ZIMABABWE OPEN UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNNOLOGY &

MULTIMEDIA COMMUNICATIONS

DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY / SOFTWARE

ENGINEERING

WEB PUBLISHING

BITH 392

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Adapted by: Patrick Mapuranga
MSc. Information Systems (MSU)
BSc. (hons) Information Systems (MSU)

Editor: Elliot Magombe

Master of Education in Science and Mathematics Education
(Physics) (UZ)
Licentiate in Education (Physics and Astronomy) Cuba
Diploma in Science Education (UZ)

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Table of Contents
MODULE OVERVIEW .................................................................................................................................................... 9
UNIT 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE INTERNET ..................................................................................................................10
1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................................ 10
1.1 OBJECTIVES ...........................................................................................................................................................10
1.2 HISTORY OF THE INTERNET ...................................................................................................................................10
1.3 HOW THE INTERNET FUNCTIONS ..........................................................................................................................12
1.3.1 INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER (ISP) ....................................................................................................................13
ACTIVITY 1.1 ...............................................................................................................................................................14
1.3.2 INTERNET CONNECTION .....................................................................................................................................14
ACTIVITY 1.2 ...............................................................................................................................................................14
1.3.3 DATA TRANSFER THROUGH THE INTERNET ........................................................................................................14
1.3.4 INTERNET ADDRESS ...........................................................................................................................................16
ACTIVITY 1.3 ...............................................................................................................................................................17
1.4 INTERNET APPLICATIONS ......................................................................................................................................19
1.4.1 E- MAIL ..............................................................................................................................................................19
ACTIVITY 1.4 ...............................................................................................................................................................20
1.5 DATA TRANSFER THROUGH THE INTERNET ...........................................................................................................21
1.5.1 FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL (FTP) ........................................................................................................................21
1.5.2 NEWSGROUP AND BULLETIN BOARD .................................................................................................................21
ACTIVITY 1.5 ...............................................................................................................................................................21
1.5.3 MAILING LIST .....................................................................................................................................................22
1.5.4 CHAT ROOM .......................................................................................................................................................22
1.5.5 INSTANT MESSAGING.........................................................................................................................................23
1.5.6 TELNET ...............................................................................................................................................................23
1.5.7 WORLD WIDE WEB .............................................................................................................................................23
1.6 SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................................................25
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................................................26
UNIT 2 WEB PUBLISHING CONCEPT AND APPLICATION ..............................................................................................27
2.0 INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................................................................27
2.1 OBJECTIVES ...........................................................................................................................................................27
2.2 INTRODUCTION TO THE CONCEPT OF WEB PUBLISHING .......................................................................................27
ACTIVITY 2.1 ...............................................................................................................................................................28
2.3 THE WEB AS AN INFORMATION DISSEMINATING TOOL ................................................................................28
ACTIVITY 2.2 ...............................................................................................................................................................30
2.4 THE BENEFITS OF WEB COMPARED TO TRADITIONAL MEDIA................................................................................30
ACTIVITY 2.3 ...............................................................................................................................................................31

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2.5 WEB APPLICATIONS ..............................................................................................................................................31
2.5.1 E- COMMERCE ....................................................................................................................................................31
ACTIVITY 2.4 ...............................................................................................................................................................35
2.5.2 INTERNET MARKETING .......................................................................................................................................40
2.5.3 E-LEARNING .......................................................................................................................................................46
2.5.4 WEB TV ..............................................................................................................................................................48
2.5.5 WEB RADIO ........................................................................................................................................................49
2.5.6 ONLINE NEWSPAPER .......................................................................................................................................50
2.6 SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................................................52
REFERENCE .................................................................................................................................................................53
UNIT 3 LEGAL ASPECTS: ETHICS AND SOCIAL IN INTERNET APPLICATION ....................................................................54
3.0 INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................................................................54
3.1 OBJECTIVES ...........................................................................................................................................................54
3.2 LEGAL ISSUES: PRIVACY IN THE INTERN .................................................................................................................54
3.3 COOKIES ................................................................................................................................................................54
3.4 EMPLOYEE-EMPLOYER RELATIONSHIP IN THE INTERNET ENVIRONMENT .............................................................55
3.5 TRACKING DEVICE ................................................................................................................................................56
ACTIVITY 3.1 ...............................................................................................................................................................56
3.6 PROTECTING THE CORPORATE COMPANY ....................................................................................................57
3.7 OTHER LEGAL ISSUES ........................................................................................................................................57
3.8 USING OF CHILDREN IN THE INTERNET ..........................................................................................................58
3.9 INTELLECTUAL RIGHTS ......................................................................................................................................58
3.10 SPAM E-MAIL ......................................................................................................................................................58
3.11 ELECTRONIC BUSINESS TRADE .............................................................................................................................59
3.12 “FREEDOM OF SPEECH” IN THE INTERNET ..................................................................................................60
3.13 SOCIAL ISSUES .................................................................................................................................................60
3.14 ONLINE COMMUNITY .....................................................................................................................................60
3.15 INTERNET TAXATION ......................................................................................................................................61
3.16 ICT LEGISLATION IN ZIMBABWE ...................................................................................................................61
3.17 SUMMARY ..........................................................................................................................................................62
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................................................63
UNIT 4 PRE – WEB PUBLISHING...................................................................................................................................64
4.0 INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................................................................64
4.1 OBJECTIVES ...........................................................................................................................................................64
4.2 THE BEGINNING STEP ............................................................................................................................................64
4.3 WEBSITE TARGET ..................................................................................................................................................64
4.4 INTERNET OR INTRANET APPLICATION .................................................................................................................66

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4.5 CONNECTION TO THE WEBSITE .............................................................................................................................66
4.6 SELECTING ISP .......................................................................................................................................................66
4.7 MAKING A CONNECTION.......................................................................................................................................67
4.8 PLANNING .............................................................................................................................................................67
4.8.1 PROJECT MANAGEMENT ....................................................................................................................................68
4.8.2 DOMAIN REGISTRATION ....................................................................................................................................68
4.8.3 SELECTING WEB SITE STRUCTURE.......................................................................................................................69
ACTIVITY 4.2 ...............................................................................................................................................................70
ACTIVITY 4.3 ...............................................................................................................................................................71
ACTIVITY 4.4 ...............................................................................................................................................................73
4.9 SETTING UP WEB SERVER ......................................................................................................................................73
4.10 IDENTIFYING SERVER LOCATION .........................................................................................................................73
4.11 SEVER SET UP ......................................................................................................................................................73
4.12 SUMMARY ..........................................................................................................................................................75
REFERENCE .................................................................................................................................................................76
UNIT 5 WEB DESIGN....................................................................................................................................................77
5.0 INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................................................................77
5.1 OBJECTIVES ...........................................................................................................................................................77
5.2 DESIGNING PRINCIPLES .........................................................................................................................................77
5.3 NAVIGATION .........................................................................................................................................................77
ACTIVITY 5.1 ...............................................................................................................................................................80
5.4 DIMENSION ...........................................................................................................................................................80
5.5 LENGTH .................................................................................................................................................................81
5.6 HEADER AND FOOTER..........................................................................................................................................82
5.7 THE BASIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WEB ............................................................................................................84
5.7.1 GRAPHIC ............................................................................................................................................................84
5.7.2 COLOUR ...........................................................................................................................................................85
5.7.3 TEXT ...................................................................................................................................................................86
5.7.4 LINK ...................................................................................................................................................................87
5.7.5 INTERMEDIATE LEVEL FEATURES ........................................................................................................................88
5.7.6 TABLE .................................................................................................................................................................88
5.7.7 FRAME ...............................................................................................................................................................90
5.8 SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................................................91
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................................................92
UNIT 6 WEB DEVELOPMENT .......................................................................................................................................93
6.0 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................93
6.1OBJECTIVES ............................................................................................................................................................93

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6.2 WEB PUBLISHING FROM SCRATCH ........................................................................................................................93
6.3 SCRIPT LANGUAGE ................................................................................................................................................93
6.3.1 WEB TECHNOLOGY ....................................................................................................................................96
6.4 WYSIWYG APPROACH ...........................................................................................................................................99
6.5 MICROSOFT FRONTPAGE APPLICATION ..............................................................................................................100
ACTIVITY 6.2 .............................................................................................................................................................101
6.6 SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................................................103
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................................................104
UNIT 7 WEB MAINTENANCE .....................................................................................................................................105
7.0 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................................105
7.1 OBJECTIVES .........................................................................................................................................................105
7.2 WEBTESTING .......................................................................................................................................................105
7.3 BENEFITS AND FUNCTIONALITY ..........................................................................................................................106
7.4 LINKING AND UPDATING.....................................................................................................................................106
7.5 PUBLISHING AND MANAGING WEBSITE ..............................................................................................................107
7.6 FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL (FTP) FUNCTION .......................................................................................................107
7.7 FTP APPLICATION ................................................................................................................................................108
7.8 WEBSITE PROMOTION ........................................................................................................................................109
7.9 EARLY STEP .........................................................................................................................................................109
7.10 META TAG APPLICATION ...................................................................................................................................110
7.11 ADVERTISEMENT ...............................................................................................................................................110
ACTIVITY 7.1 .............................................................................................................................................................111
7.12 SUMMARRY ......................................................................................................................................................111
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................................................112
UNIT 8 WEB SECURITY ..............................................................................................................................................113
8.0 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................................113
8.1 OBJECTIVES .........................................................................................................................................................113
8.2 WHAT IS THE MEANING OF WEB SECURITY? .......................................................................................................113
8.3 WEB SOURCE IS VALUABLE .................................................................................................................................113
ACTIVITY 8.1 .............................................................................................................................................................114
8.4 YOUR RESPONSIBILITY ........................................................................................................................................114
8.5 PREVENTION STEPS .............................................................................................................................................114
8.6 SECURITY POLICY ................................................................................................................................................115
8.7 VERIFICATION FOR RESTRICTED WEBSITE ...........................................................................................................115
8.8 ENCRYPTION DATA AND FIREWALL .....................................................................................................................116
8.9 OTHER SAFETY ISSUES .........................................................................................................................................117
8.10 SUMMARY ........................................................................................................................................................118

