Welcome to the TIPS & TRICKS page!

Tip 1: - Images

When putting images on your page it's always a good idea to include their width and height. This is achieved by using the width and height attributes and the code could look something like this:

<img src="filename.xxx" width="x" height="x">

The reason for this is two fold. Firstly, Netscape will load all of the images before displaying any of the page if the attributes are not included. Possibly resulting in a significant pause if there are a lot of images. Secondly, Explorer will show the whole page but will have a little symbol instead of your image, but does resize the images after contact has been made, so the layout goes back correctly afterwards. So if you want a faster display with Netscape and a page that wont loose it's layout then specify these two attributes!

Tip 2: - Backgrounds

When using a background picture specify a background colour also. This means that when the background picture is still downloading you can have a background colour that doesn't make the text unreadable! The code would look something like this:

<body bgcolor="black" background="filename.xxx" text="white">

If no bgcolor attribute had been used and the background wasn't downloaded it would be very hard to read on a light coloured background especially Netscape's default white!

Tip 3: - Mailto Links

If you wish to use the 'mailto:' anchor in order to let people send you mail and you want to track where it's coming from then this little attribute is the one you want. '?subject=' just add it to the end of your mail address, the code would look something like this:

<a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=Whatever">

Then whenever someone uses that link to mail you there subject will automatically be filled in. Although this one may not work for users of Internet Explorer.
- Thanks to Mike for this one!

Tip 4: - Streaming Real Audio

Most people think that to get real audio to stream you just link to the file that the encoder created (.ra or .rm), however this is not the case. To get Real Audio to stream you need to do more, so that the Real Audio file is not cached on their computer and that they can't just download it.

What you need to do is create a .ram file. All a .ram file is, is a text file with URL's to real audio files written in them and saved with a .ram extension. You can have as many URL's in the .ram file as you like, each must be on it's own line, this will play each specified Real Audio file one after the other.

Tip5: - Links Without Underlines

To have a link without an underline, include the following code in the anchor tag:

style="text-decoration: none;"

So a whole anchor tag would look like this:

<a href="URL" style="text-decoration: none;">Link description</a>


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