Netscape Extensions

One complaint that often appears in newsgroups and discussion groups about the World Wide Web is about pages that abuse the HTML extensions Netscape has added support for.

Netscape extensions such as the <CENTER> tag and inline JPEG support can be very helpful in assisting you in your goal of presenting a well formatted Web page. However, you must remember there still is a large Internet audience that is not using the Netscape Navigator as their graphical browser. And, even then, there are some who do not even use a graphical browser.

To summarize: If you plan to use the Netscape extensions to an extreme on your pages, grab a copy of a different browser like NCSA Mosaic and view your pages with that browser. See if the information is still readable, and if it is not, do what you can to make it more legible.

Images can be very useful as a visual tool in your Web publishing. However, you can over-use this tool. Keep your inline images to a minimum.Consider there are Internet users who are connected via very slow links and have to wait extended lengths of time for images to load.

On the other hand, the Internet-at-large has accepted that images can be a very important part of a page. So, particularily for a home page, it is a good idea to put includean inline image for others' browsing enjoyment.

The larger your images are, the larger the image file is and the longer it takes too load. If it is important for you to have a large image within your Web information, the best thing to do is to create a smaller version of the file and let users select it to view the original version.

<a href="bigpicture.gif"><img src="smallpic.gif"></a> 
Click on this picture for a large version.

And, once again, in consideration for those who either are working on text-only browser or have too slow a feed to effectively view images, it may be wise to include a link to a text-only page with the same basic information in it.

Netscape'ssupport for background images has spawned a growing trend in the WWW community where people compete to produce stylish and eye-catching background graphics. However, some people simply don`t have the knack for it and their background graphics end up producing nothing but headaches and crossed eyes.

Also, it is wise not to put any important information in your background image since no other browser except the Netscape Navigator will be able to view the image.

A very important consideration to take when you are using background images is contrast between the foreground text and graphics and the background graphic. For example, do not use a dark purple background with black text. Better yet, do not use black backgrounds with black text.

Transparent GIFs

The Netscape Navigator supports transparent GIF files which allows you to make your images appear like they are part of the page and not just sitting on top of it. This is done by using a program to assign a color used in the GIF file to be the transparent color. Then when you view the image with Netscape, the browser background (either the BGCOLOR or the background image) will show through where the transparent color is. Several public-domain programs are available for the purpose of "transparentizing" your image files.

The Endless Page

Try to keep the information on your page brief. If you have a lot of information to make available, try breaking it up into several pages and producing an index users can use to load only the information they are interested in.

Also, avoid redundancy.

Once again, keep in mind there are many Web-surfers who can't take advantage of all the cool tricks people have been doing with the Netscape Navigator either because they use a different graphical browser or a character-only browser.

It is generally a good idea to offer a text-only version of your information, especially if you are using an imagemap to let people navigate your informaton.