Newsletter of the East Bay Chapter of STC
September/October 2004| Home
Web Site Review: Internet 101
Kumar is a technical writer with Intel, India.
This article is reprinted from Indus, the newsletter from the India Chapter of STC. Check out this award-winning newsletter, which won a well-deserved Award of Distinguished Technical Communication this year and is packed with content on current issues in our field.
Have you ever stopped to wonder how the Internet works? Or did you have to, at some point in your professional or personal life, build up a Website from scratch? You needn't look far for answers and help.
STIMULUS Internet 101 is a well organized and easy-to-understand online resource for beginners, as well as those who need refreshers on the basics of the Internet. The site consists of three main sections: Introduction, HTML, and CGI. The challenge of covering as vast a subject as the Internet is addressed by clustering the topics in neat little lesson-modules. The key points are crisply recapped at the end of each module.
The information within each lesson module is organized under a series of questions such as, How to build a form, How to write a Perl script, and How to get the values from the FORM.
The Introduction section contains four lessons—Preface, Terminology, Connectivity, and Getting Started.
- Preface: This lesson provides an overview of the Internet, covering the origin and growth of the Internet and TCP/IP.
- Terminology: This lesson contains definitions of the technical terms typically associated with the Internet—from protocols and languages to Internet services such as email.
- Connectivity: This lesson explains how individual computers/servers connect to the Internet, and the various methods available for users to log on to the Internet (ISDN, Broadband, DSL, Cable, and so on).
- Getting
Started: This lesson is aimed at first-time users of the
Internet. It is essentially a collection of search and e-commerce sites.
If your goal is to learn more about the Internet and possibly build
your own site, skip this lesson.
The HTML section is divided into six lessons—HTML Basics, Advanced HTML, Frames, Optimizing Web Pages, Web Design, and Marketing.
- HTML Basics: This lesson explains the concept and purpose of HTML, lists the common HTML tags, and provides usage examples for each HTML tag.
- Advanced HTML: This lesson covers changing font name, size, and color, and also creating tables.
- Frames: This lesson defines frames, analyzes the advantages and drawbacks of using frames in Web pages, and describes ways to create frames and framesets.
- Optimizing Web Pages: This lesson provides some background information on how a Web page is loaded/retrieved, and then explains how the height and width tags, tables, and image formats (GIF, JPEG, and so on) influence page-download speeds.
- Web Design: This lesson provides useful tips and techniques for Web page layout—maintaining context, concealing magnitude, using sub-pages, using frames wisely, using the appropriate typefaces, and so on. The most valuable tip in this lesson is this: "Don't let your brain stop with what you see on the Internet. Invent new ways of using the same technology to present information in a way that is easy for the user to understand. If you don't succeed in your first try, continue trying."
- Marketing:
This lesson is a refreshing change from most other 'tech-knowledge'
sites, which concentrate on teaching the core technical stuff and ignore
the business side of the Internet. This lesson teaches the basics of
Internet marketing.
The CGI section consists of two lessons: Preface and Process.
- Preface: This lesson introduces students to the basic elements of FORM objects in HTML. It addresses questions such as What is a form object and How do you lay out a form object.
- Process:
This lesson uses one example as a common thread throughout the lesson
and takes students on a step-by-step journey of building an HTML FORM
that can talk to and get responses from a Perl script. Besides explaining
how to build a form and write a Perl script, the lesson also tackles
questions about how information fed into the form is processed and how
e-mails are sent using Perl.
The content is simple and to-the-point. The site is almost devoid of
graphics. While this makes reading a bit monotonous, it does help when
you are forced to live with slow connections. Numerous references to related
books on www.amazon.com
are included throughout the site. Had it been supplemented with generous
reference links to other sites, and had the Webmaster thrown in even a
basic search capability, the site could be a one-stop shop for anyone
wanting to learn about the Internet.
The next time you feel the itch to find out more about MIME, POP, cookies,
sockets, etc., simply 'google' for 'Internet 101'; this site is listed
among the top five hits. 
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