From there, one traverses the web by either clicking on links (that usually appear underlined), using the Back and Forward buttons, using bookmarks (saved addresses of pages that the user has visited before), or opening a new URL. ICS, UCI, and many places on the web keep lists of interesting or useful Web sites.
A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) provides a consistent method for
naming any page on the Web. It consists of a protocol (e.g.,
http, ftp or gopher), a host name (e.g.,
www.ics.uci.edu), and the directory and file name. For
example, the following are all valid URLs:
http://www.uci.edu/
gopher://ka.reg.uci.edu/11/ro/soc/
http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/cdemello/univ.html
If you need to guess a URL for a university, try http://www.UNIVERSITY.edu
For a company, try http://www.COMPANY.com
For a department at a university, try http://www.DEPARTMENT.UNIVERSITY.edu
For a person at a university, try http://www.DEPARTMENT.UNIVERSITY.edu/~LOGINNAME
(By the way, a program has been set up to add yourself to the ICS Directory Service for ICS staff, faculty and grad students. This creates a personal home page for you, and in the next part, it helps if you have a home page set up already. Once you learn HTML, you'll probably want to edit the file for your home page by hand. For staff, it can found in the ~www/documentroot/dir/staff/ directory.)
In our webserver, if you have a directory named public_html, in your home directory, then files in that directory can be accessed with the URL http://www.ics.uci.edu/~LOGINNAME/FILENAME.html . The directory should be readable and searchable by others, and all files should be readable. Here's one way to create the directory in UNIX:
mkdir ~/public_html chmod a+x ~/public_html chmod a+r ~/public_html
<h3>Getting Started: A Few HTML commands for the body</h3>
The tag <p> begins a new paragraph. The command is optional after a new heading. The closing paragraph tag <p> is also optional.
The tag <HR> draws a horizontal rule (i.e., line). The is no need for a command to end the line.
The tag <BR> causes a line break. There is no need for an end command.
An address is surrounded by <ADDRESS> and </ADDRESS> tags.
Note that the document ends with a horizontal line followed by information about the author. This is a standard convention on the web, and it's useful in making documents look uniform. Don't worry if you don't understand everything after the horizontal line yet. One way to make documents look uniform is to have a standard template for documents, and to copy that template when creating a new document. You are welcome to copy the file ~pazzani/public_html/template.html, and personalize the end to create your template. The following UNIX command achieves this:
cp ~pazzani/public_html/template.html ~/public_html/template.htmlIf you have run the ~www/bin/icsds program, the URL for your home page is http://www.ics.uci.edu/dir/staff/YOUR_LOGIN_NAME
<PRE> YEAR FACULTY FUNDING (In Millions) 1995 24 $4.5 1996 27 $5.4 1997 30 $6.4 1998 31 $8.2 1999 33 $10.1 </PRE>There are two types of lists commonly used. Unordered lists have items separated by a bullet. Ordered lists are numbered. Unordered lists are surrounded by <UL> and <\UL>. Ordered lists are surrounded by <OL> and </OL>. In both ordered and unordered lists, new items start with <LI>. There is no closing tag, and you shouldn't use <p> to start a new item. You may embed lists inside of lists (as shown at the end of this document). Here's an example of creating a list.
<UL> <LI>First Item <LI>Second Item <LI>... <LI>Last item </UL>and heres how it would look:
The URL in the link tag can be a full URL or a relative path name. If
you want to link to another document created by you and stored in the
same directory, a relative URL is preferred. This is simply the name of
the file, such as
<A HREF="Places.html">Useful Places on
the Web</a>. Relative path names make it easier to move a
group of files from one place (e.g., your public_html directory) to
another (e.g., the ICS Home page).
There is a special format of a URL that allows a user to send mail to a specified address. This is <a href="mailto:mailaddress">Text to display</a>. Usually, the text to display is the same as the e-mail address:
<A href="mailto:webmaster@ics.uci.edu">webmaster@ics.uci.edu</A>
The tag <IMG> creates an image. Its usual format is
<IMG SRC="URL">. Like links, you may use a relative pathname
or a full URL. For example, you could use
<IMG SRC="http://www.ics.uci.edu/~pazzani/BW.gif"> to include
a picture of me in your document.
Another alternative is to store documents in Postscript and to link to files with a ".ps" extension within your HTML. This allows a user to download and view or print the postscript. Postscript created on the Macintosh tends to be less portable than that created by LaTex.
chmod a+r ~/public_html/*Other errors usually show up as poorly formatted documents. Most browsers ignore tags they don't recognize, so make sure that tags and if necessary the corresponding closing tag are present and spelled properly. Also make sure that all open quote marks have corresponding closing quote marks.
One way to check your HTML document is to submit it to a validation service, such as the one at the bottom of this document.
