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by Joe Barta of Professional Web Design
URL: http://junior.apk.net/~jbarta/tutor/makapage/index.html
This is a nice package of basic HTML authoring tutorials available for FREE on the World Wide Web. It is tailor-made for people with no experience in Hypertext Markup Langauge at all. There are plenty of visuals and illustrations for the main points; colorful graphics and interesting images, plus relevant screenshots. The tutorials cover both PC and Mac platforms. It is highly recommended for people who want to teach themselves the basics of home page building at their own pace and practice them right on the Web!
The Table of Content as is:
|
Introduction |
Lesson 1 |
Lesson 2 |
Lesson 3 |
Lesson 4 |
Lesson 5 |
Lesson 6 |
Index |
Room for improvement and my suggestions:
Generally speaking, the Web-based tutorial is clearly presented and nicely organized. The presentation style is breezy and casual. There are, however, some points where the site could be improved to make it easier for the users.
Point 1: The lesson numbers are not very helpful
or informative. The structure of the site is not immediately apparent
to users.
Suggestion : I would recommend that, in addition to
the table, there should be lesson headings such as:
Point 2: Grouping of materials are not entirely
transparent.
Suggestion: Add sub-headings to clarify structure
and grouping of the materials. For instance, Lesson 4 talks about
different kinds of links, web links, email links. But Lesson 3 also
covers relative links vs. absolute links. It seems better to
re-organize the topics and put all those about links together in the
same lesson.
Point 3: Some minor bugs and occasional
flaws.
The Color Picker, introduced in Lesson 2, is a neat little HTML and
JavaScript widget.
http://hgseclass.harvard.edu/t525/labs/lab4/htmltutorial/makapage/picker/index.htm
It enables users to test background color, text color, link color, visited link color, active link color, text font, bold, italiac, font type and font size. It is excellent for demonstration purposes. But the item, "Choose a background image", does not seem to work very well, or at least, not entirely clear. It needs more explanations for the users to follow. Sometimes, there are some spelling mistakes, for example, near the end of Lesson 5, there is the line 'text editor on steriods to "decribe" one'. Besides, there seems to be too many instances of "Click here".
Suggestion: To demonstrate how a background image
works out in a browser, I would suggest one simple and quick method:
that is, ask the user to drag-and-drop the gif or jpg into the
Netscape window. The user will be able to see the effect of the
background image immediately. To eliminate the ambiguity created by
"Click here" links, it is better to state exactly the name of the
links. For example, instead of saying "Click here", I can write:
"Click on my photo" and you will see a
"monkey king" at work. "Click on my name"
and you'll hear my favourite music.
On the whole, this is a very useful and interesting web tutorial site. I think the index page is extremely valuable in heping users to locate things being introduced in the site.
http://hgseclass.harvard.edu/t525/labs/lab4/htmltutorial/makapage/lesson06.htm#index
There is a rich collection of web resources which might be scattered all over the Internet and hence difficult to find. At the end of the page, there is a listing of 26 useful links given in the tutorial including the Table Tutor, Form Tutor and Frames Tutor. This is a site to which many people -- both beginnes and experienced designers -- will come back again and again. I would recommend it to my colleagues and students.
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Date Last Modified: 2/25/1998. |
URL: http://hgseclass.harvard.edu/t525/students/jor/