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REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................................................119
UNIT 9 WEB ORGANISATION PLANNING ...................................................................................................................120
9.0INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................................120
9.1 OBJECTIVES .........................................................................................................................................................120
9.2 CONTENT AND SCOPE ANALYSIS .........................................................................................................................120
9.3 USER ANALYSIS ...................................................................................................................................................121
ACTIVITY 9.1 .............................................................................................................................................................121
9.4 IMPLICATION ANALYSIS ......................................................................................................................................122
9.5 WEBSITE CONTENT TYPE.............................................................................................................................................. 122
9.6 IDENTIFYING WEB PUBLISHING TARGET..............................................................................................................123
9.7 IDENTIFYING THE MAIN TITLE IN A WEBSITE ...............................................................................................124
9.8 SUMMARY ..........................................................................................................................................................126
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................................................127
UNIT 10 WEB INFORMATION STRUCTURING.............................................................................................................128
10.0 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................128
10.1OBJECTIVES ........................................................................................................................................................128
10.2 WEB STRUCTURE EXPLANATION .......................................................................................................................128
10.3 A CLEAR STRUCTURE .........................................................................................................................................129
10.4 ENVELOPE .........................................................................................................................................................130
10.5 HIERARCHIES .....................................................................................................................................................132
10.6 OVERLAPPING BETWEEN HIERARCHIES .............................................................................................................133
ACTIVITY 10.2 ...........................................................................................................................................................134
10.7 LINEAR STRUCTURE ...........................................................................................................................................134
10.8 THE COMBINATION OF THE LINEAR AND HIERARCHY STRUCTURES ...........................................................136
10.9 NETWORK STRUCTURE ......................................................................................................................................137
10.10 OTHER MANAGING PARADIGMS .....................................................................................................................138
10.11 DIAGRAM ........................................................................................................................................................141
10.12 TYPES OF ENVELOPE ........................................................................................................................................143
10.13 SEARCHING FOR VISUAL FORM OF THINKING .................................................................................................144
ACTIVITY 10.3 ...........................................................................................................................................................144
10.14 THE CREATION OF CONNECTIONS ...............................................................................................................145
10.15 THE GENERATING AND ORGANISING OF IDEAS THAT ARE ORDERLY ...............................................................145
10.16 SINGLE-LINE AND MULTIPLE-LINE IDEAS .........................................................................................................146
10.17 CLUSTERING IDEAS ..........................................................................................................................................147
10.18 BOTTOM-TOP AND TOP-BOTTOM THINKINGS ................................................................................................148
10.19 CLUSTERS ........................................................................................................................................................150
ACTIVITY 10.4 ...........................................................................................................................................................151

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10.20 BRAIN STORMING ...........................................................................................................................................152
ACTIVITY 10.5 ...........................................................................................................................................................152
10.21 PRIORITY .........................................................................................................................................................152
10.22 TITLE LISTING ..................................................................................................................................................152
10.23 STRUCTURE EVALUATION................................................................................................................................152
10.24 UNDERSTANDING THE READER .......................................................................................................................153
10.25 SUMMARY ......................................................................................................................................................154
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................................................178
UNIT 11 NAVIGATION STRUCTURE DESIGN ...............................................................................................................179
11.0 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................179
11.1 OBJECTIVES .......................................................................................................................................................179
11.2 NAVIGATION SYSTEM .......................................................................................................................................179
ACTIVITY 11.1 ...........................................................................................................................................................181
11.3 EFFECTIVE NAVIGATION SYSTEM DESIGN ..........................................................................................................181
ACTIVITY 11.2 ...........................................................................................................................................................185
ACTIVITY 11.3 ...........................................................................................................................................................185
11.4 TYPES OF LINK ...................................................................................................................................................186
ACTIVITY 11.4 ...........................................................................................................................................................187
ACTIVITY 11.5 ...........................................................................................................................................................187
11.5 SUMMARY ........................................................................................................................................................187
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................................................189

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Module Overview
This module is divided into 11 units. The synopsis of each unit can be listed as follows:

In Unit 1, we discuss the Internet history and structure besides other Internet applications. The
Internet is growing so rapidly that nothing can stop its path. This can be seen from the number of
Internet users.

In Unit 2, we highlight on how Web publishing is a website constructing process that uses
systematic
methods. Web publishing has contributed to the rise of many types of websites with different
business objectives and motives.

In Unit 3, we discuss the internet application on the aspects of legislation, ethics and social. It is
undeniable that the internet has provided a new platform that enables many functions to be
performed. Still, the internet is also subject to abuse by irresponsible parties to gain profit or to
achieve their personal goal.

In Unit 4, we expose you to website publishing planning. This includes the selection of web base,
Internet Service Provider (ISP), connection, domain registration, web base structure and web server.
You will learn further about the principles of website design in the next topic.

In Unit 5, we discuss in depth elements of web design such as navigation, dimension, length, Web
header and footer. You will also know several issues on web element applications such as graphic,
colour, text, link, table and frame.

In Unit 6, we discuss the building from scratch concept. The scripts discussed are DHTML,
JavaScript, VBScript and XML. Web technologies such as Java, CGI, ActiveX and ASP must be
understood. Web authoring software such as the Microsoft FrontPage is a simple way to build a
website.

In Unit 7, we discuss the main principles in web testing and their importance. In addition, issues
concerning website life span management and maintenance have also been touched. Make sure you
understand the methods and issues in website promoting

In Unit 8, we discuss on the knowledge about web sources that can be used by an irresponsible
party. Thus, you need to perform the prevention steps for your website, understand data encryption
and firewall concepts plus the latest issues in web security.

In Unit 9, we discuss designing a website or web document. This resembles drafting a book content
and it involves a complex process. A detailed planning before building the website can assist in
smoothing the publishing process and in ensuring that the publisher does not make many mistakes.

In Unit 10, we discuss the most important thing in planning document construction is to organise
your information. Students need to think thoroughly on what and on how you want to express in
your website or web document. You need to know deeply the contents of your website.

In Unit 11, we discuss important aspect in web document publishing, which is the navigation,
especially in the complex hypertext structure that has a comprehensive content. Navigation

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difficulties happen when readers could not match the goal of finding the desired information with
the information structure and activity provided in the web environment.

Unit 1 Introduction to the Internet

1.0 Introduction
The Internet has captured the interest of people from all walks of society to step forward towards
the era of a computerised world. The term Internet, itself refers to the network of millions of
computers and users who are using it. The Internet can be defined as a large network with at least
45000 smaller network connections that criss-cross an inter-connected world. The internet has
created a revolution that has never been thought of before in the communication system. The
discovery of telephone, telegram, radio and computer are actually the continual effort in research
and development. The Internet has enabled the connection of everything on a single track that is
far more superior to all of the mentioned equipment. The Internet has a global broad reach
unhindered by geographical factor, political ideology, race and ethnic origin.

1.1 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
 discuss the history of Internet development
 identify the functions and applications of Internet
 explain the concept of web publishing and its applications
 differentiate between the web application and traditional media
 describe the steps of web publishing
 explain the ethical aspects of Internet usage

1.2 History of the Internet

The history of Internet can be traced back to the 1960’s launch of Sputnik satellite in 1957.
Following the launch of Sputnik, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was formed.
ARPA was funded by the American Department of Defence although its researches are
academically oriented. The aim of the ARPA is to enable scientists from different locations to work
together in scientific and military projects in any form of conditions. Thus, ARPANET was created.
It is a network that can connect distant computers.

However, it was later discovered that a single connection was not able to support all the needs of
every user. So, from 1963 to 1967, ARPA investigated the possibility of building a network in a
network. Most of the important works in ARPA consist of protocol development and distribution
that act as the backbone in communication. Figures 1.1 - 1.3 show the form sketches of nodes on
ARPANET as a beginning plan to build a network that develops into millions of computer networks
around the world.

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Figure 1.1: The first ARPANET node sketches

Figure 1.2: The 4 ARPANET nodes

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 Figure 1.3: An ARPANET topology sketch map

International relation started in 1973 between the University College of London and the Royal Radar
Establishment in Norway to create a network that can connect various networks in one large system.
The result is the Internetwork or Internet. The next step was to focus on protocol establishment for
transferring through the Internet and other protocols such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Now the Internet is a collection of thousands of networks.

Table 1.1: Summary of Internet Development History

Year Event
Sputnik satellite was launched and ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) was
1957-1960s formed and the development of ARPANET that connects distant computers.

1963-1967 ARPA built a network in a network.

An international relation was formed between the University College of London and the
Royal Radar Establishment to combine various networks in one big system that resulted in
1973 the formation of Internetwork or Internet.

1.3 How the Internet Functions

The Internet operates as one Packet Switching. It means the Internet will take one package of data
and break it into smaller parts or packets. Then those packets will be sent to a server or a
receiving computer. In order to ensure the success of this data delivery, the Internet’s network router
and server must recognise the data’s location. This is done by using the TCP and IP protocols. The
next sections will briefly discuss the various ways involved in connecting a terminal to the Internet.

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1.3.1 Internet service provider (ISP)
Internet service provider (ISP) is a commercial organisation that has a permanent Internet
connection. ISP can be divided into local ISP and regional ISP, depending on the area of a country
or geographical location. ISP provides a temporary Internet connection to organisations or
individuals for free or for a fee based on tariff. Users must register with the ISP to enable their
terminal to gain access into the Internet network. With this method, users will get unlimited
access to the Internet.

Users will be charged with extra payment based on the amount of Internet time used. If a user uses
the telephone line to gain Internet access, the phone number dialled will connect the user to a point
in the Internet known as the Point of Presence (POP). When someone registers with the ISP, they
will be given at least one local POP phone number. Figure 1.4 shows how ISP acts as a connector
to all the computers in the Internet network.

Figure 1.4: ISP as a connector to all computers in the Internet network.

Figure 1 . 5 s h o w s speci fi call y how t w o u s e r s (a h o m e u s e r a n d a p r i v a t e organisation)

could access the Internet through ISP

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 Figure 1.5: User’s connection to ISP to gain Internet access

ACTIVITY 1.1

TelOne is a form of ISP that connects the whole of Zimbabwe using fibre optic backbone
technology and ATM Switching that allow transmission speed of over 100 Mbps. Look
? for the ISP examples in Zimbabwe.

1.3.2 Internet connection

Users such as students can gain Internet access through the school network. In this case, the
terminal used is part of the Local Area Networks (LAN) or Intranet. The local network will be
connected to the ISP via a high-speed access by using a leased line from the local telephone
company. Leased line is a telephone line of fibre optic cable that is leased for 24 hours to connect
one location to another location.

However, small-scale companies and home users will usually be connected to the Internet using data
line connection. By using this method, users will need to have a computer, modem and regular
telephone/data line to connect to ISP. Some users (especially large companies) will have the
choice to choose the latest high-speed technology like the Digital Subscriber Line (DSL). DSL
provides a high-speed connection to access the Internet. DSL uses regular telephone/data line as a
communication medium. Besides DSL technology, users may also use a digital connection like
ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) that gives a high- speed Internet connection using a
special telephone line. This cost of this service is more expensive than dial-up connection.

ACTIVITY 1.2

TelOne is one of the companies that offers Internet and multimedia

services via a broadband service. Is there any other local ISP that
? also provide the broadband service?

1.3.3 Data transfer through the internet

All computer terminals connected to the Internet cooperate with one another in data and information
transferring across the world by using the client and server concept. Server is a computer that
manages all the sources within the network and gives a central storage for sources such as data and
programs. While client is a computer that can access the content stored in the server. In the Internet
network, your computer is actually a client capable of accessing files and services in a server. Your
computer is actually called a host in the Internet environment.

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 Figure 1.6 The relationship between a server and a client in the Internet environment.

The Internet backbone consists of two important parts, which are the hardware/communication
network and protocol that governs data transferring across the network.

