May 9, 1996
Dear Everyone:
For the record,
Mother is in Italy, so
we’ll be celebrating Mother’s Day when she gets back.
So far, I’ve been
coasting along in fifth gear, but now it’s time to kick it back up into
overdrive. Projects are
blossoming left and right and I am presently hip-deep in
HTML.
What’s “HTML”?
You had to ask. HTML
(pronounced “aitch-tee-em-el”) stands for HyperText Markup Language and
it’s what you use to design and maintain a “Home Page” (also known as a
Website) on the
World Wide Web.
Basically, it’s text (words) and graphics (pictures) set up with little
markers that tell an
Internet Browser
(a software that helps you wander around on the
Internet) what to
display on your PC screen.
And there are some
pretty cool Home Pages out there.
They’re called Home Pages because they’re usually the first thing
you see when you visit a site.
Sort of like a welcome mat on the
Information Superhighway.
From there, you can usually “drill down” through layers of other
pages to find information that you want.
Or you may find a link that allows you to “jump” to another site
(computer) somewhere else on the
Net.
That’s the “hyper” part of hypertext.
Why am I bothering
with this stuff? Because it
has been decreed that “'Livermore' shall have a Home Page.”
But don’t think you’ll be able to go surfing on the Net and find
“Livermore”. Actually, if
you did a Web search, you’d probably find hundreds of “Livermores”.
In fact, I did a search yesterday for
ARMA (Association of Records Managers
and Administrators) because I wanted to see how many chapters already
have pages on the Web.
In less time than it
takes to read this sentence, my search came back with the first 10 of
6000 hits.
However, not all of these were for Records Managers.
I discovered that ARMA also stands for “Auto-Regression Moving
Average”, whatever that means, and it’s pretty popular.
ARMA also seems to be a word in Spanish that is frequently found
in the same sentence with hotels and beaches.
Try a search on
“Shakespeare”, and you can get 70,000 hits in seconds, including
something called “The
Skinhead Hamlet, a modern approach to...”
I don’t even want to think about it.
The point is, all
these Home Pages, and the ability to browse through them, makes it
easier to find things on the Internet.
And, in Company’s case, it can also make it easier to find
information on the
Intranet.
Large companies like Company are discovering that they have their
own, internal, internets.
Little nets within the big Net.
These are beginning to be called intranets.
With a browser, you can wander all through Company’s intranet
without ever venturing out into the big, cold world beyond “The Portal”.
And, just like the
big Net, the Intranet can be used to advertise services and try to lure
in more customers. Soon,
people with the standard, Company-approved web browser can find a
“Livermore” Home Page that will let them “jump” to a list of forms and
supplies that they can search through and then order electronically.
Someone wanting more information about
Versatile can get
it from the computer instead of having to call me.
I tell you, it’s a
brave new world out there.
The scary part is
that I understand a good 90% of what I’ve been talking about.
Love, as always,
Pete
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