September 02, 1999

Page 1

In The Spotlight
written by Rick Barr

This week I found a great site for affiliate programs. www.reporting.net

They have a little bit of everything and it is easy to apply for programs and get the code to put on your site. All of the companies that accept your offer email you to let you know your site has been approved and how to set up the links. Very easy. Check them out today.

Get Organized
written by Rick Barr

One of the most important aspects of any successful business is good organization. Being organized will make your daily tasks much easier and quicker. No more time hunting for the email address for a new contact or business associate. No more forgetting to respond to potential customers or following up on existing customers. In short, your whole operation will run much smoother. TIME IS MONEY!! , to quote a cliche.

Consider going to your local paper goods store and purchasing a dayplanner, an erasable wall calendar, and a filing cabinet. Use these to your advantage. Make sure to write down every name and email address that receive WHEN you receive it so it won't get forgotten.

Sit down at the end of every day and make a schedule to follow for the next day. We all know how easy it is to get distracted when you're online. Stick to the schedule and save the browsing for the end of the day or make one day of the week a day to 'surf'.

There is nothing wrong with checking out you favorite sites for new resources, but it is easy to get sidetracked from doing what you had originally set out to do.

Use the wall calendar to keep track of your appointments and for easy, quick access to your most commonly used numbers and addresses. Getting organized as soon as you can will greatly improve your performance.

On To Page 2

Page 2

Beginning HTML
written by Nicole Bibee

Working with Color & Images Last week we discussed hypertext links and the various ways to link to other sources. This week we are covering color and images in our web pages.

First of all, HTML identifies a color in one of two ways: either by the name of the color or the color value. According to many there are three primary colors that can be combined to create all the colors we have ever imaged.

1. Red
2. Green
3. Blue

However, this color value is a set of numbers that represent the color's appearance (the RGB value). RGB stands for red, green and blue and how intensely we need to mix these colors together to create another color. We all know that yellow and blue makes green and this is the basis to HTML color.

The main place we will use color will be the background color. To assign the background color we will simply add bgcolor="colorname" to the body tag. For example or . When assigning color you will want to use the RGB value versus the name because different browsers interpret color differently. Also the names that can be used is limited to a small number of colors.

IF you are interested in resources for color, I suggest visiting these sites:
1. THE COLOR CENTER
2. THALIA'S COLOR PAGE
3. COLOR BROWSER
4. HTML-COLOR PICKERS

Moreover you can specify color to the text on your page by adding the TEXT=color, LINK=color or VLINK=color also inside the body tag of your html file. The main use of applying this color is for the general layout of your page. Although there will come a time when you want to specify a separate color for a particular text or set of characters. When this is the case you will need to add a tag before the text being emphasized and following the text add an ending font tag . An example would be <.FONT SIZE=sizevalue COLOR=color FACE=font>

I know adding color does spice up the look and feel of a page but what if you decide to add a textured background? Well instead of using bgcolor in the body tag simply change it to BACKGROUND="image".

Just remember to give the specific location of the background file. You will also need to use a little caution when choosing a background that is seamless in appearance. The reasoning for this is due to the browser tiling the image that is retrieved. Simply put, the image usually is not the same size as your browser window and will need to be inserted over and over again into the page until it fills up the background.

Next lets discuss the extra tags that can be added to the image tag we worked with two weeks ago. Remembering back we stated that to insert an image you need to use the <.img src="filename"> tag. Well this is a very powerful command in itself but it doesn't give the user much control of where the image is placed.

You can use the alignment property which has three values: TOP, MIDDLE and BOTTOM. example <.img src="filename" align=middle> Although there is a problem with this tag, it will only work with a few lines of text and will create lots of blank space. To get over this hurdle I suggest using the align=left or align=right which can remove the blank space problem. However changing this alignment may cause a second problem, not enough space between the image and the text. To solve this there are two tags: Vertical and Horizontal space. To use these simply add them to the img tag like this --> <.img src="filename" align=right vspace=value hspace=value>

Last but not least you can also specify the size of your image. These properties are height and width in pixels. It is best to use these properties in the img tag because the browser has to calculate the size of the image which will cause the page to load slower.

Keep in mind that color and images are used to add more emphasis to your page. Using too many pictures and images may make it difficult to read and follow. So chose images and placement wisely. Next week we will discuss image maps and how they work.

Notice: We had to insert a period after the less than sign to make the tags viewable by your browser. When writting your own code please do not add the period to the tags.

On To Page 3

Page 3

This Week's Download -
written by Rick Barr

This week's download is a program and website that make it easy to create your own website. For those of you that don't know how to build your own site but understand that having a web page to promote your business is essential, this will take the head scratching out of web authoring. Visit www.homestead.com to learn more.

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