Hardware/communication network refers to fibre optic cable and satellite that connect the entire
sub network in the Internet.

Protocol controls how data is transferred across the internet infrastructure. The most important
protocol is the TCP/IP

TCP relates on how Internet users using different software can interact with one another in the
Internet. It controls the data transferring properly. IP is used to send data from a sender to its
intended receiver. Information or data sent via the Internet will move in a network or
communication line owned and controlled by private firms. These companies only provide the
Internet infrastructure base and they do not own or control the protocol and data. Figure 1.7 shows
how data is transferred from one computer to another computer in the Internet through TCP/IP
protocol.

Figure 1.7: Data movement across the Internet following the TCP/IP protocol

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1.3.4 Internet address
The Internet depends on the addressing system to send the computer data to a certain location.
Internet Protocol Address (IP) is a unique set of number that identifies every computer or devices
connected to the Internet.

Example of an IP address is 216.27.61.137. This IP address in the decimal form is convenient for
us to memorise. But, the IP address such as 216.27.61.137 that is coherent to the computer is in a
form shown below in Figure 1.8

Figure 1.8: IP address in the form coherent to the computer

The four numbers in the IP are known as octet numbers because each has eight positions in the
binary form. Because each number can only take the value of 1 or 0, the total combination per octet
is 256. Generally, the first part of the address refers to a network, while the others are the
computer’s identity.

IP address in numeric form is hard to be memorised and used. In order to overcome this problem,
the Internet also supports the usage of IP address in text form to represent the numeric form of IP
address.

Domain name is an IP address in text form. Figure 1.9 below shows an IP address and its matching
domain name.

Address IP € : 199.95.72.10
Domain Name € www.cnn.com

Figure 1.9: Address and domain name

Each domain name contains a Top-Level Domain (TLD) short form that specifies the type of
organisation that is associated with the domain. The organisation that is involved in gathering TLD
is the Inter Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Figure 1.10 lists TLD short
forms that are commonly used.

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 com - private company or organisation
edu - education institution
gov - government agency
mil - military agency
net - network service provider
org - non-profit based organization
ac - academic institution

Figure 1.10: TLD short forms

There are some domain names contain a country codes. Refer to the example shown below:
www.zou.ac.zw

In this example, the domain name ends with a country code. The zw short form actually represents
Zimbabwe. Different countries have different codes. For example, South Africa uses the code za.

ACTIVITY 1.3

? Search for codes on other countries that were not mentioned previously.

Domain name system (DNS) is a system in the Internet that saves domain name and it’s matching
IP Address

Every time you state a domain name to access a website, the Internet server will call a DNS server
that will change the domain name to its matching IP address. This enables the data or information
to be sent to the proper host or computer. Figure 1.11 shows how DNS acts as a third party between
a web browser and a server.

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Figure 1.11: DNS as a third party between a web browser and a server

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1.4 Internet Applications
Internet application refers to services that can be used in the Internet environment. Some of these
applications are shown in Figure 1.12.

Figure 1.12: Internet applications

1.4.1 E- Mail
E-mail is an application that enables Internet users to directly communicate with each other via
message and file sending using connected computers.

E-mail is the first service that is used in the Internet. It serves as a medium for scientists and
researchers to communicate with each other. Now, e-mail has become an essential tool of
communication for individuals and business trade. By using e-mail, users can type, send, receive,
forward, save and delete messages. These could be done easily by using e-mail programs widely
available in the market. Microsoft Outlook and Hotmail are some of the examples of e-mail
programs. Messages used in e-mail can be made into a simple text and/or send together with an
attaching file in the form of .doc, graphic file, audio or video clip.

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For every message that the user wants to send, there must be a receiver’s address. In order for you to
receive an e-mail message, you must first have an e-mail address. The same goes if your friend
wants to send an e-mail to you, he must have your e-mail address. An e-mail address is a
combination of a user name and a domain name which identifies a user’s server, so that the e-mail
message could be send to the user.

Example, ahmad@yahoo.com

User name is a unique combination of characters or numbers that represents a person’s identity.

A person’s user name cannot be the same as another person’s user name using the same domain as
this will lead to conflict. So, for the example above, the user name is ahmad and the yahoo.com
domain is unique. There is no other words there is no more ahmad in this domain.

Most e-mail programs have a mechanism that alerts the user when he receives a new message even
though the user is currently using other application in the computer. The commonly used method is
by displaying an appropriate message or playing a sound when the user receives a new message. All
e-mail messages received will be put into a mailbox.

Mailbox is a storage location located in the ISP computer that connects the user to the Internet. A
server that has a mailbox is called a mail server. Most ISP provide e-mail program and mailbox in
the mail server by default when users register to access the Internet.

There are websites that provide web-based e-mail services for free. In order to use these e-mail
programs, users need to access the website and sign up to get an e-mail account. This process
involves submitting personal particulars by the user and the allocation of e-mail address and
password by the service provider.

ACTIVITY 1.4

Visit any of these websites that have e-mail programs and register
? yourself:
Gmail at https://gmail.com
Yahoo at https://yahoo.com

How does an e-mail message get correctly send from one user to another user? When you send a
message, a program in the mail server will determine the passage that will be used to send the
message across the Internet. When the e- mail message arrives at the receiver’s mail server, the
message will be transfer to a Post Office Protocol (POP) server or POP3.
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Post Office Protocol (POP) is a communication technology to retrieve e-mail from a mail server.
POP server will hold onto the message until the receiver access the message using e-mail
software from his computer. The latest version of this protocol is the POP3.

1.5 Data Transfer through the Internet

Data may be transferred through the internet by various means. Below are some of the methods of
data transfer.

1.5.1 File transfer protocol (FTP)

File transfer protocol (FTP) is an Internet standard that allows a file to be downloaded or
uploaded from one computer to another computer in the internet. As an example, when you
click on a website link that enables a file to be downloaded to a computer, you are actually using
FTP. FTP server is a computer that enables user to download or upload a file using FTP. An FTP
page is a collection of files including text format, graphic, audio and video that are saved in the
FTP server.

1.5.2 Newsgroup and bulletin board

Newsgroup is an online service that allows users to perform a written discussion on a certain subject.
In order to take part in the discussion, a user must send a message to the newsgroup. Then,
other users within the newsgroup will read the message and send a reply. The whole collection of
newsgroup is called a Usenet. Usenet covers hundreds of newsgroup in various topics of research.
Examples of topics commonly discussed are current news, business, computer and science.

Computers that store and distribute newsgroup messages are known as news server. Most ISP
have news server. In order to join a newsgroup, you need a program called newsreader that is
available in almost every web browser. Newsreader enables you to access into a newsgroup and
read all the messages that were sent. These messages are called articles. You may also submit
messages to the newsgroup. Newsreader is capable of tracing all the read and unread messages.

ACTIVITY 1.5

? You may visit websites to get a list of newsgroup and join any newsgroup
that you are interested in.

.
Besides posting new questions, users may also reply to the messages currently available. If this
action was repeated by many users, the result will be a thread of discussion. This thread of
discussion contains the original article and replied messages. A thread of discussion may be present
for a certain period of time or maybe even for a long time depending on the type of topic and interest
shown by users towards the topic.

21
By using newsreader, users can also search for newsgroups that discuss certain topics like sports
equipment, job opportunities and technical issues. If you are interested in a certain newsgroup, you
can subscribe to the relevant newsgroup. Which means the relevant newsgroup location will be
saved in your newsgroup for easy access.

For some newsgroup, messages posted by the user will be sent to a moderator and would not be
directly displayed. The moderator will evaluate the contents of the article and then post the message
for display to the other users. In certain condition, the moderator will edit or discard some of the
received article contents. The moderator’s true purpose is to ensure that posted messages are
relevant to the topic of discussion.

Now, there are also web-based discussion groups that do not use newsreader. Most of the current
websites provide bulletin board or also known as discussion board. Bulletin board is much easier to
use than newsgroup.

1.5.3 Mailing list

Mailing list is a group of e-mail names and address in a single entity. When a message is sent to a
mailing list, all individuals in the list will receive a copy of the same message in their mailbox. You
have to subscribe to a mailing list in order to enter your name and address into the list. Nowadays
there are hundreds of mailing lists that touch on a variety of topics on entertainment, business,
politics, sport, education and culture.

1.5.4 Chat room

Chat, in the Internet context, is a real-time discussion that takes place in a computer. Real-time
discussion means two or more individuals sharing a conversation online at the same time. When you
type on the keyboard, some lines of characters and symbols will appear on the computer
screen. Your chat friend, connected to the same chat room server can clearly see the messages or
notices that you have typed.

Chat room is a location on the Internet server that allows user to chat with other users. In the chat
room, you can also get someone’s profile in the chat room by clicking on the buttons available in the
chat room. Anyone in the chat room can take part in the discussion that usually touches on certain
topics. Some chat rooms even support voice chat and video chat where you and your friends could
hear or see one another.
How do you start a conversation in a chat room? To start a discussion, your computer must be
connected to a chat server using a chat client. Most of the current web browser comes with a chat
client. If your web browser does not have a chat client, you can download a chat client from
websites. Chat client is available in text or graphic form. As soon as you have installed the chat
client, these actions can be taken:

• Start a new conversation; or

• Join an ongoing conversation

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Chat room will display its topic of discussion. The person who creates a chat room will act as
an operator and has the responsibility to moderate discussion. They can even terminate the
connection of a person who has gone over the limit of a discussion. The operator’s status can be
shared or transferred to another party in the chat room.

If you want to join a chat, visit this website and register yourself. Then you can chat with anyone
that you want through http://chat.yahoo.com/. There are even voice chat and video chat but extra
equipment like a microphone and a webcam must be available first

1.5.5 Instant messaging

Instant Messaging (IM) is a real-time Internet communication that will notify you when there is
one or more person online. Then you can exchange messages or files or join an exclusive chat
room with your friend. Most IM services are even capable of alerting you on details such as
calendar appointments, stock information, weather and so on. To use an IM, you must first install
an instant messenger software from the IM service provider.

Operating system like Windows comes with a default installation of instant messenger software.
You can download an instant messenger at MSN Messenger website at http://messenger.msn.com.

1.5.6 Telnet
One of the reasons of the Internet’s existence is to enable users to work with remote computers.
For example, a researcher from Zimbabwe Open University may have an account with a host
computer located in a different part of Zimbabwe. With the Internet, the researcher can access
and log into the remote host from the Zimbabwe Open University as if he is personally in front of
the host. The service that allows you to log in and use a remote computer in the Internet is called a
telnet

In order to use a telnet service, you must have a telnet client to gain access to the remote host. Most
remote computers use the UNIX operating system. With telnet, you can log into any remote
computers that support remote users but with the condition that you have a valid username and
password to access the computer. There are even remote computers that allow users to log into the
host by using a guest account. If you log in using this type of account, the convenience and facilities
provided by the computer host will be limited. There are remote computers in America that allow
users to access weather forecast information. For this purpose, any user can use telnet and log
into the host without a password.

