Understand WWW   |   Getting Started   |  Visual   |   Functionality   |   Resources

At Penn State, you can learn HTML through seminars or online training or these online sources. Many HTML guides and references are available online:

Beginner's Guide to HTML (A good place for novices to begin) an excellent on-line book provided by The National Center for Supercomputing Applications.   HTML -- an Interactive Tool for Beginners   The World Wide Web Consortium's HTML Page presents the standards for using HTML.   HTML Quick reference from the University of Kansas.   WebReference.com an essential 'Zine for web developers.   HTML Goodies primers and tutorials in HTML, JavaScript, CGI, and other topics.   WebMonkey Wired magazine's online resource for experts as well as novices.   An interactive introduction to HTML and CGI scripts   An introduction to frames by Netscape.

"What You See Is What You Get" editors (such as Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver) allow you to create HTML files without writing the source code yourself. Using a WYSIWYG editor without some knowledge of HTML is at best limiting, and at worst can lead to problems. If you do have some understanding of Web development basics, then using these utilities can increase your productivity.

Page Generators: Penn State course web sites can be generated though A New Global Environment for Learning (ANGEL).

Note: Even if you use editors that write HTML for you, making web pages without some knowledge of HTML is asking for trouble. So, it's worth your time to at least learn some of the basic tags, using the references listed above.

Please take note: as of the third of June 2002, you will no longer be able to transfer files to your Personal Web space using methods with FTP (including WS-FTP and Fetch) that are not completely secure. (You can read the announcement of this change at http://cac.psu.edu/news/alerts/ftp_announce.html.)

Instead, three options are available to you:

1. The PASS Gateway: The preferred, secure method is your Penn State Access Account Storage Space (PASS). As of Fall 2001, all Penn State Access Account holders have access to at least 100MB of file storage space. Your PASS space includes your personal Web space, your WebMail files, your Penn State Portal settings, and if you have a UNIX account, your home directory. For more information, see Penn State Access Account Storage Space (PASS) and Instructions for Mounting the PASS Gateway. Note that if you are using a commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP), your ISP must make Server Message Block (SMB) protocol service available in order for you to access your PASS.



2. If you use the Penn State Portal, you can also use the PASS Channel to access your storage space. The Introduction to the PASS Explorer provides detailed instructions.



3. New secure FTP (SSH) clients--SSHfor Windows, MacSSH for Mac--will be available on the latest PAC-ITS CD, or can be downloaded from the PAC-ITS Web site by following the links to your operating system, and then to "File Transfer." ASET provides instructions for these clients

Other methods using FTP may still be available for accessing non-ITS web space. However, note that FTP does not transmit your information securely. More information can be found at http://aset.its.psu.edu/ftp/.

The path for COLA Web space is:
/:/services/www/courses/test_course/test_course101_xyz123/
(where test_course/test_course101_xyz123/ represents your course and your Access Account userid)

The path for Departmental Web space is:
/:/services/www/dept/your_dept/
(where /your_dept/ represents your departmental folder)

One good way to use your web space is to make an "e-portfolio," a web-based collection of evidence of what you've done and what you can do. Penn State's e-Portfolio Site provides advice to get you started