="submit" ...> element),
  * form data elements (e.g., <INPUT>, <TEXTAREA>, and <SELECT>) as needed, and
  * additional markup (e.g., identifying data elements, presenting instructions
)
    as needed.

A more detailed explanation of the use of forms is available at
<URL:http://www.hut.fi/u/jkorpela/forms/>. If you want to install CGI programs
on your server, the following are useful resources:

  * the CGI Programming FAQ <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/cgifaq.html>
  * the CGI section of the W3C's Security FAQ
    <URL:http://www.w3.org/Security/faq/wwwsf4.html>
  * the list of prewritten CGI scripts/programs at
    <URL:http://www.cgi-resources.com/Programs_and_Scripts/>

7.2. How do I get form data emailed to me?

The only reliable mechanism for processing form submissions is with a
server-side (e.g., CGI) program. To send form data to yourself via email, you
should use a server-side program that processes the form submission and sends
the data to your email address.

Some web service providers make standard form-to-email programs available to
their customers. Check with your service provider for details.

If you can install CGI programs on your own server, see the answer to the
previous question for a list of useful resources.

If you can't run CGI programs on your own server, you can use a remotely hosted
form-to-email services. A list of such services can be found at
<URL:http://www.cgi-resources.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Remotely_Hosted/Form_Pro
cessing/>.
Note that the provider of a remotely hosted service will have access to any dat
a
submitted via the service.

Forms that use ACTION="mailto:..." are unreliable. They may work for some of
your users, but they will fail for others who have different software
configurations.

7.3. How do I make a form so it can be submitted by hitting ENTER?

The short answer is that the form should just have one <INPUT TYPE=TEXT> and no
TEXTAREA, though it can have other form elements like checkboxes and radio
buttons. For a more detailed answer, see
<URL:http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/%7Eflavell/www/formquestion.html>.

7.4. How can I make a form with custom buttons?

Rather than a normal submit button (<INPUT TYPE=submit ...>), you can use an
image of a custom submit button. Use <INPUT NAME=Send TYPE=image
SRC="http://url.to/image.gif" ALT="Send" VALUE="Send">. Most browsers will also
send the x and y coordinates of the location where the user clicked on the imag
e
to the server. They are available as "Send.x=000&Send.y=000" in the CGI input.
For more information, see <URL:
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/%7eflavell/www/trysub.html>.

For the reset button, one could use <BUTTON TYPE=reset ...>, JavaScript, and/or
style sheets, although none of these mechanisms work universally. For more
information, see <URL:http://www.hut.fi/u/jkorpela/forms/imagereset.html>.

7.5. Can I have two or more Submit buttons in the same form?

Sure. This is part of HTML 2.0 Forms support (some early browsers did not
support it, but browser coverage is now excellent).

You will need to give your Submit buttons a Name attribute, and, optionally, a
Value attribute. In order to determine which button was used, you will want to
use distinctive Names, or Values, or both. Browsers will display the Value, in
addition to sending it to the server, so choose something that's meaningful to
the user.

Example:

<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT NAME=join VALUE="I want to join now"> -or-
<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT NAME=info VALUE="Please send full details">

If you're unsure what results you're going to get when you submit your form,
NCSA has a standard script which you can use. Code this, for example (assuming
method "post"):

<form method="post" action="http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/htbin-post/post-query">

and then go through the motions of submitting your form. The NCSA server decode
s
the form input, and displays the result to you.

7.6. How can I allow file uploads to my web site?

First of all, the RFC for this is located at
<URL:http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/html/rfc1867.txt>.

File upload is handled by the CGI.pm Perl5 library available from
<URL:http://stein.cshl.org/WWW/software/CGI/cgi_docs.html>. The most recent
versions of the cgi-lib.pl library also support file upload.

These things are necessary for Web-based uploads:

  * An HTTP server that accepts uploads.

  * Access to the /cgi-bin/ to put the receiving script.

  * A form implemented something like this:

    <form method="POST" enctype="multipart/form-data" action="fup.cgi">
    File to upload: <input type=file name=upfile><br>
    Notes about the file: <input type=text name=note><br>
    <input type=submit value=Press> to upload the file!
    </form>

Not all browsers support form-based file upload, so try to give alternatives
where possible. Also, if you need to do file upload in conjunction with
form-to-email, the Perl package MIME::Lite handles email attachments.

7.7. How can I use forms for pull-down navigation menus?

There is no way to do this in HTML only; something else must process the form.
JavaScript processing will work only for readers with JavaScript-enabled
browsers. CGI and other server-side processing is reliable for human readers,
but search engines have problems following any form-based navigation.

See <http://www.hut.fi/u/jkorpela/forms/navmenu.html>, which explains how to
create pull-down menus, as well as some better navigation alternatives.