To get more information about telnet or to download telnet application, you can visit this website:
http://www.webopedia.com

1.5.7 World wide web

The World Wide Web (WWW) is the Internet’s most popular and favourite application or service.
We frequently relate the WWW with Internet technology. For those without a clear understanding
23
about Internet technology, they would say that Internet surfing is the same as web surfing.
However, both terms have a different definition.

As mentioned previously, the Internet is a network of computers where interaction and sharing can
occur between the users.

WWW is a collection of hypertext document saved in computers within the Internet network.
Hypertext document refers to electronic document with characteristics that allow users to open
other hypertext documents. If you have surfed the Internet, this operation can be executed by just
using the mouse click operation. Web document is a hypertext document. Every web document is
called a website. Website can contain text, graphic, sound, video or link to other documents.

The homepage of a website refers to the main page of the many documents associated with it.

When you open a website, there are actually two main entities that interact with each other to enable
the hypertext document to be displayed to you that is at the web server and at the web browser.
What is the difference between a web server and a web browser?

Web server is the computer that saves hypertext documents that can be access by Internet users.
Among the most popular web servers are the IIS for Windows and Apache for Unix/Linux.

Web browser is a software that retrieves hypertext documents from the web server and then displays
the document on the user’s computer screen. The two widely used web browser are Fire Fox and
Chrome

How can you track a website? Every website has a unique address called Uniform Resource
Locator (URL). Web browser will access a website from the web server by using URL, also
known as web address. URL will inform the web browser to get the website location. The correct
website would not be displayed if you typed in the wrong URL. A URL example is shown below:

http://www.zou.ac.zw.blocks/results.php

protocol domain name path

A URL like the one above consists of protocol, domain name and sometimes path to a specific
website. The command http:// in the URL is a communication standard that enables hypertext
document to be transferred to websites.

What can we do in a website? Websites enable us to get information from various fields. For this
purpose, many search engines such as Yahoo and Google help us to search for information in the
Internet. This can be done by entering a keyword into the search engine. Website could also be
saved off line in our computer. A website can have any content or topic such as news,
business, sports, weather, entertainment and others.

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 Figure 1.13: A World wide web example

1.6 Summary
This unit touched on the Internet’s history and structure besides other Internet applications.

The Internet is growing so rapidly that nothing can stop its path. This can be seen from the number
of Internet users.

The numbers are predicted to expand progressively with new users emerging from all around the
world. The existence and growth of Internet applications that satisfy users’ demand is also a catalyst
to the Internet’s expansion.

KEY TERMS
Bulletin Board Internet
Chat room Internet Protocol Address
E-mail Internet Service Provider
Instant Messaging

25
REFERENCES
Lemay, L. (2000). Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 Days Professional
Reference Edition. (2nd ed.). Indiana: SAMS.

Lowe, D . & H a l l , W. (1999). H y p e r m e d i a and The Web: An Engineering Approach.

Chichester Wiley.

Martin, J. (1990). Hyperdocument and How to Create Them. Englewood: Prentice Hall.

Salim, J. & Yaakob, Y. (2000). Hyper document: An Innovative Tool for Teaching and Learning.
Proceeding of the International Conference on Teaching and Learning. Strategising
Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century. 24th ă 25th November 2000, Putrajaya.
Bangi: Faculty of Education, University Kebangsaan Malaysia.

26
Unit 2 Web Publishing Concept and Application

2.0 Introduction
Before the emergence of the World Wide Web or WWW, the mechanism used for sharing thoughts
and ideas are limited to the usage of media, classroom and social surrounding. Now the web is the
place for sharing thoughts and ideas.

2.1 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
 explain the five important steps in web publishing
 list web’s function as an information broadcasting tool
 differentiate between web publishing and web building
 list the six popular web applications
 compare web application with traditional media usage

2.2 Introduction to the concept of web publishing

Web Publishing is a systematic process of developing and maintaining a web. Web
development is one of the process/phase in web publishing. In order to build a website, you do not
have to be a computer programmer. The five important steps in web publishing are:

The benefits of website built with a web publishing approach are:

(i) Website that is capable of attracting many visitors;
(ii) The ability to link users in the same topic;
(iii) Website that can be easily updated;
(iv) Require little effort; and
(v) Capable of m a n i p u l a t i n g graphic, sound , audi o , ani m at i on and video spontaneously

27
Among the skills needed to publish a website are:
(i) Computer literacy;
(ii) Basic internet literacy;
(iii) Organisation skill;
(iv) HTML knowledge and web publishing technology; and
(v) Knowledge of multimedia file formats.

Why publish with a web? Lately, the WWW has become a major system for disseminating
information on the internet. The WWW’s sudden popularity growth is because of its ability
to integrate graphic and multimedia elements. Publishing in the web is an effective way of
disseminating numerous kinds of information. We will discuss in detail about the methods of web
publishing in the coming units.

ACTIVITY 2.1

? What makes a website attractive?

2.3 The web as an information disseminating tool

The web, accessible to all users from all over the world regardless of time and location has made it
the best platform for disseminating information. A website could be categorised according to the
type of information that it wants to present. There are six types of website, that is:

(a) Portal website

Portal offers miscellaneous news and internet services in one location and a single interface. Most
portal based websites provide services as shown in
Figure 2.1.

28
Figure 2.1: Services offered by portal websites

(b) News website

News based website provides news materials. This includes articles on current issues. Lots of
printing media and magazine companies maintain websites that give summarised news of their
printed news and other news that are not included in the printed news.

(c) Information website

This type of website contains factual information. These websites are usually owned by
government agencies to provide information such as population statistic, census data,
transportation information and others.

(d) Marketing/business trade website

These websites contain promotional materials or the selling of products or services. Almost every
business and corporate agencies have their own business/marketing website. Example, Teleone,
CBZ and ZOU

(e) Personal website

A website that does not have any association with any firm or organisation is usually called a
personal website. Users usually publish personal websites for various reasons. This could be due to
job hunting or merely for sharing ideas.

29
 (f) Discussion website

These websites usually contain opinions, issues or debates. The website’s main purpose is to
convince users on the validity of an opinion or an idea. These websites usually contribute opinions
or ideas associated to a movement or a committee. Websites published by political parties may be
grouped in this category.

Even though there are other different web categories, there is only one objective for these websites’
existence that is to disseminate information to other users.

The existence of these six types of website has clearly shown that the web is capable of
disseminating a lot of information to its users. Some websites may have a combination of more
than one category as discussed previously.

ACTIVITY 2.2
Please state each of the website’s category, example and function
?
No. Category Example Function
1
2
3
4
5
6

2.4 The Benefits of Web Compared to Traditional Media

Although traditional media such as radio, television and newspaper can be used for disseminating
information, the web has its many convenience and speciality, making it an interesting tool for
information dissemination. Table 2.1 differentiate between the web and the traditional media.

Table 2.1: The web and traditional media characteristics

No. Web characteristics Traditional media characteristics

1. Accessible from around the world. Billions Inaccessible to users from around the world.
of users.
2. Accessible 24 hours a day Accessible only on certain times.
3. Enables fast communication between News displayed in the newsp aper cannot be
users. Contents updated by website staff or changed after printing.
webmaster.
4. Provides a personalised service. Cannot be personalised according to users’
preference. Radio and TV are the only sources with
the same content to reach users of different
backgrounds.

30
5. Has a h i g h l e v e l o f a c c e p t a n c e No usage of multimedia becomes static.
from users, with a positive image?
Dynamic with multimedia usage.
6. User-centred. Also user centred.
7. Gives a high level of comfort to the users Can also purchase or products without
because they can get information without leaving the house.
leaving the house.

8. Reduces printing and data entering cost. Content is limited. For example, newspapers could
Web technology allows huge amount of only display a limited number of pages. Any addition
information with the presence of servers will involve extra cost. Television uses small tapes
that can store millions of data bytes. with limited storage for recording programmes.

Clearly web usage gives more benefits compared to the usage of other traditional media.

ACTIVITY 2.3

? Think of other differences between the web and the traditional

media. Does this mean the traditional media will soon be
obsolete? Why? Write a small article about this matter.

2.5 Web applications

In the following sections, six popular web applications, developed through the web publishing
process will be discussed. These web applications include:
- E-commerce;
- Internet marketing and e-advertising;
- E-learning;
- Web TV;
- Web radio; and
- Online newspaper.

2.5.1 E- Commerce
E-commerce or E-business is a business that involves financial transaction in an electronic
network. For this purpose, the website will become the link between customer and business
agency. Anyone who has internet access and a credit card for purchasing products or services can
take part in e-commerce. Banking and shopping are two types of popular e-commerce. Other
markets for e-commerce include finance, entertainment and media, tourism, health and others.

A research taken at the end of 1999 discovered that 55 million people or 60% of global internet
users have shopped online (Dodd, 2000). 15% of the internet users have also done banking
31
transaction online. Business via e-commerce has reached USD 600 billion in year 2001 and this
number is estimated to reach USD 5 trillion in year 2005 (Source: International Data Corporation
(IDC) (www.idc.com). This research clearly shows that users are confident of the internet and the
website as a transaction tool.

From the business aspect, e-commerce websites provide a golden opportunity to corporate
companies. E-commerce is a place for individuals and businesses to gather information. Using the
internet through websites can cultivate better communication between staff, customer and vendor
while increase staff productivity. E-commerce eliminates obstacles such as time and distance that
usually slow down business conducted in the conventional manner. Through e- commerce, a
business transaction can be done instantaneously across every part of the world. Amazon.com is
an example of the most popular e-commerce website among visitors who are interested in
purchasing books (Figure 2.2).

Figure 2.2: Amazon.com’s commercial website

(a) E-Commerce business models

There are four types of E-Commerce business models:

(i) Business-to-consumer (ii) Consumer-to-consumer (iii) Business-to-business
(iv) Business-to-employee

(i) Business-to-Consumer (B2C) E-Commerce

32
Figure 2.3: A business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce model

A B2C E-Commerce model as illustrated in Figure 2.3 covers product or service marketing from a
business to the general consumer. In this model, the business agency is the merchant and the
consumer is the buyer. Products marketed are physical products such as computer or book. Besides
physical products, other products that could be marketed are non-physical products such as
magazine subscription or downloaded software. Popular services under the B2C e-commerce are
online banking and online airplane ticket reservation.

One advantage of this model is that business agencies do not need a middleman to promote their
products. With this model, traders could have a direct contact with the customers without retailers
or wholesalers as a middle party and this enables the product to be sold faster and with a lower price.
As for the consumers, they would have plenty of choices without the constraint of time and
distance. A lot of B2C websites offer customer services such as access to product commentary
and chat room. There are even business agencies that personalised their websites according to the
different preferences of users when they are surfing the website. This enables B2C e-commerce
to advertise according to the different demands of users.

(ii) Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) E-Commerce

Figure 2.4: Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce model

A C2C E-Commerce means an individual that uses the internet to market a product or a service to
another individual (refer Figure 2.4). Example of a popular C2C e-commerce website is online
auction. Another form of C2C e- commerce is the peer-to-peer (P2P). P2P actually refers to an

33
internet network that allows users with the same software network to connect their hard disc and
share files with one another.

