Websurfing Tips

This page offers some fairly elementary advice on how to view urielw.com and other websites.

Contents

Browsers, HTML, and the Webmaster's Burden

A web browser, or "browser" for short, is a software application that's used to "browse" (or "surf") the web. Most people use either Microsoft Internet Explorer ("MSIE") or Netscape Navigator ("Netscape") as their browser, but there are also other browsers besides these two.

The browser's main job is to open selected webpages and render their contents. "Rendering" usually means visually displaying in a window, but for blind users it might mean representing content in a tactile or audible format.

MSIE really represents not one browser but a family of browsers -- all the various versions of MSIE that have been released by Microsoft over time. Many different versions of MSIE continue to be used by surfers today, because many people continue to use old versions even after newer ones become available. As of February, 2000, the current version of MSIE is 5.

Similarly, many versions of Netscape are currently in use, though the version for MS Windows that is current as of Feb. 2000 is 4.7.

The people who create and maintain websites are webmasters. Ideally, they should make their websites render appropriately for all or at least most visiting surfers. This is complicated by the variety of hardware and software configurations used by surfers. Besides different browsers, there are differences in operating systems (the various versions of Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux, and others), monitors (physical computer screens), display resolutions, and users' personal settings (see below). It is inevitable that the same webpage will be displayed differently for different surfers.

HTML is the language in which webpage contents are represented and transmitted to browsers. (In MSIE 5, you can see the HTML underlying the webpage being displayed by doing View:Source.) One important ideal of HTML is to describe content semantically. That way, browsers (like MSIE or Netscape) can make intelligent decisions as to how to render content appropriately, given the characteristics of the system at hand. But HTML and its implementation by browsers has some way to go before the full benefits of this approach are realized. [Still true in 2005, 5 years after that was written.]

You can get an idea of how well your browser adapts to different circumstances by seeing how it changes the display when you alter the size of your browser's display window, or when you change your default text size (View:Text Size in MSIE 5).

One measure webmasters can take to try to make their webpages display appropriately for every visitor is to adhere to standard HTML, as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Due to the widespread use by web surfers of out-of-date browsers, however, not to mention bugs in the up-to-date browsers, this does not ensure success. Even a webpage that uses only standard HTML may turn out to be poorly rendered by some browsers because they are not correctly implementing the HTML commands on the webpage.

As a surfer, you can reduce the incidence of such problems by keeping your browser software reasonably up-to-date. Webmasters, however, have little choice but to resign themselves to the reality of the statistics (normally recorded by webservers) indicating the browser versions being used by their visitors.

The webpages at urielw.com generally adhere to standard HTML. One exception is noted at Math Notation and other Special Symbols below. Anyone can verify adherence of any webpage by using the free service offered at http://validator.w3.org/.

Your Personal Browser Settings

MSIE, Netscape, and other browsers let you choose a default font (e.g. Times New Roman, Tahoma, Verdana, Garamond, Georgia, etc.). In MSIE 5, for example, you can change the default font via the menu -- Tools:Options:General:Fonts. Netscape offers a similar way for users to change the default font.

Your browser displays the text from most webpages using the default font you have selected. If you change your default font while viewing this webpage, for example, your browser will display this page in the new font you select.

The HTML instructions in some webpages, however, instruct your browser to override the default font, and to use a font specified in the instructions. Your default font, in other words, determines the font used for display only as long as the webpage you are viewing does not override your default.

Since the user chooses his browser's defaults, defaults are also referred to as user preferences. Barring good reasons for doing otherwise, it is considered good practice for webmasters to refrain from overriding user preferences, and to permit user preferences to control the display.

Other defaults that MSIE and Netscape allow users to set are font size, as well as colors for text, hyperlinks, and window background. As with fonts, these defaults can be overridden by HTML instructions in a webpage.

Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks, or "links," are those things on webpages that you can click on with your mouse in order to surf to someplace different from where your display is currently.

When you place your mouse cursor over a link like this, and before you click, these things happen:

• The mouse cursor changes. This is modifiable, but in most browsers it changes to a hand icon.

• The link's color changes to the active link color. (A link's status is either active, visited, or other. The colors for each may be specified by a webpage or by your browser settings.)

• The browser's status bar displays the link target -- that is, where you'll be taken if you click on the link. (Note that your browser settings may determine whether or not the status bar is displayed.)

Clicking on a hyperlink typically requires your browser to fetch a new webpage from a webserver via the Internet. However, some links point to a different location on the same webpage already being displayed. (You can determine this by comparing the target address shown in the status bar with the current address shown in the address bar. Note that your browser settings may determine whether or not the address bar is displayed.) With such "same-page" links, the browser can generally update the display instantaneously.

