According to a recent news story, the official release of IE 8 will not be in 2008 as once planned. Basically put, Microsoft feels it needs more shakedown and testing before becoming official - and to be honest I am in 100% agreement with this.

I’ve used the beta version of 8 (which obviously isn’t finished since it’s beta), and while the browser is better at some things than 7 it does need some buttoning up. I do sincerely appreciate that Microsoft is basically stating "We want to know every single possible complaint you have about 8 and address it before release."

Some are quick to say to use Firefox or Opera as an alternative instead of IE, however there are those who (believe it or not) like IE and want to stick with it. As long as 8 delivers (primarily with its enhanced security and privacy), it will be a worthy upgrade.

On a personal note, some have written that 8 is slower than 7. In the time I used beta 8 that certainly wasn’t the case. Tabs were faster, rendering was better and simply put, it was just easier to use than 7. I will be happy to ditch 7 for 8 and will do so without hesitation - but not until official release.

[Source: ChannelWeb]

The internet as we know it today predominantly runs on Linux. There’s an extremely high probability that the internet connection you’re using right now is connected thru a Linux server - and routed thru many other Linux servers along the way.

Below is a graph showing the market share for top servers across all domains from August 1995 to September 2008 - from news.netcraft.com.

You’ll notice that Apache has a huge lead over anything else out there. The only other type that comes anywhere near it is Microsoft.

While it’s true the HTTP server from Apache has a Windows version, the one used the most without any hint of doubt is the *nix release.

Why was it that Linux (and Unix) paved the way for the modern internet and not something else?

Two reasons:

1. Cost.
2. The ability of Linux to "act enterprise" without needing enterprise-grade computer hardware.

Imagine the following scenario:

It’s 1994. You get the idea that you want to run your own dial-up ISP. You need the "leased pipe" (the primary internet connection from the phone carrier, usually T1), a computer to act as the server and a bunch of serial-connected dial-up modems (via digiboard most likely) to receive the calls for that server to give your customers connectivity. And of course a bunch of phone lines from the local carrier for your modems.

The computer you use is obviously not going to be some $10,000+ super-duper server because you simply don’t have the cash for it. Rather, it’s going to be whatever you can afford that will get the job done.

And all you’ve got is a 486 DX2 66MHz box - which at the time was modern.

It’s 1994 and you need a server-grade OS. What’s available?

Windows NT 3.1 did exist but wasn’t exactly equipped to do what you wanted. And there was no way MS-DOS with Windows 3.1 could do the job.

Apple’s MacOS was only at System 7.1 in 1994, so that was a no-go.

What’s left? Unix and Linux.

Any Unix was too proprietary at the time - assuming you could even get your hands on a copy of the OS.

For you nit-pickers out there, yes it’s true there were BSD distros in ‘94 - but it wasn’t exactly easy to get a hold of. For those interested, read up on 386BSD, the predecessor to Free/Open/NetBSD.

Then there’s Linux. You had a few choices at the time. Slackware, Red Hat, Debian (of course) and maybe a few others.

At this point you acquired the Linux OS of your choice from a friend on floppy diskettes, installed it, configured the server and gave it the best shot you could. Your Linux "server" had absolutely no GUI because it had to be 100% optimized for speed (and for the fact it was never meant to be a server).

God willing, if your "server" didn’t choke on a daily basis and your customers stayed customers, you made enough of a profit to cover the T1 line cost and upgrade to a real server later on.

~ ~ ~

This story is more or less how modern internet started. There were thousands of Mom n’ Pop ISPs that operated out of a garage (sometimes literally) just like this - and the vast majority of them were all running Linux. Windows couldn’t do it back then and neither could MacOS.

Linux was literally the only OS out there that had the right price (free), ran similar to a Unix and could use existing computers of the time to connect customers. Anything else would break the bank way too easily. What would you have used that you could afford? Netware? Lotus Domino? HP-UX (that requires those refrigerator-sized HP servers)? I don’t think so.

In addition, those who ran web sites also followed suit. They used plain-jane consumer grade PCs "upgraded" to servers (by OS and nothing more usually) to run things like HTTP servers, IRC, FTP, electronic mail and so on.

Would the internet as we know it exist without Linux?

Absolutely not. Where Linux shines the most is in its server applications - no question.

To this day I see a lot of web sites, be they blogs or otherwise, that are just… wrong. As in designed poorly. More often than not the audience is the last consideration most people have when designing their sites when it should be the first.

These links have nothing to do with software and everything to do with knowledge.

Web Pages That Suck

I am a long-time reader of this site. Vincent Flanders is an authority on pointing out design mistakes and is darn good at it. He has coined terms such as Flasturbation (using needless Flash) and Mystery Meat Navigation. It’s more or less a guarantee that if you’re new to design, there are things mentioned in this site that are wrong with yours.

CSS Tutorial

There is not a single application made that will do all your CSS for you. In order to learn CSS properly it must be done "by hand". For those who use WordPress themes you will inevitably run into the problem where a template just "won’t work". This is most likely because the CSS doesn’t "agree" with something you’re trying to add/remove/modify. If you know how to hand-code CSS you’re be way better off discovering out design foibles and fixing them.