(iii) Business-to-Business (B2B) E-Commerce Model

Figure 2.5: Business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce model

Figure 2.5 illustrate the B2B E-Commerce model. Most of the e-commerce websites built are B2B
model. B2B E-Commerce allows interaction among traders. This includes product or service selling
and trading between businesses. For example, a company involved in motorcycle manufacturing
might use the internet to purchase tyres from another vendor. B2B market grows more rapidly than
B2C. Lots of companies or firms try to manipulate the internet by communicating with other
business partners to reduce the supply chain. Lots of business firms that are involved in B2B are
also involved in B2C.

(iv) Business-to-Employee (B2E) E-Commerce

Figure 2.6: Business-to-employee (B2E) e-commerce model

Figure 2.6 illustrates B2E E-Commerce model. B2E E-Commerce is also known as Intra-Trade
E-Commerce. B2E refers to internet technology application to perform business activities that takes
place in the company or firm. B2E does not return any extra income when compared to the other
models of e-commerce. However, it raises the company’s profit by reducing company spending. For
example, B2E usage allows discussion between staff, sharing of data and information, sales
information and marketing analysis. B2E eliminates tasks that have to be done manually.
34
ACTIVITY 2.4

? Explain each of the e-commerce models below:

Model Brief explanation

B2C
C2C
B2B
B2E

(b) Web business models for E-Commerce

A lot of private firms and individuals decide to bring their businesses to the website. This is because
e-commerce offers a customer-based service, high quality customer service and increase in supply
chain management. In order to attract customers to e-commerce, business agencies use various
business models in the website. This includes the storefront model, auction model, dynamic pricing
model, portal model and other website business model. The website business model chosen by
a business agency will depend on the company’s policy, operational environment, technology and
ideology. Figure 2.7 shows the e-commerce website business mode

Figure 2.7: E-commerce business models

35
 (i) Store front model

The Store Front model combines business trade process, security, online payment and
information storage that allow traders to market their product through the website. This is the basic
method of E-Commerce so traders and buyers can interact with each other. Shopping Cart and
Shopping Mall are the two approaches used in the StoreFront model.

Shopping Cart is a booking processing technology that allows consumer to collect items that they
want to buy while shopping in the website. Shopping Cart is supported by a product catalogue that
is available on the trader’s database server. This server is a data storage and management system
used by the trader. The database is designed to save and to report a huge amount of information. For
example, an online clothing retailer database generally has product specification such as item
description, size, total stock, delivery information, stock information and booking information.
Besides that, the database is also capable of storing customer information such as name, address,
credit card information and previous booking pattern. A website example that has successfully used
this approach is the www.cdnow.com. This website is shown in Figure 2.8.

Figure 2.8: An e-commerce website that shows a shopping cart model

Online Shopping Mall offers a wide selection of products and services. With this model, customers
may search and shop for various products in one business transaction. Customers can use this
method to shop from different stores in one business transaction. Usually, Shopping Mall will act as
a shopping portal that provides links to other online shopping stores for certain products.

One of the most famous Shopping Mall is the Mall.com that is accessible through
www.mall.com. Visit this website to see how a product is offered.

36
 (ii) Auction model

With the auction model, website will act as a forum where internet users may log on and take
part either as a seller or a bidder. The seller can post a description of the item that he wants to sell,
the product’s minimum price and the auction’s closing date. Some websites that use this method
allow
Sellers to insert extra information such as the picture of the product going for auction. Even
though the auction website will charge a fee based on a commission for each sale, this site only
acts as a forum for online marketing and purchasing. The party t h a t m a i n t a i n s the auction
w e b s i t e i s n o t involved in the payment or delivery of the product. After an auction ends, the
auctioneer and the bidder will be informed and both parties will handle the payment method and
product delivery. A website example that has successfully used this approach is
www.ebay.com. This site is shown in Figure 2.9.

Figure 2.9: An e-commerce website that shows an auction model

(iii) Portal model

Portal based website gives visitors the chance to search for any product in just one place or location.
Usually the portal will offer news, sports, weather services and search capabilities in one website.
Portal can connect visitors to online auction websites, online shopping and etc. There are two types
of portal:

• Horizontal Portal; and

• Vertical Portal

A horizontal portal example is a search engine that is involved in the search for information on
various topics. The vertical portal is a specific portal that gives a lot of information based on one’s
special interest. The vertical portal is also known as community portal. Community portal offers
various online special interest groups. The community portal gains customer loyalty by allowing
them to contribute to the site, chatting with their friends and giving specific information to
visitors. Yahoo! and America Online are examples of popular community portals.

37
 (iv) Dynamic pricing model

With these business models, there are five approaches that can be used:
- Name-Your-Price Model;
- Price Comparison Model;
- Demand-Sensitive Pricing Model;
- Barter Model; and
- Rebate

• Name-Your-Price model

This model allows buyers to fix the price for the products and services that they want to purchase. A
lot of agencies that offer this kind of service have made an agreement with industries such as
tourism, loan and retail. These industries will receive the booking of a buyer’s product at a price
fixed by the buyer from the website handler. Then the industry will decide whether to sell the
requested product or services. If the price fixed by the buyer is unreasonable, they will be asked to
fix a different price. Example of an e-commerce website that uses this approach is
http://travel.priceline.com. The site is shown in Figure 2.10.

Figure 2.10: An e-commerce website that shows a Name-Your-Price model

• Price Comparison model

With this model, a list of firms and products offered by the firm will be displayed to the user. The
user can select the products or services with a low price. The website handler will receive income
by making an agreement with the firms. Example of an e-commerce website that uses this approach
is the www.bottomdollar.com.

38
• Demand-Sensitive pricing model

This model allows a group of visitors to shop online to get a cheaper bulk price when compared to
the price for one item. Example of an e- commerce website that uses this approach is the
www.shop2gether.com.

• Barter model

This model allows users to trade items among themselves. Example of an e-commerce website
that uses this approach is the www.ubarter.com.

• Rebate
This model gives price cut and other special offers to attract customer. Example of an e-commerce
website that uses this approach is the www.ebates.com. This site is shown in Figure 2.11.

Figure 2.11: An e-commerce website that shows a rebate model

(c) E-Commerce advantages

It is undeniable that e-commerce has brought businesses into the web. E-commerce gives a lot of
advantages to traders and buyers too. Some of the advantages that are enjoyed by e-commerce users
are:
(i) E-Commerce enables the global market to be open 24 hours a day. (ii) Business agency has
access to 6.4 billion users around the world. (iii) Customer can compare product prices more easily.

39
(iv) Fast feedback from customers.
(v) Easy and fast information sharing and exchanging.
(vi) Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) in the website give convenient support to users.
(vii) Fast ability to collect and analyse customer information.
(viii) Business agency eliminates the middle party cost such as wholesaler and retailer.
(ix) E-Commerce creates a paperless environment.

2.5.2 Internet marketing

Web users come from different countries around the world and have diverse backgrounds. This
provides the opportunity for effective marketing activities. Every firm that operates physically will
have a product that can be categorised into three groups: manufacturer, retailer or wholesaler. Each
firm can use internet marketing to market their products.

In fact, the web is the most popular platform for internet marketing. Through internet marketing,
companies do not need to send their staff to other places or countries to market their products. The
firm will only need a website in order to promote their products. By using this approach,
expenditure cost can be reduced and at the same time, the latest information can be provided to
buyers. The internet and the website provide traders with a new and easy tool to increase the success
of marketing effort. Internet marketing can also cultivate good relation between business firm and
the user.

When one is considering website publishing, designing issues and types of internet marketing such
as e-mail marketing, promotion, e-advertising, web casting and interactive advertising must be
considered. The type of search engine that will be used must also be thought of too. Figure 2.12
shows a briefing on internet marketing types.

(a) Site designing issues for internet marketing

The capability to search a website and to purchase a product or service is done differently from
the conventional way. Low switching cost plus a fast and easy way to get other competitors, have
made trading in the internet a competitive way of doing business.

There are many features that must be placed in a website to attract the old and the new customers.
Site surfing tools that help customers to search for products, services and information must be
included. FAQ and company profile for customers’ information must be placed at a location that is
easy to access and user friendly. Multimedia applications such as video and audio in a website
are interesting, but not all users have the computer system and high-speed internet access to
download the information efficiently. When building a website, the time needed to download
an element must be considered. Security policy on users’ personal details must be added into the
website and displayed to the users. Figure 2.13 shows some details that can be used to attract the
old and the new customers to surf your website.

40
 Figure 2.13: Website designing issues

(b) E-mail marketing

E-mail marketing provides an effective and cheap way to attract customers. Before starting an e-
mail marketing campaign, an organisation must decide on the campaign’s objective. This is
to ensure the target group, demographic factors, geographical location and personalised
standard. A direct e-mail that has been personalised will target users with specific information.
By using the customer’s name, supplying the right product, at the right time and d e l i v e r i n g
s p e c i a l p r o m o t i o n t o the p r o s p e c t i v e customers according to their interest, can
encourage a warm relationship between a trader and the customers who received the e-mail.
Figure 2.14 shows an advertisement example in an e-mail message.
Some of you may have received e-mails from a company that manages Bonuslink. This is an
example of a personalised e-mail because the e-mail was sent to your e- mail address plus it
personalised the mail by mentioning your name in it.

Figure 2.14: Example of e-mail marketing

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(c) Promotion

Promoting in E-Commerce can attract customers to a website and influence their purchasing
pattern. This can be done online or offline and can include bonus points, discount, free trial or
coupons. Another way of attracting customers to a website is by giving free trials.
For example,www.travelocity.com offers users to try their services as a guest. This website
h e l p s c u s t o m e r s t o p l a n t h e i r h o l i d a y a n d p u r c h a s e h o l i d a y packages offered by
them. The website is always updated with the latest discount and special promotions. Some
websites offer online coupon for online shopping.

(d) E-advertising

E-Advertising is a marketing tool in the web. At the end of the year 1998, E-advertising or online
advertising is an industry that has spent USD 1.8 billion and this figure has expanded into
USD 15 billion in year 2001 as shown in Figure 2.15.

Figure 2.15: Expenditure for E-Advertising Source: Li 1999. (The Forrester Report)

E-Advertising plays the same role as other traditional advertising in channelling information to
users. However, e-advertising i s different from the other traditional advertising because e-
advertising allows interaction with the advertisement. Users can explore the website to search for
extra information or to take further action in purchasing the offered products or services.
Advertising through website provides the opportunity to focus on a target group/user.

Nowadays, advertising for E-Commerce is done by using traditional channels such as television,
film, newspaper and magazine. Most of the firms involved in E-Commerce advertise their
business in television’s prime time slot. For this purpose, the firm will spend a lot of money to
get the prime time slot. Even though newspaper, magazine and television are effective tools for
advertising, internet advertising is also becoming better known. E-advertising also facilitates the
forming of business relationship by allowing a banner to be put on another company’s website and
registering a company website with a search engine and directory.