8. HTML Frames

8.1. How do I make a link or form in one frame update another frame?

In the frameset document (the HTML document containing the <FRAMESET> and
<FRAME> elements), make sure to name the individual frames using the NAME
attribute. The following example creates a top frame named "navigation" and a
bottom frame named "content":

<FRAMESET ROWS="*,3*">
    <FRAME NAME="navigation" SRC="navigation.html">
    <FRAME NAME="content" SRC="content.html">
    <NOFRAMES><BODY>
        <!-- Alternative non-framed version -->
    </BODY></NOFRAMES>
</FRAMESET>

Then, in the document with the link, use the TARGET attribute to specify which
frame should be used to display the link. (The value of the TARGET attribute
should match the value of the target frame's NAME attribute.) You can specify
the target frame for a link (e.g., <A TARGET="content" HREF=...>) or for a form
(e.g., <FORM TARGET="content" ACTION=...>). Also, you can use <BASE TARGET=...>
to change the default target frame for the entire document (normally, the
default target frame is "_self", the current frame).

8.2. Why do my links open new windows rather than update an existing frame?

If there is no existing frame with the name you used for the TARGET attribute,
then a new browser window will be opened, and this window will be assigned the
name you used. Furthermore, TARGET="_blank" will open a new, unnamed browser
window.

In HTML 4.0, the TARGET attribute value is case-insensitive, so that abc and AB
C
both refer to the same frame/window, and _top and _TOP both have the same
meaning. However, most browsers treat the TARGET attribute value as
case-sensitive and do not recognize ABC as being the same as abc, or _TOP as
having the special meaning of _top.

8.3. How do I update two frames at once?

There are two basic techniques for updating multiple frames with a single link:
The HTML-based technique links to a new frameset document that specifies the ne
w
combination of frames. The JavaScript-based solution uses the onClick attribute
of the link to update the additional frame (or frames).

The HTML-based technique can link to a new frameset document with TARGET="_top"
(replacing the entire frameset), but there is an alternative if the frames to b
e
updated are part of a nested frameset. In the initial frameset document, use a
secondary frameset document to define the nested frameset. For example:

<FRAMESET COLS="*,3*">
    <FRAME SRC="contents.html" NAME="Contents">
    <FRAME SRC="frameset2.html" NAME="Display">
</FRAMESET>

A link can now use TARGET="Display" to replace simultaneously all the frames
defined by frameset2.html.

The JavaScript-based solution uses the onClick attribute of the link to perform
the secondary update. For example:

<A HREF="URL1" TARGET=Frame1
   onClick="top.Frame2.location='URL2';">Update frames</A>

The link will update Frame1 with URL1 normally. If the reader's browser support
s
JavaScript (and has it enabled), then Frame2 will also be updated (with URL2).

8.4. How do I get out of a frameset?

If you are the author, this is easy. You only have to add the TARGET attribute
to the link that takes readers to the intended 'outside' document. Give it the
value of _top.

In many current browsers, it is not possible to display a frame in the full
browser window, at least not very easily. The reader would need to copy the URL
of the desired frame and then request that URL manually.
I would recommend that authors who want to offer readers this option add a link
to the document itself in the document, with the TARGET attribute set to _top s
o
the document displays in the full window if the link is followed.

8.5. How do I make sure my framed documents are displayed inside their frameset
?

When the sub-documents of a frameset state are accessed directly, they appear
without the context of the surrounding frameset.

If the reader's browser has JavaScript support enabled, the following script
will restore the frameset:

<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript">
<!--
if (parent.location.href == self.location.href) {
    if (window.location.replace)
        window.location.replace('frameset.html');
    else
        // causes problems with back button, but works
        window.location.href = 'frameset.html';
}
//  -->
</SCRIPT>

A more universal approach is a "restore frames" link:

<A HREF="frameset.html" TARGET="_top">Restore Frames</A>

Note that in either case, you must have a separate frameset document for every
content document. If you link to the default frameset document, then your reade
r
will get the default content document, rather than the content document he/she
was trying to access. These frameset documents should be generated
automatically, to avoid the tedium and inaccuracy of creating them by hand.

Note that you can work around the problem with bookmarking frameset states by
linking to these separate frameset documents using TARGET="_top", rather than
linking to the individual content documents.

8.6. Is there a way to prevent getting framed?

"Getting framed" refers to having your documents displayed within someone else'
s
frameset without your permission. This can happen accidentally (the frameset
author forgot to use TARGET="_top" when linking to your document) or
intentionally (the frameset author wanted to display your content with his/her
own navigation or banner frames).

To avoid "framing" other people's documents, you must add TARGET="_top" to all
links that lead to documents outside your intended scope.

