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Site Seeing on the Web By
Pol Calinawan
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It’s been a while. My first site seeing tour on the Web was on a
souped up 386 with a 14K modem. Nowadays, there are i-Modes WAPs,
PDAs, iMACs, and hyper Pentium 4s running around on the information
highway. The Web scene has truly evolved a new generation of net
citizens. |
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 he
decision to create my own little surfer’s nook on the Web came
easily and quite naturally, but the HTML source codes that made up
the Web sites I was visiting, daunted me. Fortunately, I had by then
embraced the wonderful world of that spanking new WYSIWYG
(whiz-zee-wig, meaning “what you see is what you get”) MS Word
processor. Surely, there must be a similar processor to publish my
presence on the World Wide Web.I found out that there was this famous online startup called Yahoo! that could help me in my search for a way to build my own Web site. Was there a way around the inevitable HTML? My search results then turned up just a few hits. But with that handful, I realized then that there was indeed a way out of HTML and that I could design and create my own Web pages in a WYSIWYG manner, as easy as ordering pizza. |
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so, with my fresh SKYinternet account, I downloaded the trial
version of NetObjects Fusion into my 386 running Windows 3.x. With
justa few clicks and some tweaking, I was able to generate the pages
of my first Web site. I was stunned. It looked like a pro job,
complete with text formatting, graphics, page layout and hyperlinks.
True to my multimedia colors, I downloaded additional free graphics
and sound files to incorporate into my pages. After a friendly visit
to my ISP site, I was soon downloading a free copy of WS-ftp, a file
transfer program, to facilitate the upload of my files to the server
and fill up my allocated web space.The moment of truth came when I launched my newly downloaded Netscape browser and first opened my very own online Web site. It was elegant. It was incredible. It was glorious. My self-esteem zoomed skywards. It was luck at first site! Pushing my luck further, I went on to Macromedia and tried their Web graphics, Java applets and scripts. They dazzled my Web senses. I was entering the world of plug-ins and add-ons at a time when Microsoft and Netscape were engaged in their browser wars. With some freebie bells and whistles from these innovative giants, my very own little place on the World Wide Web was finally ready for prime time. |
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the future looks even more exciting. The Web scene is much wider now
than what it was the first time I took that site-seeing tour. With
Web-master know-how now tucked under my sleeve, it’s a pleasant
surprise that companies like Micromedia and NetObjects,
trailblazers that made my journey to Web-site design that much
easier and more rewarding, are still around (though grown a lot
bigger) to provide state-of-the-art products and services. Internetworking has come of age. Portals are the in thing. B2B, B2C, and peer-to-peer are the buzzwords. Interactivity is a must when it comes to cool Web sites nowadays. And so, I try to resurrect my old static Web site using some of the new hardware, software and Internet applications that are available today. The platform didn’t come cheap, for me anyway. A Pentium III 550 MHz, a scanner, a respectable 17” monitor attached to a 16MB AGP card, 128MB of RAM, a multimedia system package, and disk storage made up the desktop. I installed Windows 2000 Professional with a LAN card connected to a Compaq Server running Novell 5. A 3COM Office Connect box that dials up the ISP is attached to the LAN Hub. |
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Adobe PhotoShop and Corel Draw, together with the software that came
with the scanner, I was in graphics heaven. I then used MS Office
for my word processing and database design. I readied my SQL Query
statements that I generated in MS Office for migration to Oracle 8I,
which in turn was packaged with Novell 5. Luckily, I had stints as
DBA on IBM mainframes, so it was a cinch. With all the drafts I needed for my Web-site content ready, I launched NetObjects Fusion 5 and proceeded to fill in the input boxes on the template that I had chosen. No coding, no HTML, just point-and-click fun. That version was pretty funky with all the new features and stuff. I was confident of a gloriously reborn Web site. It didn’t disappoint me. The finished product was a work of art. Thanks to those forward-looking innovators of computing, my self-esteem was again on high. Unfortunately, there were quirks in my database-driven pages and it didn’t quite work out, but hey, there are millions of database-driven Web pages out there, I’ll have some of my own soon enough. As for basic interactivity, perhaps you can someday visit and see online www.lmmaxco.com, one of the sites I did with NetObjects that has forms, advanced scripts and applets. Here, I also used IBM HotMedia for the graphics. And what about HTML? Well, that’s a long story. If you’re inclined to really get into Web-site building or even if you’re a newbie in search of resources, then surf on over to my other Web pages where I have written A No Sweat Guide to Web Site Building article for your consumption. Cheers! |
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