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(i) Banner

Advertising banners in websites can act as a billboard that contains graphics and advertising
messages. The advantage of this type of advertising is that it increases brand popularity, exposure
and sales. If visitors see a banner advertisement, they may decide to buy the product. Banner can
be built in many sizes and posted at various locations in the website. Some banner advertisements
are designed for displaying purposes while others are linked to the offered product or services’
homepage.

When designing a banner for advertising, it is very important to decide on how the firm wants to be
known. For example, some firms place a logo or a certain colour on their banner. Before posting
banner advertisements on a website, it is important to know the other advertising banners that are
also posted on the website. If a website is full of advertising banners, this will distract the user.
Advertising banners must be placed creatively in a website, which wi l l a t t r a c t t he
c u s t o m e r ’ s attention. After posting an advertisement banner in a website, the advertising
frequency and payment method must be thought of. Some sites will only display advertisement
banner for a certain period of time only. Usually the advertising space will be most expensive
during peak hours. A form of banner advertisement enriched with animation, video and audio is the
Rich-Media Banner.

(ii) Online space purchasing and e-advertising selling

Purchasing an advertising space in a website that receives the highest number of visitors and has a
similar market focus as the retailer can further increase visitors and income. Selling advertising
space on the web can actually bring extra income to us. For purchasing and selling purposes, it is
important to differentiate the unique visitors from all the other visitors to the firm’s website. Most
companies have various methods of payment for advertising in their website. Monthly payment
for online advertising is rarely practiced. Currently, the three common ways of payment are:
- Cost per thousand
- Pay-per-click; and
- Pay-per sale

Another choice of advertising that is quite popular is exchanging advertising space in

the web with another company’s advertising space. This method is effective for businesses that
depend on each other and it is usually done for free.

(iii) Webmercial

Webmercial is a form of E-advertising that has the usual television commercial characteristics.
Webmercial can be displayed for 5 to 25 seconds in a website. Webmercial usually comes in the
pop-up form that will catch the users’ attention when they open a new website. Most Webmercials
are in the form of video clip that requires the user to click on a RealPlayer type application button to
begin the promotion.

(iv) Pop-up ads

There are two t ypes of Pop-up Ads, for example, Int ersi ti al s and S up ersi ti al s . Intersitials is
a web ad that appears between websites. The ad will appear in a new server window. It will appear

43
for several seconds or until a website has been fully downloaded. Intersitials have a
questionnaire component,
feedback, dialogue box, audio and animation. When users click on the Intersitials ads, they will be
redirected to a new website or use the Intersitial for interaction.

Just like Intersitials ads, a Supersitials ad is a form of E-Advertisement that appears between
websites. This form of ad was built by the Unicast Corporation company with the brand name
SupersitialTM. This ad works by saving a memory code (cache) into the user’s web server. Only
after the content of a website has been fully opened, then the Supersitial will be downloaded in the
background. Supersitial ads will not be displayed even though a user opens a website that contains
the ad. Supersitial has a more outstanding characteristic when compared to Intersitial ads. It is
because this ad has animation, graphic, interactive business engine and quality video. Supersitial
also supports Java technology, Flash, HTML and GIF.

Examples of Intersitials ads and further information on Intersitials ads can be seen at the site: -
https://appsamurai.com/interstitial-ads/

(v) The advantages of e-advertising

Both advertiser and user gain from the benefits of E-advertising when compared to other
traditional ways of advertising. The benefits gained by the advertiser are:

• The internet and the web is a large market that offers various types of access to the user.
This will provide the opportunity for advertisers to advertise their products or services.
• The internet and the web provide a platform for getting target users by using ads in
website and by announcing about the latest products to users.
• E-advertising is free from the constraint of time and space. This is different from
traditional advertising.
• E-advertising can be promptly and easily changed and updated when compared to traditional
advertisement.
• Web ads generally are cheaper to build and have a higher level of exposure than
traditional advertisement.
• Web ads are more prestigious, and web ads’ low cost will allow an organisation with a
low advertising budget to compete effectively with big firms that have stable sources of
advertisement.

From the user’s view, the benefits that could be gain are:
• E-advertising allows users to use the web to search for the latest information on products or
services offered.
• The web provides a single interface for users to access information on a product and to shop
online.

(e) Web casting and interactive advertising

Webcasting uses the media based on video and audio elements to broadcast an event in the web.
The video based media uses television simulation. Seller who uses this kind of approach must
also realise that a lot of internet users do not have high-speed internet access. Low-speed internet
access will cause an unclear and static video display.

Interactive advertising means the combination of rich media application (such as video, image and
animation) and traditional media form (such as print media, television and radio advertisement) for
44
an advertisement campaign. It enables user to recognise a company, a product or a brand. An
example of interactive advertising is the advertisement campaign done by the sport company Nike.
The company’s advertisement campaign involves users’ interaction with the television a n d the
web. Nike television advertisement would invite users to visit the company’s website at
www.nike.com. The website offers a selection of sport action pictures for users to choose and
play. Then users will be able to watch the chosen picture display. Users also have the option to
send the picture to their friends. This actually gives a free advertisement for Nike.

You may visit http://www.digiknow.com to see how interactive advertisement is used.

(g) Search engine

Search engine allows users to search for information that are relevant to a specific subject from
the huge amount of information available in the internet and World Wide Web. Examples of
search engines are Yahoo, Alta Vista and Google. Searching for information on the web can be
difficult without the use of search engine. Search engine is a computer program that can scan
websites and then form a list of websites based on keywords entered or according to other
search engines’ scheduling criteria.

Search engine scheduling is important for directing users to a website. The techniques used by a
search engine for scheduling a website will rate the website’s accuracy in the search result.
Companies or organisations can customise and register their site so that their website would be
displayed in the search engine’s result list.

Examples of other search engines are MSN Internet Search, AOL Search, Ask Jeeves, Lycos,
HotBot, MetaCrawler and WebCrawler.

(i) Meta tag

Meta Tag is a HTML tag that holds information on a website. We will discuss HTML and Meta tag
in detail later on in Unit 3. This tag instruction does not change how a website is displayed, but it
contains a website’s particulars. Search e n g i n e s w i l l u s e t h o s e particulars when
scheduling a website.

(ii) Search engine registration

A website registration with a search engine is a very important process. When you register your
website with a search engine, you must also include keywords and your business information with
the search engine. After this process is done, the search engine will insert the given information into
a website database. When users use the search engine, the registered website may be displayed in
the search result list. However, not all search engines use database; some search engines will use
the entire internet to search for information. If you did not register with a search engine, the
search engine might still be able to recognise your website but the probability of your website to
be found by the search engine in the searching process is not high.

(h) Internet marketing issues

Global marketing can create various unique challenges. If a trader is not sensitive towards
linguistic, legislation and custom, it can fail to market a product or a service. With the World
Wide Web, online traders must give full attention to h o w t hei r i nt ernat i onal customers
interact with t h ei r website. For web marketing purposes, the website design must be in
45
multiple languages and prices quoted in different currencies. Customers must also be able to
access currency exchange information from the website.

2.5.3 E-learning
The E-learning industry has expanded rapidly with increasing number of users who owned
computers with internet access. Universities and training firms offer quality long distance education
by using websites. E-learning is defined as a networking technology application for designing,
sending, selecting, governing and furthering education.

Specifically, E-learning is a process that uses the internet and the web with components such as
main content in multiple formats, learning experience management, community with students in a
network, content author and expert. The basic elements of E-Learning are technology, content and
service. There are even experts that defined E-Learning as any education that uses the web to offer
learning solutions.

All of the E-learning definitions mentioned above clearly showed that the web plays an important
role in offering education to its users.

(a) Web component in e-learning

The popular web components used in E-learning to highlight education to the user are:

Figure 2.16: Web components in E-learning

(i) Web-based training (WBT)

WBT is a long distance learning approach that uses internet and web technology. WBT gives a
direct content that can be changed dynamically. WBT allows structured learning presentation and
self- instruct learning and participation in various discussion topics. WBT loaded with various
media such as virtual reality, real-time audio and video provides the best mode to reach users from
all over the world through the web. WBT offers subject that can be accessed through the web in
just about anytime and anywhere. One of the training firms that is heavily involved in WBT is
46
Deitel & Associates at www.deitel.com. The WBT built by the firm uses a cyber-class approach
with laboratory characteristics. There are websites that use WBT to offer courses without any
payment. This type of WBT has a social service element. Visit WebED Learning Centre at
http://www.webed.com/

The advantages and the disadvantages of WBT, are clearly explained at

http://www.webbasedtraining.com/primer.aspx

(ii) Virtual class

The rapid growth of internet and computer technology have enabled lecturer and tutor to teach and
to use the computer without the existence of a physical classroom. Virtual Class is the place
where lecturer and students meet. The Virtual Class offers all the techniques that can be applied
physically in the classroom. These include presentation, discussion, practise, exam and social
interaction. The two main components in a virtual class are:

• Content Push - Content Push allows lecturer to upload learning notes in a virtual class
environment
• Interaction -The virtual class gives an interface for interaction during the learning session.
The interaction is upgraded with the presence of chat room and bulletin board in the virtual class.

The benefits of virtual class are:

• Enables lecturer and student to take part in learning irrespective of geographical area.
• Allows announcement on course syllabus including objectives, schedule and assignment
• Virtual class in a virtual website also gives the e-mails of the lecturer and all the
students for interaction purposes outside of the virtual class environment.
• Virtual class allows a direct coverage in various topics using video and audio
technology. Also, virtual class allows graphic format support.
• Test, exam plus grading can be done in the virtual class.

(iii) Web course tools (WCT)

WCT is another web component used in E-learning for highlighting learning to user and to
student. WCT allows lecturer and student to use web technology to heighten their learning
experience. For interaction purpose between lecturer and lecturer, WCT has a chat room, e-mail and
bulletin board. WCT comes with a course development tool that enables academics to
development supplementary materials for a course or to insert the complete content of a new course
into the WCT learning hub. Among the examples for WCT concept application is WebCT,
Blackboard and Desire2Learn, MyVista

(c) The future of e-learning

The emergence of web technologies and fast internet network is predicted to catalyse the growth
of E-learning. Websites developed to fulfil the demands of E-learning is expected to integrate
multimedia components tremendously. Real time interaction facility using teleconference will also
play an important role in E-learning. Last but not least, Short Messaging System (SMS) will also
become an important element in E-learning.

47
Even though the future of E-learning is bright, there are still some obstacles that can impact the
development of E-learning itself. These include low internet penetration in some places. A low-
speed internet access will cause slow downloading and if the website is rich with multimedia
elements, the display will be slow too. There are even obstacles such as individual principle that
can impact the development of E-learning. For example, a student who is not comfortable learning
in cyber style would prefer the traditional way that enables teaching-learning to be done face to face
with the lecturer.

