Recent changes

1 December 2005: The chapter on PHP is now also available in Dutch.

25 November 2005: There is now a rudimentary chapter on PHP but only in English.

October 2005: The translation into Dutch is taking more time than I hoped but the work is nearly done.

10 Years!

September 2005: This guide now exists 10 years and that was a good occasion to do a major revision. The lay out was modernised: I made it more simple and clear. The whole guide is finally being translated into Dutch, as a special birthday gift to the 20 something million people that speak this language. Of no consequence to the reader but much more efficient for me is that the various tables of contents are now build automatically from the texts I write. Finally, during the whole redesign dozens of small bits of information were added and small error corrected.

10 February 2004: Added information on default values in text fields of forms using Javascript.

11 January 2004: Mark Binder published a German translation of the chapter on Server Side Includes.

20 May 2003: Added information on using and clearing default values in textareas (forms) and restoring the default value if the user leaves the field without typing anything to the chapter on Javascript.

13 May 2003: Changed the sample colour codes to the 216 web safe colours.

4 May 2003: Weeded out many dead links on the resources page and added some new ones. Also added some links to the software page. Made some small improvements to the layout of the pages.

1 September 2002: Corrected some errors in the style-sheets and added the CSS button to the bottom of every page (the button links to the validator). Made some small changes in the layout. Added some more information on inline frames and how to load files into those.

1 August 2002: Added information forcing a page break when printing to the chapter on style sheets.

12 November 2001: Added information about how to use an image to link to your e-mail address whilst hiding the address with Javascript.

30 October 2001: Added how to load different style-sheets for different platforms, how to get information about the browser name and version, and how to set and clear default values in forms using Javascript.

27-28 October 2001: Back again after almost two years! My hobbies are really suffering under my work load. I made major changes to the layout and colours of the guide. Hope you like it. I added a chapter on basic CGI programming in Perl 5. Added the € (Euro) symbol to the table of characters. Also did hours worth of minor improvements to the text.

22 November 1999: Added a section What do I need? to the first chapter of the guide.

28 October 1999: Added font-weight, font-style, font-variant and font-size to the chapter on style-sheets. Added letter-spacing, line-height and text-align to the chapter on style-sheets. Added background images to the chapter on style-sheets.

12 September 1999: Added the ACCESSKEY attribute to the chapter on Anchors.

12 September 1999: Added the ID attribute to the chapter on anchors. Added the TITLE attribute to the chapter on anchors.

9 September 1999: Added the ID attribute to the chapter on style-sheets.

2 September 1999: Wow, it has been almost a year... Now I added information about inline frames.

27 September 1998: Coming home after a month travelling for work I discovered an incomplete version of the chapter on style sheets has been on the server for ages. That is fixed.

15 August 1998: Had to redo the chapter on server side includes because the new server runs Apache, rather than Webstar. Also added #_exec, #_printenv, #_set, #_elif and #_else to that same chapter.

14 August 1998: I moved the whole thing to a new provider. Added a bit on how to hide your e-mail address to protect yourself from spam to the chapter on Javascript.

12 July 1998: Added loads of things to the chapter on Server Side Includes, among others on how to format time and file size output, how to hide and display for certain browsers or IP addresses, the if and endif includes and how to set the error message.

29 June 1998: Added a whole new chapter on Server Side Includes (SSI)

15 June 1998: Added the SUMMARY attribute to the chapter on tables. Added the LANG attribute.

14 June 1998: Added a truckload of new links to the resources chapter.

13 June 1998: Added a chapter on style sheets.

12 June 1998: Added brown, darkblue, darkcyan, darkmagenta, darkred, lightgreen, mediumaquamarine, mediumblue, peru, saddlebrown and yellowgreen to the chapter on colours.

11 June 1998: Upgraded these pages to 4.0 (transitional). Click the button at the bottom of every page to validate it instantly. The old version is no longer available. Now comes the task of updating all the information in the guide.

