How to Format Files for the Web

Of course, submitting your pages in web-ready form -- that is, fully formatted and ready to be placed directly on the Web -- is most preferred. However, if you don't know HTML formatting codes or you don't have a web page editing program, things can still be submitted.

Intro

Even though I just said web pages are text-only, they also include a variety of simple codes that appear inside angle-brackets (< >). These are HyperText Mark-up Language codes, or HTML. These codes do not appear on the screen in a web browser, but they tell the browser how to display headers, text, paragraphs, backgrounds, tables, etc. Volunteers have to add these commands to format a document for the web.

To add HTML commands, the original text document can be edited with a variety of web-formatting programs, or the editing can be done manually. Using the "find and replace" command available in most word processors can greatly speed up this task.

Text

For files or information submitted to the District site, text should be standard ASCII text, using as few special fonts or symbols as possible. Dingbats, special symbols, and foreign characters seldom come through properly when saving a formatted word processor file in text-only format.

Tab characters are actually a good thing. They won't be in the final web document, but can help editors use "find-and-replace" commands to automate the process of paragraph formatting. Also, multiple spaces are ignored, and come through as a single space in HTML format. The most important thing is consistency -- use the same paragraph formatting all the way through the document.

Continuous, non-wrapped paragraphs (i.e., paragraphs without a line break at the end of each line) are also preferred; if the text contains return/paragraph characters only where you want paragraphs to end, this also helps facilitate "find and replace" editing of the text into web-ready form.

Quotation marks and apostrophes should be simple ASCII text, not "curly-quotes." Curly-quotes do not show up properly in most web browsers, and such characters have to be sought out and edited one by one before a page is ready for posting on the web.

Long dashes (em-dashes) also do not translate properly; use two regular hyphens instead. In some word processors, optional hyphens which appear only when needed will also turn into undesired regular hyphens when saved in ASCII text format.

If you use the special character for three dots, they may be lost; it is better to use three actual periods instead. If you use ampersands (&), per cent symbols, copyright or other symbols (i.e., any symbol typed with the CONTROL, ALT or OPTION key held down), please let the person to whom you are submitting the information know this in advance. The same goes for symbols that are made using the regular keys but are in a special font such as symbol or dingbats fonts (which should not be in a plain ASCII text file to begin with, of course).

Taking care of such formatting issues before submitting your document can save hours of volunteer time. And another benefit of saving your information in text-only (ASCII) format is that you can copy it all and paste it right into an e-mail message rather than sending it as a file attachment!

Graphics

To submit graphics for inclusion in web documents, either submit the graphics along with the text as separate files or e-mail attachments, or send high-quality pictures to be scanned.

To send graphics by e-mail, they must be sent as encoded binaries (MIME, uuencoded or binhex formats). Since internet e-mail is by definition ASCII text, binary (non-text) files must be encoded in ASCII format in order to be sent as e-mail attachments. It is likely that your e-mail program will do this automatically, but sometimes you need to set the preferred options for handling attachments in your mail program's Preferences or Options menu.

Before sending graphics or any other large attachments by e-mail, make sure you have pre-warned the recipient and asked their permission to send the file.

Simple HTML Codes

For example, if you want to format titles or text, add the appropriate format commands, as shown in the following table.

Also, if you want to put in a divider to specify a definite break in the text, type "<HR>", which will place a "horizontal rule" to clearly separate the paragraphs. This is a horizontal rule:

To center a block of text, type <CENTER> before the text and </CENTER> after it.

To indent a block of text, type <BLOCKQUOTE> before the text and </BLOCKQUOTE> after it.