2.5.4 Web TV
Web TV is a way to bring television programmes into the web. Television in the web has
interactive characteristics. Now Web TV emerges as a broadcasting system that enables users to
receive, to supply and to interact with information and other users. Web and television developed
jointly with the birth of the latest technology. Television content can be inserted into the web with
the presence of a technology called Intercast. Intercast allows the reception of both television and
web signals via a television set and computer. The Intercast technology is designed by Intel
Corporation. Intercast technology functions by entering web data into the television programme by
using Vertical Blanking Interval (VBI).

The web can be accessed through the television set that has been connected to a set-top box. This
box system brings web technology to the television set. By using the set-top box and telephone line,
Web TV user can dial to the internet service provider via a modem to surf the internet, to send and
to receive e-mail and to chat with other users in the internet. When sending an e-mail, user can
attach picture and audio clip using video camera, digital camera and VCR. Web TV also increases
television programming by enabling user to pause, fast forward and replay both recorded live
screening while watching one of the television show.

The Web TV basic system has a wireless keyboard, 8.6-GB hard disc storage, 56- Kps modem and
the ability to record television programme for 6 hours. There are other Web TV systems that are
more expensive and with bigger storage capacity. Web TV enables the television to act as an
entertainment centre that can bring the web and other internet functions such as e-mail along with
traditional programmes. According to a research done, users are likely to use Web TV to increase
the experience of watching television more than using the computer itself. Figure 2.18 shows a
Web TV broadcasting system.

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Figure 2.18: Web TV broadcasting system

Aside from integrating the television into the web, there are even websites that simulate the
television by broadcasting content through the web. These websites have started to broadcast
documentary and drama, news, game show, talk show, and entertainment through the web. Even
though these websites do not showcase the entire television programme, they use video clips that can
be displayed in the internet network.

2.5.5 Web radio

Web radio is now the new alternative to traditional radio that is broadcasted by wave. Web radio
that uses web technology offers various services compared to traditional radio. This is because
traditional radio is confined to broadcasting signal application and audio only, whereas web radio is
supported by latest technologies such as graphic, text, audio video that can satisfy users’ demand.
Web radio is equipped with a variety of news such as international news, weather,
entertainment, sports and business.

There are even web radios that offer talk-show and chat-room for interaction purposes. Most web
radio stations only exist in the web and they have no physical station to broadcast their show like
traditional radio stations. A cyber station can be developed by anyone with a minimum cost of USD
10 000 for buying software and equipment compared to the cost of USD 250 000 to build an actual
radio station. Web radio also does not require a license and has no control by the government.
According to a research done in 1997, nine out of ten users who surf the internet frequently use web
radio (Taylor, 1997).

49
(a) The Benefits of Web Radio and Its Challenges
Web radio offers a lot of benefits when compared to traditional radio as stated below:

(i) Users only need to select an audio file from the archive when they want to listen to that
particular audio. The Web audio files can be listened for as many times as the users wish for
without considering when the file was first broadcasted. Users are also not confined to broadcasting
schedules that require users to wait for broadcasting time.

(ii) Web radio allows the programme to be listened to from any part of the world irrespective
of the programme’s original broadcasting location. This is different from traditional radio that
requires users to be located in the receiving wave range.

(iii) Web radio not only allows users to listen to the programme but enables them to watch it
too. For example, songs or news broadcast via web radio can be seen through text, graphic or
video. This provides multiple selections to users if compared to traditional radio.

(iv) The multitasking technology that provides users the ability to listen to radio programmes via
web radio and at the same time to surf the web have contributed to web radio’s popularity.

Even though web radio has a lot of benefits but there are still many challenges that need to be
handled in web radio application. Among the challenges and obstacles that have been identified are:

(i) Voice quality of the internet is a main obstacle in web radio application.
Most of t he i nt ern et users using 28.8 kbps i nt ernet connection speed frequently received
disruptive sound quality from Web radio.

(ii) Users take a long time to download an audio file. There are even web radios that cannot
support too many users at one time.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/music/best-internet-radio-stations/

2.5.6 Online newspaper

You have previously been exposed to the many perspectives and implications of the technological
development of using the Web, especially in education, business and mass communication that
involved advertising, broadcasting (radio and television). The media landscape has clearly not been
excluded in facing the evolutional wave of current technology.

Back then, the print media (such as newspaper) is a news source that provides numerous
information to the public. Nowadays, there are news being published in the cyber space. Online
news or anything that are known as netpapers are starting to be used as an alternative to broadcast
news to the public. However, printed news or net news, have basically the same function in
collecting, evaluating and managing information to the mass public.

Through online news, news flow is accessible to the public in a short period of time. The boundary
of time and space is no longer an obstacle to users who want the latest news for their necessity and
satisfaction. Through the web and the push technology, users have the chance to get the latest news
that are always updated and published.

50
Push technology means a data or information that is automatically send to a computer on an
interval period or when caused by an event.
At the same time, there are news archives that can be accessed. In other words, news publishing in
the web provides multiple selections, is capable of interaction and has interface with details that are
perceived as news source. Figure 2.19 is an example of an online newspaper.

Figure 2.19: The Star Online newspaper homepage web at www.thestar.com.my

Below are several online newspaper websites that can be visited:

Herald http://www.herald.co.zw
Newsday http://www.newsday.co.zw
Dailynews http://www.dailynews.co.zw

(a) The difference between online newspaper and printed news

News displayed on the web is different when compared to printed news in the way it is displayed
and its application. The advantages of online news are summarised as below:

(i) Online news is limitless when compared to printed news. Through the web, summary version
can be displayed, while the complete news can be displayed through a link.

(ii) Online news have no limitation in boundary and no time limit. The numerous news
displayed cover international, local and regional news.

(iii) The latest news can be posted on the web. The news is updated continuously while
news archive can be read again.

51
(iv) The news presentation on the web is not just in visual form, in fact, it is combined with
audio, text, video and graphic.

(v) News content is presented in multiple formats followed by news in multiple versions and
hypertext interaction. Convenience such as e- mail and bulletin board for example, give users the
chance to provide feedbacks.

When discussing on the latest development in news broadcasting, some important questions must
be understood from the implications of online journalism to the media industry. Will web news
replaced the printed news or those broadcasted on the television? News delivery in the era of
current technology implies the web as the main medium. The conventional method in news
broadcasting has now move over to a dynamically interactive way and capable of reaching out to
users through the web with no boundary.

One of the effects that can clearly be seen is the implication on the news flow. It simultaneously
questions the issue concerning news source and the role of journalist in the internet era. The
organisation in the media industry and the question on ownership faced changes in the current news
presentation.

2.6 Summary
Web p u b l i s h i n g is a website constructing process t h a t u s e s s y s t e m a t i c methods. Web
publishing has contributed to the rise of many types of website with different business objectives
and motives. The web platform has been manipulated by industrial and individual parties in order to
reach their business objectives or targets. The progress of web technology and an established internet
infrastructure are expected to contribute to the birth of creative and innovative websites for
attracting more visitors.

KEY TERMS
E-Advertising Web Publishing
E-Commerce Web-Radio
E-Learning Web-TV
Internet Marketing

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REFERENCE
Dodd, J. (2004). Avoid the Hustle and Bustle. PC Novice. p. 4

Lemay, L. (2000). Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 Days Professional
Reference Edition. (2nd ed.). Indiana: SAMS.

Lowe, D . & H a l l , W. (1999). H y p e r m e d i a and The Web: An Engineering Approach.

Chichester Wiley.

Martin, J. (1990). Hyperdocument and How to Create Them. Englewood: Prentice Hall.

Salim, J. & Yaakob, Y. (2000). Hyper document: An Innovative Tool for Teaching and Learning.
Proceeding of the International Conference on Teaching and Learning. Strategising
Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century. 24th to 25th November 2000, Putrajaya.
Bangi: Faculty of Education, University Kebangsaan Malaysia.

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Unit 3 Legal Aspects: Ethics and Social in Internet Application

3.0 Introduction
In this topic, we will see how internet application has given a new challenge to the fields of
legislation, ethics and social. The challenges and dimensional issues in the cyber world are far more
different when compared to the actual physical environment. The currently available conventional
law is hard to apply on the internet.

3.1 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
 evaluate legal issues and state examples of internet abuse
 explain safety precautions for social interaction on the internet
 evaluate the complexity of collecting internet taxes
 discuss the country’s ICT laws and internet usage ethics

3.2 Legal Issues: Privacy in the Intern

Laws are formulated to regulate the activities that take place in the community. Enforcing a law by
filtering the internet can cause conflict, because something that is legal in country X, maybe
banned in country Y. Is there a need for a standard law that can be accepted by all countries with
different customs and traditions on this issue?

The internet is very dynamic and different from the physical environment. Therefore, traditional law
application for the internet is definitely unsuitable, disorganised and challenging. The internet is a
self-regulated medium. It means the internet industry controls its own activities. The internet
expands without being influenced or restricted by the law. Thus, problems can arise because the
internet industry does not have a guideline that can be followed in the cyber world.

According to a research done Hendrickson (2000), 97% of the studied websites collect their users’
personal particulars, but only 62% of the studied websites inform users that their personal particulars
will be collected. Plus, 57% of the studied websites use a tracking device to track their users’
activities. This information is worrying especially on the users’ part because they are being
observed without their knowledge.

Most of the websites gather the user’s personal particulars when the user is using their websites.
Whether the user realised it or not that his activity or personal particulars are being gathered by the
website depends on the method used by the website. Among the approach that can be used for
‘observing’ the user is by using cookies or tracking device. In the next sections, we will see some
internet application privacy issues from the user and corporate’s perspective.

3.3 Cookies
Cookies is a text file that is stored by the website into the user’s personal computer without the
user’s knowledge. When a user visits a website for the first time, he will receive cookies. The
cookies will be activated every time the user visits the website again. The information that are
54
saved in the cookies are log on information, purchase done on the website, websites visited before
and after visiting the current website. Amazon.com is an example of a website that sends cookies to
the user’s computer. Even though cookies are stored in the user’s computer, they do not interact with
the computer system. Cookies example is shown in Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1: Example of a website that requests the user’s permission to open the cookies file in
the user’s computer.

Cookies can be beneficial to the user. This is because they save information on the user who visited
the website and on product or service purchasing pattern. This enables traders to do a personalised
marketing to the user.

However, all the benefits that can be gained by a trader are achieved after neglecting the user’s
privacy. A lot of parties question the application of cookies because it abuses the individual’s
freedom and privacy rights. Even though cookies can be deactivated in the user’s computer by the
user, many users do not know the operation on how to deactivate the cookies. One must bear in mind
that by deactivating cookies, users may be unable to surf certain websites.

3.4 Employee-Employer Relationship in the Internet Environment

A lot of organisations and corporate firms observe their employees when they use the internet for
office tasks. This action could strain the employee and employer relationship. Example of the
latest technology that can be used to observe the computer user’s activity is the keystroke cops. The
employer’s action to observe their employee’s activity has been questioned by worker associations.

The employee must also realise that using the internet for personal reason must be avoided
because it can result in poor productivity. Opening video files in the internet during working hours
can cause congestion in the server. This can affect other users because a sluggish internet system
can cause the downloading of important files to take a longer time.