7 June 1998: Added the last few missing special characters to the chapter concerned. Added <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"> to the chapter on HTML documents as well as the Base URL For Relative Links and the LINK element. Added the COMPACT attribute to the chapter on lists. Added the BLOCKQUOTE tag to the chapter on formatting. Added the ALIGN attribute to the section on the CAPTION tag for tables. Added information on aligning tables left or right and centering tables. Removed a number of things that were not compliant with HTML 3.2.

31 May 1998: I thought the old lay-out began to look a bit 'seventies' so I made a new one in midnightblue and lavender. Hope you like it.

15 May 1998: Added JPEG and the difference between GIF and JPEG to the chapter on images. Added information on different file extensions to the chapter on basic HTML.

30 April 1998: I registered my own name as domain name so now I moved this guide to http://www.weijers.net/guide/.

9 November 1997: Renamed the Index into Table of Contents and added an Index by Alphabet.

4 November 1997: The chapter of frames now explains that you can include links within the <NOFRAMES> and </NOFRAMES> tags. Removed some 2 dozen typos, he admitted all embarrassed.

21 October 1997: This copy of the guide is now the only one, the copy at Frontier is gone.

31 March 1997: Put my Easter weekend to some good use and completely rewrote the chapter on forms to include many more examples and to explain those in smaller steps.

18 March 1997: The names and numbers of colours are now listed in black as well as in their own colour, as some colours were almost impossible to read on a white background.

16 March 1997: Added how to set the font face to the chapter on paragraph and character formatting. Added how to fix a background image to the chapter on basic HTML. Added the Height attribute and the Nowrap attribute to the chapter on tables. Added the Value attribute to the chapter on forms.

10 March 1997: Added a table of contents at the top every chapter with direct links to the parts of that chapter. Changed the colours of the guide because I was fed up with the black background.

9 March 1997: Added a chapter with more than 100 colour codes and examples. Merged the chapters on horizontal rulers, backgrounds and colours and basic HTML -which were quite small anyway- into one new chapter on Basic HTML.

28 February 1997: Added information on setting the background colour for cells and colouring borders to the chapter on tables.

31 December 1996: Completely rewrote the chapter on tables, adding many more examples and explanations.

29 December 1996: Added a page where users of this guide can leave their name and URL. Come on, let me know you are out there somewhere!

29 December 1996: Added opening a link in a new window to the chapter on links. Added how to use a table to put text in columns. The new colours are used everywhere now, so source code in green and the result of examples in blue.

28 December 1996: Added how to use a button as a link, how to link through a pop-up menu and how to display messages anywhere in your page when the mouse is over a link to the chapter on Javascript. Added blink text to the chapter on Paragraph and character formatting.

10 November 1996: revised the chapter on the Basic HTML Document and included the <META> tags there. Added an explanation of client side image maps to the chapter on anchors and links.

9 November 1996: added the TYPE, START and VALUE attributes to the unordered and ordered lists. Totally rewrote the chapter on Paragraph and character formatting (and about time too). The chapter now includes superscript and subscript, <BIG> and <SMALL> tags, non-breaking spaces and the <NOBR> tag and has generally been improved and updated. Changed the chapter on definitions into a more general introduction.

7 November 1996: added a text menu to get to the different chapters at the bottom of every page after it was pointed out to me that blind users of the web need text only (which can be converted to braille) rather than menus or image-maps. Added loads of links to the chapter software. Added the <U>Underline</U> tag to the chapter on styles, although supported by few browsers.

20 October 1996: added a menu on top of every page to replace the image maps.

26 May 1996: added several really nice bits of JavaScript to the chapter on Flashy Tricks and immediately used them myself all over the place. Deleted the chapters on styles, headers and comments, which were very small anyway, and added their content to the chapter on body text. Deleted the chapter on absolute and relative filenames and added the content of that to the chapter on Anchors, where it seemed to belong. The number of chapters was now reduced to 12, without any loss of content. Also did piles of minor and major changes to lay-out.
So many changes at the same time is of course asking for problems, please let me know if you find any.

25 May 1996: added the <P ALIGN="center"> attribute to the chapter on images, as well as the VSPACE and HSPACE attributes. Basic stuff, but it should be there.

12 May 1996: added a chapter Flashy tricks which only includes a forced reload until now. Also added a chapter on frames for Netscape.

September 1995: first version online!