Web pages and HTML

While fancy web pages are often designed using web development software, it can be very useful to build basic web pages for presentation of information that is accessible, e.g. to collaborators, via the web.

Structure of an HTML document: <command></command> structure, <HTML><BODY [bgcolor=]>,

Basic HTML text processing: text will appear continuously in a browser regardless of how it is entered in the HTML source file, unless there are command directives: the width of the text will adapt to the width of the browser. Various text directives:

<Hn> Headings in different font sizes (1 is largest) </Hn>
<P> Force a line break with vertical paragraph space
<BR> Force a line break without extra vertical space
  Force small horizonal space
<UL>/<OL> Unordered list / ordered (numbered) list (end with </UL> or </OL>
- <LI> : individual list element
Font commands
- <I> italic </I>
- <B> bold </B>
- <FONT [color=]> general font command

HTML links:

<A HREF=address> active text </A> : sets up a link
<A NAME=label> : sets a lable in a HTML file, can be directly skipped to using address#label format

HTML tables:

<TABLE [BORDER=]>: start a table
<TR> : start a new row
<TD [COLSPAN=]> : start a new column
</TABLE> : end table

HTML figures:

<IMG SRC={file} [WIDTH=] [HEIGHT=]> : force size using WIDTH= and/or HEIGHT=, usually only one of these, as this will automatically preserve aspect ratio
If at all possible, use file format that most browsers know how to display inline: GIF, JPG, PNG

comments in HTML files:

All of these can be combined, e.g., a table of figure thumbnails with links to full size figures:

	<TABLE BORDER=2>
	<TR> <TD> <A HREF=fig11.jpg> <IMG SRC=fig11.jpg WIDTH=200> </A>
	<TR> <TD> <A HREF=fig12.jpg> <IMG SRC=fig12.jpg WIDTH=200> </A>
	<TR> <TD> <A HREF=fig21.jpg> <IMG SRC=fig21.jpg WIDTH=200> </A>
	<TR> <TD> <A HREF=fig22.jpg> <IMG SRC=fig22.jpg WIDTH=200> </A>
	</TABLE>

Frames, CSS, and much much more!

web servers

A web server is a network program that runs on a server machine, and interprets/delivers web pages as requested. Standard web requests are http://{machinename/address}/{file|directory}. On the web server, the {file|directory} is interpreted as a relative path to some document root directory. If the requested address is a directory, the web server will look for a file named index.html in that directory and, if it exists, will use the contents of that file; if it doesn't exist, it will show the directory listing of the directory.

NMSU web pages

Web server at NMSU uses /home/httpd/html as the document root, and all users have a directory /home/httpd/html/{username}, so web requests to http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/{username} will look for files in this directory. Note that this directory is located on the disk server, so it is not a great location to put large files; if you want to provide access to large files, or even whole directories, located on a disk on your machine, consider the use of symbolic links ... Department web pages are built using Wordpress. How to modify: link in Internal Info on Astronomy web pages (astro/NMSUAstronomy) You can include a link to a personal web page which you can create using basic HTML, or any one of a number of website builders.

collaborative web pages

Google docs/sheets, etc
wikis : local, allows organizational structure