Developing Web Site Content

Basic Content - issues to be considered:

	Plan the site - who and when will do the work, what is expected, how will results be measured, risk mitigation.
	Establish a directory structure to organize content.  Remember to maintain consistency once created to support commercial search engines that have documented the site.
	Maintain comment relevant to the site.
	Copyrights - who owns it, who can use it.
	Compressed files - faster access, less of a bottleneck for the server.  Use commercial standards for file compression.
	File formats - use commercially acceptable and popular file formats, e.g.: Graphics: GIF (drawn), JPG (photograph), PNG (new standard from Microsoft); avoid bitmaps (too large). Audio: AU and WAV formats most popular. Document formats: PDF (Adobe Acrobat)
	Liability of Content Standard liability (slander) issues. Pornographic content. Viruses

Content Production

	HTML - tags contain content, define formatting for the document
	Various tools for editing web pages: Editors - Notepad, Emacs VI HTML Editors - HTML Assistant, HoTMetaL, BBEdit Word Processors - Word, WordPerfect Wizards - Access, PowerPoint, Excel Converters/Filters - RTFtoHTML Web publishing tools

	Stored web pages are static; only changed via a creation/editing process.
	Dynamic content is changing and or functional; typically generated via database-stored information.

	Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) - describe how document content is presented.
	Styles are used to modify existing HTML tags (e.g. H1, etc.) in terms of font type, size, bold/italic, and positioning.
	There are browser peculiarities when dealing with style sheets.

	Document object models or Dynamic HTML  (DHTML) is a specification for browser-based "programs" (scripts, etc.) to dynamically access and update the content, structure and style of documents.
	DHTML is a combination of JavaScript and the Document Object Model (DOM) environment in web browsers.
	The object model enables you to modify properties and invoke methods to manipulate the appearance of a web page.

	Browser dependencies for dynamic content based on version of the browser (Netscape v. Internet Explorer and version 3.X, 4.X).
	Web scripting languages JavaScript and VBScript (Internet Explorer only) JavaScript - developed by Sun Microsystems and Netscape in 1995; not related to Java (a full-blown programming language) although syntax has some similarities.   VBScript - developed by Microsoft; script version of Visual Basic (VB). Both depend on object-based environment (document, form, form elements, etc.) that is manipulated with programming commands. The script is interpreted on fly by the browser (tends to be slower and browser dependent). Versions of JavaScript and browser versions must be considered when developing scripts. Scripts are often used  to validate user form data (e.g., ranges of values), provide limited functions (e.g. calculator); and provide multimedia effects (e.g., button rollovers).
	ActiveX and Java Java is an object-oriented language similar to C++.  It requires a Java Virtual Machine to interpret bytecode (Java is theoretically able to run on any platform).  Java created components provide specialized functions. ActiveX is a component-based environment.  Objects with unique functionality are created and deployed in other software environments (e.g., web browsers, Visual Basic/C++ programs). Java and ActiveX components are often manipulated with JavaScript/VBScript.

	Active Server Pages (ASP)/VBScript (IIS only), JavaScript, Java, Perl, C++ run on the server to dynamically create web content.
	Scripts and other code (DLL's, programs) are executed when the web page is served.
	Input to the script may come from forms on web pages (when the page is submitted).
	Output is sent to the web browser via HTML output stream.