The information superhighway

My first computer was a VIC-20, by Commodore. This was maybe in 1983? It was just a clunky keyboard that interfaced with my mom's floor model television via a formidable-looking "alligator clip" that visually was more suited for automotive jumper cables.

When attached to the two screws on the back of the television set marked “VHF”, my computer occasionally had a "color monitor" of just 16 colors.

Despite her initial protestations and concerns of this hybrid set up "…possibly damaging the television", I got fare time with the device. I was quite satisfied with my so-called computer. I could not envision much beyond the mystery of this machine and the language it spoke. I could play pre-packaged games that came as a small square "cassettes" that plugged into the back of the keyboard.

A game called Battle Chess was my all-time favorite, especially when I added a "joystick" to enhance my ability to interact with the Chess characters. I usually lost the game, but it was fun anyway

I learned a bit of B.A.S.I.C. language in which I could make a small ASCII "stick-man" character on-screen do jumping jack exercises. Faster or slower this character would jump, based upon the number of times I coded the "For/Next" loop to execute before the next "If/Then' statement. This was about the extent of my "programming abilities"

In the very early 90's I attended a brief (10-week long?) one-night-per-week Adult Education Course for Programming in BASIC. I did okay with it, I sort-of "got it". I passed the class near the top. But I could only see one thing for the future...-yeah, I'd need a better computer.

Say, isn't that one of those new-fangled MOS 6510 processors?

I next bought a used Commodore_64 computer, which was okay for about a year. I knew of a few "bulletin boards" and something called "telnet, and could possibly have connected to and send/read messages.

In 1985 or "86maybe, I "upgraded" to a new ATARI 130XE but without a modem I still could not access anything beyond pre-canned programs on mini-cassette. I wanted to exchange a few e-notes with friends met at science fiction conventions whom spoke of this "telnet" thing, but my system without peripheral upgrades would not support it. I did however, very much enjoy a "game" called “The Halley Project ” and while I never attained the end of the game and subsequently found the hidden so-called "Easter Egg" Extended Game Play that was said to exist, I much enjoyed this game.

The "IBM-PC" was the golden standard, so next came my first "real" computer, a TANDY 1000 RLX computer by Radio Shack.

-Yeah, -mistakes come in threes I'm afraid…*grin*. Enough said!

While I was doing this, the Internet as we know it was quite ready to be born. There might have been quite a few telnet bulletin boards out there by now, linking together, encompassing larger areas of lay-users. The emergence of "backbone" companies such as America Online and CompuServe brought "internet" to the masses. Physical landlines were being strung by companies like Sprint, which were to be integral to the Internet boom about to emerge. From what had begun as a Professionals-users-only Old-boys club, emerged something the World had never expected, The World Wide Web. A "critical mass" of would-be users had been achieved, the ribbon was unceremoniously cut and a Information Superhighway we call "The Internet" exploded forth as many thousands of users joined in that first year alone with exponentially more every year since.

I had joined the emerging "internet" circa early 1994 with a program called PC_LINK" (not to be confused with a business that was later created in the late 1990s with the same name) on my new computer with a "i186" and 14.4kbs modem. I found a way to tweak this from the bench-tester's 14.4-baud speed to 19.2-baud. This was still quite slow, really.

An aftermarket modem upgrade to a 28.8-kbs helped. A few years later, I had to upgrade yet again, to a COMPAQ Presario with "i586" with the optimum dial-up standard, the 56-kbs modem. And still, the Internet demanded more and more of computers. Today I use a used-to-be-HP with AMD-K6, tricked-out with added-on peripherals, and can barely keep up with the changes!

Still, my biggest personal pet peeve was that Personal Web-Pages take so long to load on dial-up! Why? I learned that there are "tricks" a conscientious Web-page programmer can do to assist users of "slower" computers. -Better coding.

Road signs to Guide You

Codified thought... I wanted to learn even just a little bit of how to write HTML. How to change the color of my text posted upon a Forum, or how to use a different font or emphasis... -That would do. But learning how to write Web Pages seemed impossible! On "forums" I would edit my replies to include little things gleaned like colored text, altered text sizes, and other styles of font. I wrote down what worked, what it does. I needed the skills to write my own pages.

So, how about writing your own code?

It was about seven years ago I began to learn through online resources and later, signed up via Internet classes with Distance Education Course and made it through several courses on "Introduction to HTML" and "Web-Page Design w/ multi-Media". It was difficult as all new things are. I learned some basic HTML, tried it and quickly saw how sometimes what I wrote was skewed on one or the other of the two main browsers, Internet Explorer and Netscape! This is terrible! What did I do incorrectly? Was there someplace I could "test" my code for accuracy and compatibility? (YES! W3C Validator) -These course helped me to create web-pages... but I did not learn right away of resources like this, or where to look for pre-written (FREE would be preferred!) things such as ready-to-use code snippets, libraries of open-source images such as *GIFs, sound files, plug-ins and upgrades etc., to add value and appeal to my pages.

I learned about the history of the Internet, it's intricacies, some potential dangers too. The direction it is heading, how "netizens" are using it today and, more importantly for me, how to do intelligent searches that lead to meaningful finds. As a future Web Page Designer seeking to increase his personal web-presence, this resource alone was worth the time invested in these courses.

I have looked for and found "code validator" sites, which allows web-coders to paste their live URL's (or actual code into) to be validated for errors and/or warnings. You get a nearly immediate line-by-line review of your tested code, cited are any errors, conflicts, deprecated (discontinued/unsupported) tags, missing or improperly closed tags, bad/incorrect syntax and any other "unrecognized" errors.

Using this course, I have found other useful, fun sources of code, games, freebie utilities, plug-ins and archived knowledge that I *knew* must have existed, somewhere. Resources such as StrangeBanana that programmatically generates a new, unique X-HTML sheet for you, right before your eyes! You can "renew" the image with one click, to get one that you like! Free for you to take, follow their included instructions, and make it your own. And I located a slick collection of links to "opt out of site cookies", like (website no longer exists). Most sites do let you "opt out" of receiving their cookies. -But they usually do not advertise this openly, so most people don't even know this. This opt-out site has collected a listing of the most prolific cookie-givers, and shows you where to "opt-out" of those ads/tracking networks, by "blocking" future cookies from them with a "stale cookie", one that the visited site cannot "overwrite" or otherwise replace.

I feel more confident in searching for resources since having undertaken this introductory course those years ago. A course that I could have availed myself of years sooner had I know they existed and was aware of the benefits they bring. This could have saved myself many hours of fruitless searches with non-relevant returns. In earlier courses and in my own reading I have learned how to make my Web-page code degrade and still be fairly compatible and forward-looking with most current generation browsers. Recommended reading is Elizabeth Castro's HTML For the World Wide Web. I started with the “Fourth Edition” of her excellent book. The "Fifth Edition" of this title is highly recommended. -Adding X-HTML and CSS (“Cascading Style Sheets”.) the Fifth Edition cited above is an indispensable desk side reference manual that no Web Page Builder should be without