Building Business Websites

Lesson 1: The Basics

A Brief History and Some Important Technical Stuff

OK, a little history. For those of you who skipped history class in high school, don't be tempted here. This is prime stuff. And I personally think the background is necessary so you get a complete picture.

We've all heard the story of the Pentagon paying $400 for a hammer. Hey, it's a bureaucracy. By it's very definition it's supposed to mess up an average of 50% of the time (I work for a bureaucracy, I know I mess up at least that frequently...ha). For those who complain that nothing good comes from the Department of Defense, guess again! In 1973, the DoD research branch, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), were given the little task of coming up with ways to share information across networks.

1973?? Does anyone remember what computers looked like then? Big, hulking monstrosities that chewed up and spit out these little cards with holes punched in them (little known fact: these are the same cards that Florida modeled its voting cards on….really, it's where the name "Chad" came from….Chad Foster worked at DARPA…OK, I'm pulling your leg).

From this wee project, DARPA established the same Internet protocols we use today: TCP/IP. "TCP" stands for Transmission Control Protocol and "IP" stands for Internet Protocol.

Why is this important?

When data or your family photos or your business' order gets sent over the Internet, it gets broken up into something called packets. Let's say you're looking at information about one of the books that I've mentioned here. The page you're viewing contains a photo of the book cover, reviews of the book, and Barnes and Noble's navigation (we'll get in depth about navigation later). All this stuff is broken into packets by the TCP at one end, then reassembled into the correct arrangement at the other end by the same TCP.

And how does it know where to go? That's the job of the IP. Once you request to see something, it sends your request to your computer instead of your neighbor's. That way, your neighbor doesn't see your small business orders, and you don't see whatever it is that he does with his computer in the basement…with the blinds drawn….late at night….

What's cool is that your computer has software on it that understands TCP/IP and you don't have to do a thing! This software is normally called socket or TCP/IP stack. Most PCs use a version of the software called Winsock. Macs use MacTCP.

I'm guessing this is more than you wanted to know about that. For more extensive information, see the links for Lesson 1.

Now that you know how information is sent and received, let's look a while at the hardware.

For those of you still using a 56K modem, I admire your patience!

Me, I've gone to a cable modem at home because I have no patience. I think that my karma is supposed to learn patience in this life, but so far it's a losing battle.

So, guess what, you will need to design your site for the "lowest common denominator" and that presently is the 56K modem. Not only do people with slow connections dislike too many graphics and other large files, but these items are not always needed to create a great site. More on that in later lessons.

If you have a 56K modem, it essentially means that your computer is supposed to receive Internet information at a rate of 56 kilobytes per second (Kbps). When I used such a modem I found that my Internet Service Provider (ISP) slowed things further, and I usually couldn't get better than 28.8 - 36 Kbps. This means that lovely 500K photo of the family reunion that you just got in your e-mail will download to your computer in about 17 seconds. Enough time to go get a Coke from the fridge.

For further comparison: the ISDN line receives and sends data at a rate of 128 Kbps, the DSL line at 144 Kbps, and the cable modem at 1.5 Megabytes per second (Mbps). Now we're looking at split seconds for the family photo to load.

Last bit of technical mumbo-jumbo and then we'll commence with coding, 'k?

In the world of the Internet, Browsers are not people who shop. Those are called users. Browsers are the software on your computer that interprets HTML and Java and a whole bunch of other stuff, and displays everything on your monitor. If you're using a PC, and you are running some kind of Windows product, then chances are you are using Internet Explorer ("IE") as your browser. As of this writing, the latest version of IE is 6.0.

There are other Browsers out there besides IE. Netscape makes a fine browser. As does Opera. Both of these products are free. Yes, you heard me correctly…FREE. You can download either by visiting their Web sites (http://www.netscape.com and http://www.opera.com respectively). The newest kid on the block is a zippy little browser called Firefox made by Mozilla. (http://www.mozilla.org). It is still in its infancy, and has a few minor bugs as of this writing (version 1.0.6) but it has GREAT security and some nice features like tabbed windows.

There is a bucket load of free stuff online. That's an entire course on its own: Free Stuff on the Web That Will Make Your Life Easier. Hmmmmm. I could do that. Oh. Anyway, I digress.

In the 1990's there was a nasty little Browser war that most of your probably don't know about. Because Microsoft packaged IE with all of the Windows operating systems, IE went from having a market share of around 33% in the mid 90s to a whopping 96% as of August 2002 (see "AOL Unveils New Version of Netscape" by James Maguire at http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/1923... for more information). See now why we had that little antitrust lawsuit?

Why do we care, you ask? I'm glad you did. While the powers that be (the World Wide Web Consortium -- http://www.w3.org/) have tried for years to establish standards by which all browsers will operate, they in fact, don't operate the same way. Because of this, while some of the HTML we do will be displayed wonderfully in Netscape, it looks like crud in IE, and vice versa. AND, if you have a Mac, browsers are unique to that operating system as well.

This becomes crucial as you develop your site. You want to reach as large an audience as possible, yes? Then your site will have to be all things to all people. As we go through these lessons, I'll point out any discrepancies between browsers and how to fix these.

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