Unfortunately, there is no reliable way to specify that a particular document
should be displayed in the full browser window, rather than in the current
frame. If you can configure your server to send the proprietary header
Window-Target: _top in the HTTP response, then Netscape browsers will display
your document in the full browser window. However, other browsers ignore this
header, and it doesn't work to use <META HTTP-EQUIV="Window-target"
CONTENT="_top"> in the document itself to mimic the HTTP response.

Another workaround is to use <BASE TARGET="_top"> in the document, but this onl
y
specifies the default target frame for links in the current document, not for
the document itself.

If the reader's browser has JavaScript enabled, the following script will
automatically remove any existing framesets:

<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript">
<!--
if (top.frames.length!=0)
    top.location=self.document.location;
// -->
</SCRIPT>

An alternative script is

<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript">
<!--
function breakOut() {
    if (self != top)
        window.open("my URL","_top","");
}
// -->
</SCRIPT>
</HEAD>
<BODY onLoad="breakOut()">

8.7. How do I specify a specific combination of frames instead of the default
document?

This is unfortunately not possible. When you navigate through a site using
frames, the URL will not change as the documents in the individual frames
change. This means that there is no way to indicate the combination of document
s
that make up the current state of the frameset.

The author can provide and link to multiple frameset documents, one for each
combination of frame content. These frameset documents can be generated
automatically, possibly even being created on the fly by a CGI program.

8.8. How do I remove the border around frames?

Removing the border around frames involves both not drawing the frame borders
and eliminating the space between the frames. The two major frames-capable
browsers use different proprietary attributes to achieve this.

Netscape recognizes the BORDER attribute on FRAMESET. It can be set to 0, in
which case the border will not be shown, and the spacing will be set to zero.

Microsoft Internet Explorer recognizes the FRAMEBORDER and FRAMESPACING
attributes on FRAMESET, but in some versions also on FRAME for individual
frames. Both attributes must be set to 0.

So, the most widely supported way to display borderless frames is <FRAMESET ...
BORDER=0 FRAMEBORDER=0 FRAMESPACING=0>.

Note that these attributes are proprietary and not part of the HTML 4.0
specification. Also, removing the border around a frame makes it impossible to
resize it, as this border is also used in most GUIs to change the size of the
window.

8.9. How do I change the title of a framed document?

The title displayed is the title of the frameset document rather than the title
s
of any of the pages within frames. To change the title displayed, link to a new
frameset document using TARGET="_top" (replacing the entire frameset).

8.10. Why aren't my frames the exact size I specified?

Netscape Navigator seems to round pixel-based frame dimensions to the nearest
whole percentage, and to use those percentage-based dimensions when laying out
the frames. Thus, frames with pixel-based dimensions will be rendered with a
slightly different size than that specified in the frameset document. There is
no way to prevent this behavior, and the rounding error will vary depending on
the exact size of the browser window.

To accomodate this, you should design your site to adapt to variations in the
browser's presentation. This is a good idea in general, but especially so in
this situation.

8.11. Are there any problems with using frames?

The fundamental problem with the design of frames is that framesets create
states in the browser that are not addressable. Once any of the frames within a
frameset changes from its default content, there is no longer a way to address
the current state of the frameset. It is difficult to bookmark - and impossible
to link or index - such a frameset state. It is impossible to reference such a
frameset state in other media. When the sub-documents of such a frameset state
are accessed directly, they appear without the context of the surrounding
frameset. Basic browser functions (e.g., printing, moving forwards/backwards in
the browser's history) behave differently with framesets.

Furthermore, frames focus on layout rather than on information structure, and
many authors of framed sites neglect to provide useful alternative content in
the <NOFRAMES> element. Both of these factors cause accessibility problems for
browsers that differ significantly from the author's expectations and for searc
h
engines.

For further discussion, see
<URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/design/frames/whatswrong.html>

          ------------------------------------------------------------

  For additions or omissions to this FAQ, please contact <[email-masked]>.

 All information contained herein was originally compiled by members of the Web
  Design Group, principally Arnoud "Galactus" Engelfriet, John Pozadzides, and
                                 Darin McGrew.

Additional input has been provided by Boris Ammerlaan, Lori Atwater, Alex Bell,
Stan Brown, Roger Carbol, Alex Chapman, Jan Roland Eriksson, Jon Erlandson, Mar
k
Evans, Alan Flavell, Lucie Gelinas, Bjoern Hoehrmann, Tina Marie Holmboe, Peter
 Jones, Nick Kew, Jukka Korpela, Simon Lee, Nick Lilavois, Neal McBurnett, Glen
  McDonald, Dan McGarry, Ken O'Brien, Timothy Prodin, Steve Pugh, Liam Quinn,
   Colin Reynolds, Kai Schätzl, Doug Sheppard, Sue Sims, Toby Speight, Warren
       Steel, Ian Storms, Peter Thomson, Daniel Tobias, and Diane Wilson.

                                Thanks everyone!

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                                   Web Design Group
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