PHP

PHP is a scripting language, and this is what you’re most likely using if you’re hosting your own site. The vast majority of sites (including PCMech) require PHP just to run and without it would be nothing but static pages that wouldn’t "talk" to each other at all. In today’s blogging world all the major blog engine offerings (WordPress, MovableType, etc.) use PHP with a MySQL database.

Like CSS, this is something that is best learned "by hand" using a plain text editor to write/modify PHP scripts.

The Bare Bones Guide to HTML

Although dated, the information contained in this guide is still relevant because there are still many instances where you have to use plain HTML to get things done. While it’s true that you can use CSS to do most things HTML can, doing it via HTML is faster and easier.

Small example of the difference between the two:

In HTML, to make something bold you can use <strong>bold text here</strong> or just <b>bold text here</b>.

Doing the same in CSS would be <span style="font-weight: bold">bold text here</span>.

The HTML way is much faster and does the same job, hence the reason you should know it in the first place.

In business, branding is important and this involves a logo. The logo is a visual piece of art representing your product or service.

There are rules to making logos; it isn’t something where you can just whip up any old thing and throw it out there. Why? Because if it’s designed improperly it will inevitably cost you (possibly a lot of money).

If you design your logo right the first time you can achieve maximum coverage for the least cost.

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Google Chrome is a web browser very recently released by Google. While Dave concentrated more on the “guts” of the browser, I concentrated more on its usability. What I discovered is that while Gmail and Yahoo! Mail work, the full version of Hotmail does not. The bookmark import from Firefox on initial install didn’t work. There’s also some Java stuff that doesn’t work and the zoom feature isn’t too great either (compared to IE or Firefox). However I will say that yes, it’s really fast, zippy and easy to use. See video below for details.

Google Chrome is a web browser very recently released by Google. While Dave concentrated more on the “guts” of the browser, I concentrated more on what I could actually do with it. This is a very early release (not even at version 1 yet) and noticed that the full version of Hotmail doesn’t work, Java has issues with it and the zoom feature doesn’t work properly either. However it is fast and yes it’s easy to use. See video below for details.

Not everybody uses Internet Explorer. Mozilla Firefox is a very popular alternative.

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Now that we have used a table to create a basic layout for our website, we can expand the site to more than one web page. Watch below as I show you how to do this. After all, almost all sites have more than one page involved.

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Tables can obviously be used to lay out data in an organized way. However, you can also use tables to create the overall structure of your website. This video below will explain and show how to do this.

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Now that this course has provided the basics on hand-coding your HTML, we will delve into the world of WYSIWYG editors. Using an editor like this will allow you to create your web pages in a much quicker fashion and in a style much more similar to a word processor. You can accomplish much of what you need without doing any HTML coding by hand.

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What makes the Internet into the “world wide web”? Or more accurately, what makes it a “web”? It is links. See, if there is a web page floating out there on a server with no links pointing to it, it might as well be completely off the Internet. Nobody can get to it! It is links which link one web page to another and it is links which form the continuous flow that is the Internet experience.

Obviously, a link is essentially an element on a web page that, when clicked, takes the user to another page. When that link is a text, it is usually signified by being an underlined and your mouse cursor will turn into a little hand. You clicked on a link to get into this very lesson.

OK, now let us jump right into how to create a link.

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Tables are something you will probably need to make use of on your web pages. You may use them to simply structure your data for easy viewing. Some people actually use tables to form the basic layout of their pages. I will address using tables for design later in this course. For now, let me simply introduce the HTML needed to create simple tables.

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Often, the difference between a “blah” looking webpage and a good looking one comes down to the images used. Images are used not only to accent your text, but also for the actual design and layout of your web page. We will get into how to actually design a web page a little later in this course, but for now it is necessary to know how to insert images into your HTML.

In the Introduction to Website Files, I talked about what a JPEG, GIF and PNG image file is. These are image files, and these files are SEPARATE from your HTML file. You use an HTML tag to reference the external image into your HTML document.

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OK, before we get going with creating your own website, there are a few things to think about and gather together.

An Idea

Before creating your own website, you need to have some idea of exactly what you are trying to do with it and what you would like to accomplish. You can consult the Reasons To Have a Website lesson in this course for more information on the different types of sites that are out there.

The reason I mention this again on the checklist is because I believe you should put a little planning into your new website. It is best to think about your ultimate goal and then work backwards. For example, are you looking to create a site to talk about yourself and potentially “sell” you to recruiters? The goal here would be an impressed recruiter. They will need to have information about you (i.e. a resume) and will want to see that information on a professional-looking website. Want to keep your family updated on what is happening in your life? You’ll probably want a site which allows easy updating often (a blog).

With a relatively firm grasp of where you want to go with this, let us get into the different tools you are going to need to get moving.

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The first step to getting into this field is to understand how it works. Here are some questions that I have found many people simply don’t understand:

• How does the internet work?
• When I put up a website, where does it go?
• When I enter a website address into my browser, what is happening?

I have talked to people about this and the confusion is definitely rampant. Most people have never really thought about where a website comes from. Its just the mysterious “they” who do it, I guess. Also, contrary to what Senator Ted Stevens said, the internet is not really a “series of tubes”.

So, let’s take a look at how this all works.

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Before we begin in earnest, let’s talk about why you might want to have a website. There are a lot of different types of sites out there and the great part about the internet, in general, is that it is a free medium to do with what you want.

Some of the common things people do on their websites today are:

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