The Browser's "Back" Function

If you're not using your browser's back function, you are missing out on an essential feature for surfing. "Back" takes you back to the address you came from. That is, if you surf from location A to B, then to C, then to D, you can then go back from D to C, then from C to B, then from B to A. (It should be noted that this function doesn't always work perfectly well.)

In MSIE and Netscape, you can invoke the "back" function on the keyboard via Alt-Leftarrow.

Multiple Windows

Another useful browser feature is the option of opening a hyperlink in a new window, leaving the current one open. You can thus create multiple browser windows between which you can alternate (via Alt-Tab, if you're using Windows). This is useful, for example, if one webpage contains text that refers to figures on a different webpage.

You can also create an additional window without a hyperlink, via a menu command (File:New:Window in MSIE 5). This is useful when using multiple windows to display different sections of a single webpage.

In MSIE and Netscape, you can open a link in a new window by right-clicking on it.

A webmaster can put a link on a webpage in such a way that a normal left-click on it produces a new window. I never do this at urielw.com because it can cause confusion or annoyance. (Unfortunately the popular browsers offer no visual cue to distinguish such links.) Advanced surfers can always get a new window if they choose.

Endnotes

Endnotes are notes, numbered sequentially from 1, that are placed after the end of the main body of a document to avoid interrupting and distracting from the flow of ideas. The main body contains only references to the endnotes.

urielw.com has suffered some ambivalence as to how to display endnote references. Some look like the "[3]" link right here.[3] (But this is just an example -- clicking on it won't take you to an endnote.) Others look like the "[4]" link right here.^[4]. That [3] bothers me because it should be raised. The [4] bothers me because, at least in MSIE 6, it makes the whole line containing it conspicuous by inserting extra space above it.

In printed documents, endnote references are conventionally shown as small, upraised numbers without brackets, but on a webpage this could make the link too small for some surfers to easily activate with the mouse.

In addition, an endnote at urielw.com always exists on the same webpage as the reference(s) that points to it. Therefore, when you click on an endnote reference, your browser displays the endnote immediately (no further retrieval from the Internet is needed). You can thus conveniently refer to a succession of endnotes, returning after each to the main body by means of the browser's Back function.

Alternatively, you may prefer to open a second window to display endnotes. (This may however result in a re-retrieval of the page from the remote webserver.)

Math Notation and other Special Symbols

One of the webpages at urielw.com, namely urielw.com/mathlaw/mathlaw.htm, addresses the subject of mathlaw and contains mathematical symbols.

I've confirmed that the mathlaw webpage displays as intended using both MSIE 5 and Netscape 4.61 under Windows 98. Whether you're using one of these or a different browser, chances are that any display problems you have can be corrected by changing your browser settings.

My main objective in producing the mathlaw webpage was to make it viewable using conventional browsers without the necessity for visitors to install additional software (e.g. plug-ins) on their computers. That meant using pictures (GIF files) to display special symbols. By resorting to pictures, a webpage can display any image whatever, including math symbols, without depending on anything more than a conventional browser.

Enable "Show Pictures"

If you see the word "Boo" below this line ...

... and above this one, then you already have "show pictures" enabled. If you don't see it, then you will have to enable "show pictures" in order to properly display the mathlaw webpage. In MSIE 5, this is accomplished by going to Tools:Options:Advanced:Multimedia and putting a checkmark at Show Pictures.

Note that webpages with pictures may open more slowly as a result of enabling pictures.

Other Notes

Another possible display problem may be the relative size of the math expressions and the surrounding text. This can arise because pictures are unaffected by the default text size you have set in your browser. You can make the text size correspond better to the pictures by adjusting your browser's default text size. (In MSIE, View:Text Size.)

A webmaster does not have the option, as with text, of using the users' color preferences in presenting pictures. Colors must be specified at the time pictures are created. I have therefore opted for black on white, the typical colors preferred by most surfers. In order to avoid color clashes between pictures and surrounding text, I have also imposed the black on white scheme on the text.

In order to achieve desirable vertical alignment of the pictures within surrounding text, I have resorted to a non-standard feature of HTML (the absmiddle value for the align attribute of the <IMG> tag). This feature is supported by at least MSIE and Netscape.

The pictures on the mathlaw webpage were produced using MathType, an application made by Design Science, Inc. that runs under both Windows and Mac. Note that GIF files produced by MathType are not just normal GIF's -- they contain MathType source. This means that anyone who has the Mathtype software can open these GIF files, edit them, and save them in different file formats.

For those interested in math on the web, below are some links that may be of interest. In addition, the alt.math newsgroup is a helpful source of advice.