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If you are looking for JAVA, or SHOCKWAVE or any other advanced web page design tool information, please look elsewhere. I am strictly a WYSIWYG designer. I don't even have a clue at HTML Editing. This course is for the true beginner, who just wants to have a functional and attractive web site to call their own. If the latter describes you, then please read on. Cameras and Scanners I've been asked by friends to go into details concerning the hardware equipment and what you should look for when buying cameras, scanners and other capture devices. I hope this section answers your quires.
I tend to manually adjust my images using the many options of this wonderful camera. But the fully auto mode does a fine job too. Look soon for the Beemaster Photo Gallery where I'll offer 1024 X 768 resolution wallpaper images from my ever growing collection. This simple course in image handling should aid you in developing a mental image on how big your photos will be captured, saved and used in your website designing. Ideally, I suggest you have save your best images at various resolutions. I always capture at 1024 X 768 or higher resolution, but save 320 X 240 images for fast loading images for my website. The higher resolutions are necessary if you want quality printings of your images. Keep in mind that your screen displays images at 75 dots an inch and your printer ( typically ) prints at 300 dots per inch or higher. The difference MUST be understood to fully get quality output of your printer. What looks good on the screen can OFTEN look blocky when printed. Every time, this is a resolution issue. Again, save your images at the highest resolution as possible IF you plan to print them. Caution, Cameras that do not offer some sort of zooming are limited in their functionality and are useless at shooting animals, birds or portrait shots from a comfortable distance. They are equivalent to those throw away cardboard supermarket cameras. If you use a fixed lens camera and have to shove it into someone's face to get a close-up photo, they are likely to yield an uncomfortable, unrelaxed smile for you and also become over exposed if the flash is used.. But you can get a great close-up from 10 or 15 feet away using even a 3 power zoom. The subject will be more relaxed, the flash will defuse better and this will show in the finished photo. I can not express enough how important having zooming ability is to your overall camera experience. Literally, every image you take will improve if you can vary the size or range that the object appears in the photo. 35mm photographers with quality telephoto lenses would never settle for a fixed lens, neither should you. This is one place that you should not compromise when shopping for a digital camera. Get at least a 3 power zoom, but think about the photos you expect to take and adjust your shopping cart to reflect those needs. But the Internet is not a large image file friendly place. Low bandwidth connections scream for files that load quickly, but still contain quality images. This is where file compression and image editor come in. All digital cameras come packaged with software for tweaking, resizing or manipulating images. Scanners I also have a standard letter size, single pass scanner which sold for under $100. For most of my needs the digital camera is ideal. Rarely do I use the scanner except for copying documents. For copying photographs, I use my camera and it does a fine job. Both the digital camera and scanner have their place in your web publishing arsenal and between the two you will handle nearly every publishing task. Software Programs For starters let's cover some basics. I use several programs while putting together my web site. All these programs are either Freeware, Shareware or Beta releases and all are found on the internet. I will include here links to these different programs. Here is a list of the software I use. Click on the programs name to go to a download site. Follow the directions at the site for downloading and installing the programs. Netscape Communicator has COMPOSER packaged with it and it is my main layout program for all my web pages. I am comfortable using it and it has many features needed to design a good web page. It does not make frames, but it supports them in the browser. I choose Netscape over Microsoft Explorer for my own browsing needs, but I always check my finished pages using Explorer too, just in case of formatting differences. AOL Press is another fine web page and web site design program. It is much smaller than Communicator's Composer, but it is very powerful in features. I used this program to make the frames version of my web site. AOL Press also allows you to complete view and test all the links at your complete web site, not just on a single page. It also supports Image Mapping, tables, frames and forms. I like this program and it has a wonderful interactive tutorial divided into lessons. CuteFTP is another small but handy program. Using this you can upload, download and monitor your internet shell account. I use it mainly to check my shell account for folder size, move files around and delete files while I'm working with the two design programs mentioned above. Paintshop Pro is my image management and manipulation program. It is a very powerful painting and graphic program which will convert, resize and do just about anything to your images. You can add text, combine and animate images using this. There are many different programs out there in download land which
can do everything that these programs can. I suggest that you try these or
similar programs until you find what works best for you. Lesson Topics
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It's nice to see friends getting interested in designing web pages. I am
very new to this myself, but I think I've learned enough to help out new web
page designers to get started. The main reason I've made this course is because
after searching relentlessly, I haven't found many worthy web sites to point
friends toward that offers enough information to get them started in designing.
Hopefully this course will teach you enough to put together a web site that
you'll be proud to call your own. 