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Version History

version 4.0.1 / May 1999

Updated for inclusion with Thinkquest 2000 CD-ROM. Typos corrected thanks to many writers, especially the careful eye of Guy Vaughn. More resources add to reference section, which has been subdivided into separate sections accessible via a JavaScript driven menu. Tested for compatability with Internet Explorer 5.0

version 4.0 / December 1998

Long overdue! Created new format for demonstrating example web pages. Updates to reflect references to HTML 4.0, condensing of text on main entry page, added notes for tags covered on lessons page, use of JavaScript menus in the tags reference, clarified explanation of file structure references with more diagrams in lessons 8a and 14. Added section in lesson 21 for using images as backgrounds in table cells. Revised more modern look for alumni form and random alumni page results. Top page links added to view the email feedback "kudos". Re-designed all lesson download pages to better depict the file structures used in the examples.

New lessons on META tags (24), targetting windows (25), frames (26), introductory JavaScript (27), JavaScript alerts and MouseOver (27a), JavaScript Dynamic Content (27b), JavaScript Custom Window Openers (27c), JavaScript Image Swapping (27d), Forms (28), designing forms (28a), making forms work with email and CGI (28b) as well as JavaScript (28c).

Because of some problems in maintaining connections, we provided two additional download sources for the tutorial files. And as always, with the help from our users such as Pat Shauer, we made corrections to typos.

version 3.0.4 in Korean / November 1998

Dr. Byeong Choon Lim, Department of Computer Education Chuncheon National University of Education has been translating Writing HTML into Korean

version 3.0.4 / August 1998

Minor fixes of URLs that have changed, some typos corrected. Added more options for the mailto: tag in lesson 12. A number of corrections were made in the Spanish version of the lessons thanks to Andrés Valencia.

version 3.0.3 / December 1997

Lots of people on Windows were having trouble with the .zip versions of the tutorial so the download page now sends them out as self-extracting archives.

version 3.0.2 in Icelandic / July 1997

Thanks to Gudjon Olafsson, we now have a version in Icelandic / Íslenska called Forritun í HTML

version 3.0.2 / July 1997

Hopefully some of the last typos are squashed, with a great deal of help by Maureen Nelson, a professional proofreader, who printed out the entire tutorial and provided some great red pen "mark-up" for the typos. Thanks also to Joel Smallbeck and Leah Simpson for suggestions on wording. Also Douglas Nady provided a useful pointer about resizing images from smaller to bigger that is now part of lesson 7a and demonstrated as Going from Small to Big. Some of the example URLs for geology/volcano sites have been updated. Also, a general reference page has been added with links to it from the top of all lesson pages. And no one to date noticed the discrepencies for the sample files for lessons 8e - 12, until spotted by Erin Cormier! Now you can download a tutorial archive for Windows95 (the only difference is that it has file names that end in ".html". Oh how revolutionary...). We also compiled the frequent email feedback into a section called What People Say Abut Writing HTML.

version 3.0 in Spanish! / February 1997

Arturo Garcia Martin, <agma@redestb.es> kindly translated the entire tutorial into Spanish.

version 3.0.1 / January 1997

Fixed typos in lessons 8d (thanks to Gene Menzies) and the lesson 18 test page (thanks to Benjie Wolicki), and even on this page (thanks to Leo Robert Klein). Benjie also correctly pointed out that it is not safe to say that Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in the universe, but rather "the largest known volcano in the solar system"

version 3.0 / October 1996

Revised and corrected typos (from lots of net feedback) in all lessons. Tables added throughout lessons as any browser worth using now supports tables. Simplified instructions for downloading image files. All sample HTML in lessons is now color coded. Added comment tags to lesson 1, more examples for using <br> tags for headers in lesson 4, non-breaking space in lesson 10, color name codes for lesson 16, font FACE options in lesson 18, colored table cells in lesson 21. Broke up the big tag summary table into separate pages.

Finally gave up on ever trying to write more advanced lessons as the web just changes and grows too damn fast. The whole thing is getting complicated by the glut of new features introduced by Netscape vs Microsoft.

Version 2.0 / December 1995

Cleaned up typos. Added explanation for height and width attributes for inline images in lesson 7a. Re-organized lesson structure for pictures in subfolders and example files for lessons after lesson 8a. This not only explained other ways of linking web directories, but made it more managable for setting up the example files for later lessons where one page became many pages. Added explanation in lesson lesson 8a for relative URLS that link upwards in the directory structure. New lessons on Splitting vs Lumping (14) of long web pages; Netscape and HTML 3.0 issues (15); colored and texture backgrounds (16); the dreaded <blink> tag (17); spiffing up text (colors, sizes, superscripts, subscripts) (18); more options for the <hr> tag (19); aligning text and images (20); Tables (21); More for Images and Lists (22); and Clickable Image Maps (23) Alumni page now pulls 10 names at random rather than listing them all.

Version 1.7 / November 1995

Still fixing typos with the help of our audience. Added summary page for all HTML used in the tutorial and a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page. With help from Kurt Leinbach, developed CGI form for registering our alumni

Version 1.51 / September 1995

New lesson for Blockquotes (13).

Version 1.5 / August 1995

Re-writes for improved directions and fixed the many typos (thanks to Jennifer Adamson). Minor cosmetic changes. Added <br> tag to lesson 2. Until we write some new lessons, provide links to sites for HTML 3.0, CGI, Image Maps.

Version 1.41 / June 1995

Removed use of the underline <u> tags which were once supported by NCSA Mosaic. Added lesson 12 for using the mailto: link and the <address> tag.

Version 1.4 / May 1995

Removed directions specific to NCSA Mosaic, new logo. Several links to external sites were updated.

Version 1.3.1 / February 7, 1995

Typos fixed as well as inconsistencies in the sample lessons, with thanks to Robin Wright.

Version 1.3 / December 15, 1994

New lessons added for Named Anchors (8d); Preformatted Text (9); Special Character Sets (10); and Descriptive Lists (11). Information on using the ALT keyword in the <IMG> tag was added to lesson 7a, "Inline Graphics".

Version 1.2 / November 15, 1994

Links to external sites were verified and updated. Directions were re-written to take into account the increasing number of different web browsers, each of which may have commands under different menus. Navigation links between lessons were moved to the top of the page.

Version 1.1 / July 1, 1994

Based on the surveys from our June workshop, we updated several the exercises to make the descriptions more clear. First version placed on our WWW server. Although the files are the same for different platforms, we made separate download-able archives for Macintosh and DOS formats (difference in how DOS and Mac systems differ in the use of carriage returns in the text files)

Version 1.0 / June 1, 1994

This was the first version of the tutorial, as written for a 2 day workshop for faculty at South Mountain Community College, and included lessons 1-8.