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PIRL User Notes |
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The main PIRL pages are written to the HTML 3.2 Reference Specification as specified by the World Wide Web Consortium, we believe that this provides the most general "common denominator" version of HTML that the most browsers will be able to understand. As such, all pages which conform to the HTML 3.2 Reference Specification should begin with the following DOCTYPE statement:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
All HTML tags should be written in lower case like
<html>, not like <HTML>. All
tag attributes should be enclosed in double quotes like
<a href="http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu">, not
<a href=http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu>. Additionally,
be wary of using tags that are not in the HTML 3.2 Reference
Specification.
When referring to locations within the PIRL web hierarchy, use
relative links like <a href="/research">, not
absolute links like
<a href="http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/research">.
When referring to files within the PIRL web hierarchy, don't use
the file extension. Write links like <a href="style">
not like <a href="style.html">. There is no
penalty for doing this as we have our webserver configured to automatically
expand the extension from the filename. The advantage is that maybe when
I write the page it's called style.html, but if I later change
it to style.shtml, style.cgi, or even expand it
into a directory called style, I don't have to change my HTML,
because the webserver automatically maps the name to the correct extension
or directory. However, if you have both a style.html and a
style.cgi then you will have to specify, otherwise it's
ambiguous and the webserver will either complain, or guess incorrectly.
We use Server Side Includes to embellish the
PIRL webpages with headers, navigation bars, and footers.
This mechanism allows us to create uniform decoration and
propagate changes instantaneously across our pages. In order
to make our lives easier, we have created template files
for the beginning
(/www/pirl/begin.shtml) and
ending (/www/pirl/end.shtml)
of a PIRL page. These two
files contain some relatively standard HTML header tags,
as well as the appropriate virtual file includes
for the banner, navigation bar, and footer files. In
order for our webserver to correctly process those
Server Side Includes you will have to give your
file the extension .shtml. In order to see
how we have written various .shtml files, you
will have to cruise around the PIRL filesystem, because if
you try and just view the source, our webserver has already
done all of the including and you won't be able to see how
we did it.
For more information on Server Side Includes and how
to use them, please see the
Introduction
to Server Side Includes at the
Apache Web Server site.
These embellishment files are meant to be used on a page with a white background color. If you would like to create a page with a different background color, contact us, and we can talk about altering the few graphic elements required to make these embellishments fit any color.
In order to specify colors, there are sixteen colors that the HTML 3.2 Reference
Specification allows you to refer to by name, and for readability
we suggest that when using one of those sixteen colors, refer to
them by name (like bgcolor="yellow") instead of by
hexadecimal number (like bgcolor="#ffff00").
The PIRL color scheme is very simple. The content pages should specify a white background color and a black text color. The default link colors should not be specified. The the colors that we are using are as follows, listed by their hexadecimal number:
| #87cefa | |
| #4e71ac | |
| #330066 |
We will not specify fonts to be used on our pages, let the user
decide. To highlight text use the various header tags
<h1>, <h2>, etc.,
as well as <em>, <strong>,
and <code>. Avoid using <i> and
<b>. If you need to alter font sizes
within your text, use <big> or <small>.
If you must use the <font> tag, use relative font
size tags like <font size="+1">,
not absolute font size tags like <font size="6">.
The Apache webserver comes with a great set of standard icons, available at /icons/ which you can use.
There is a lot of whitespace up there in the top right corner of the PIRL pages that could be used for banner ads relevant to PIRL, things like image releases, meeting deadlines, whatever. If you have something that you'd like put up there, ask us first. If we think it's a good idea, then you can go ahead and make an image (with a maximum of 80 pixels tall and 400 pixels wide) or just a sentence or two, and a URL that the "ad" can link to and we'll put it up.
If you are using the standard PIRL footer (see Headers, Navigation, & Footers above), then the Server Side Include code in the PIRL footer will take care of looking at the last modified time of your file and display it in the PIRL footer box. If you are not using the standard PIRL footer for some reason, then you should make sure that you place some kind of "last modified" statement somewhere on your page. We suggest using the Server Side Include mechanism that the standard PIRL footer uses, because then you don't have to worry about it, the Server Side Include mechanism takes care of looking at the file's last modified time and displaying it.
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Lunar &
Planetary Lab