55
3.5 Tracking device
One approach used by online traders or marketers to track their users’ behaviour is by using tracking
device. The users’ habits that are mostly wanted by traders are the types of product or merchandise
that are usually bought, the purchasing pattern and the frequency of visit to the website. By
using this information, traders can structure and personalise their marketing according to the
users’ taste. However, most users and users’ association question this method because in their
opinion, it abuses the users’ privacy rights.

ACTIVITY 3.1

Do you realise that the firm you are working with, has a tracking device
to observe your internet activities? Is their action appropriate? Are they
? abusing your privacy rights? Share your opinions with your classmates.
3.1.4 Protecting Yourself as a User

In order to protect oneself when using the internet, there are several approaches that can be used by
the user. For example, a user can surf a website or other internet application by using a different
identity or an anonymous identity. A user can fake his personal particulars. The objective is not to
scam anyone but for protecting oneself. There are internet services that enable a user to surf the web
without giving away his identity that is by using a digital certificate. A digital certificate is actually a
document given out by a trusted authorized certification party such as a third party or a monetary
institution

Figure 3.2: Example of an authorised certification party issued by a monetary institution

56
The World Wide Web consortium has introduced the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P). This
consortium has given out their questionnaire form for users that use the latest web browser such as
Internet Explorer or Netscape. The purpose of this questionnaire is to study the level of privacy that
web users demand. Then, the server will conform to the level of privacy demanded by the users
and will only allow them to interact with the website according to the users’ selected privacy choice.

3.6 Protecting the Corporate Company

For corporate companies that owned a website, they have to prepare a message on privacy policy
in their websites; for their visitors’ acknowledgement. Corporate parties must respect the
privacy policy. Besides that, corporate parties must guard all the information so that it would not
be abused by another party.

In order to make sure that users have confidence and trust towards a corporation, the corporate
website owner must follow these guidelines:

(i) User must be informed that their personal particulars will be

requested/collected.
(ii) User must be given the freedom to decide how their personal particulars can be used.
(iii) User must be allowed to recheck his given information. This is to ensure that the
information given by the user is complete and accurate. User must also be given the choice to
change his given data or information.
(iv) The information given by the user is guaranteed to be confidential.
(v) The website must accept full responsibility to ensure that all the above steps are followed.

For further information on privacy issues, visit the website www.privacyright.org.

3.7 Other Legal Issues

Let’s look into every of the issues below

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3.8 Using of children in the internet
Children must not be exposed to pornography elements. Children must also never get involved
in any immoral activities in the internet. It is unlawful to distribute child pornography in the
internet. America has laws that protect children in the cyber environment. One of the laws’ main
characteristic is that a website cannot gather personal particulars from children below the age of 13
without their guardian’s or parent’s consent.

3.9 Intellectual rights

Ownership right and patent are examples of intellectual rights. Intellectual Rights are protection
given to the author or the creator of an original product or a service. This includes music, drama,
business product and others. Individuals who want to use a product or a service that has intellectual
rights can only do so after receiving a written permission from the original creator who holds
the intellectual rights. Usually the original creator will receive a royalty from the party who
wants to use or to distribute the original creation. Application, distribution or alteration of a
product with intellectual rights without the consent of its creator is a major offence and legal
action can be taken. Most digital products like music and songs can be reproduced by using the
internet. This has created the debate on how far traditional laws can protect intellectual properties
that were distributed in the internet without the original owner’s consent.

Another industry that is suffering loss due to intellectual property abuse is the software industry,
which is facing rampant piracy problem. A research done by the Microsoft Company in 1998,
showed that it suffered a total loss of USD 11 billion due to illegal copying of the company’s
personal computer software applications. The loss is due to sharing of invalid licence, digital
copying without permission, cultural difference that has different interpretations on piracy and
many others.

3.10 SPAM E-mail

E-mail is a popular form of online communication in the internet. In 1996, 20 million e-mail users
have sent 500 million messages per day in America. This number has reached 105 million users
with the amount of messages as many as1500 million per day. A research conducted by the media
firm AOL (Herbeck, 2000) found out that one in every three messages that were sent daily can be
classified as unsolicited commercial e-mail or SPAM.

SPAM happens when an organisation or perhaps an individual sent out a huge amount of e-mails by
using an anonymous identity or a firm name. You may have received this SPAM e-mail yourself.
How do you feel when you see a huge number of SPAM e-mails in your e-mail account? Figure
3.3 shows an example of a user’s e-mail that has been spammed.

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Figure 3.3: SPAM e-mail example

As the e-mail receiver, you do not have the authority to ask the SPAM senders to take your name
off their mailing list. Currently there is no law that can control SPAM even though some countries
have formed panels to draft laws to control SPAM. SPAM e-mails can cause the e-mail server to
be full with this kind of mails. Recognising this situation, some firms that offer web e-mail such
as Hotmail, provide free services that filter all e-mails received by its users. Although this
method does not fully eradicate SPAM but it does lessen the amount of SPAM received by e-
mail users.

3.11 Electronic Business Trade

Using the internet for business transaction is very popular. This helps with the emergence of many
E-commerce websites. Some legal issues have been raised regarding electronic business trade. One
of the issues that users frequently encounter is that their personal details could be access by a
third party when making online transaction. Among the users’ information that could be accessed
illegally b y a third party are purchasing pattern and o t h e r c o n f i d e n t i a l information
such as users’ account number. All of this information could be used by an irresponsible party to
perform online business transaction by using the users’ credit card without their knowledge.

To ensure the security of electronic business transaction and to convince internet users, a lot of
encryption technology has been developed. Computer software that uses encryption technology
has also been developed. This software technology enables business agencies and their customer to
communicate online without the information being accessed by a third party. This technology is
capable of preventing information theft. However, software that uses the latest encryption
technology is under government supervision. Besides that, export control could also prevent
software companies from developing software that uses encryption technology. This prevents a lot
of users from having the latest encryption technology. There are computer experts that can decode
encrypted data back into its original form. Figure 3.4 shows an encryption technology that is used to
prevent information breach by a third party.

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Figure 3.4: Encryption and decryption technology

3.12 “Freedom of Speech” in the Internet

Is the internet a platform for mass communication? The answer to this question is still being debated
by many parties. Even without a concrete resolution to this question, it still does not abate the
discussion that links the internet with the freedom of speech issue. Some countries monitor their
printing media such as newspaper so that it would not have anti-government sentiment. There are
also countries that do not apply any restriction on their country’s printing media. How about the
internet? In America, restriction is not applied on printing media such as the newspaper. However,
for the internet, every case that has been reported will be look at on a case-by-case or technology-
by-technology basis. Different countries have their own approach to handle the freedom of
speech issue in the internet. Thus, when someone wants to upload articles with political element in
the internet platform, he must be cautious.

3.13 Social Issues

The emergence of the internet has given a new dimension to the interaction pattern between
communities. The internet enables a community to be form regardless of border and cultural
restriction. While the web, specifically, enables interaction between larger groups, who come from
various backgrounds, interests and ideas. In this section, we will see how the internet has evolved
to fulfil users’ social appetite by creating a virtual community and allowing the access of
unlimited information.

3.14 Online Community

The internet has changed the way people meet and interact. In the cyber world like the internet,
we do not know the presence of a new member unless he posts a message, picture or communicate
via video camera. In the internet, our physical features or characters are not known to others. We
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recognise one another through conversation. This can be seen in chat room. The virtual
community created by the internet to enable members from different backgrounds to interact on
certain topics. A lot of virtual communities have been created in the internet to enable individuals
with the same interest to take part. Some communities organise political and social discussions.

The virtual community concept is also widely formed all over the world by governments while not
being realised by their own citizen. For example, Singapore has launched an effort known as
IT2000 to portray the Singapore Republic as an intelligent island in year 2000. While Japan
has an electronic vision that is called Teletopia. The United States has a National Information
Initiative (NII) plan to connect every school and children to the internet by the year 2000.

Even though the virtual community has advantages because it allows open interaction between
various different individuals, users must be cautious when taking part in the virtual community. A
fanatic virtual community that criticises culture and religion must be avoided by users. Virtual
community members too must be cautious of other members because they may be using a different
identity for purposes that can cost or endanger other members.

3.15 Internet Taxation

In traditional business, if a buyer and a supplier happened to be in the same place or state, they may
be charged with sales tax by the local authority. If both the user and the supplier are in different
location or state, they may be charged with a tariff depending on the selling or buying that was
done. The ability of the authority to collect tax depends on the physical presence of both the user
and the supplier. Now consider the situation below that involves online business trade. Let’s discuss
the scenario:

A consumer in Zimbabwe had bought a computer online by using an E-commerce website registered
in America. The purchased computer was sent to the buyer’s son who is studying in Britain. The
question now, can the Zimbabwean, American or British Authority charge sales tax to the supplier
and user?

The answer is no (at least currently). However, there is pressure from sovereign governments,
especially America, to legalise internet taxation. This issue has long been debated by various parties.
A lot of parties including consumers and corporations had objected to internet taxation because it
can impair the internet’s growth plus affect the business agencies that are involved in E-commerce.
There is a high possibility that users from developing countries such as Malaysia will be subjected to
internet taxation by developed countries in the near future.

For further information about where other countries stand on internet taxation, visit the European
website: http://www.taxprophet.com/faq/991114.htm.

3.16 ICT Legislation in Zimbabwe

Table 3.1: ICT laws in Zimbabwe

No ICT laws in Zimbabwe

1 Zimbabwe National Policy For Information And Communications Technology (ICT)
2 2016
Cybercrime And Cybersecurity Bill, 2017
3 Electronic Transactions And Electronic Commerce Bill 11 June 2013

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3.17 Summary
This topic has discussed the internet application on the aspects of legislation, ethics and social. It is
undeniable that the internet has provided a new platform that enables a lot of functions to be
performed. Still, the internet is also subject to abuse by irresponsible parties to gain profit or to
achieve their personal goal.

Internet users must be aware of the existing internet abuses so that they can take the right action
when facing the situation. Users also cannot use the issue in internet abuses as an excuse to not using
the internet. In order to overcome the internet abuse problem, a mutual standard that involves all
countries must be formed.

KEY TERMS
Cookies Social SPAM Tracking
Ethics
Online Communication

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REFERENCES
Hendrickson, D. (2000). FTC Proposal for Web Privacy Guidelines Meets with Mixed Reception.
Mass High Tech 5 to 11 June, 2000. p.11

Herbeck, D. (2000). Lecture Notes. Boston College

Lemay, L. (2000). Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 Days Professional
Reference Edition. (2nd ed.). Indiana: SAMS.

Lowe, D . & H a l l , W. (1999). H y p e r m e d i a and The Web: An Engineering Approach.

Chichester Wiley.

Martin, J. (1990). Hyperdocument and How to Create Them. Englewood: Prentice Hall.

Salim, J. & Yaakob, Y. (2000). Hyper document: An Innovative Tool for Teaching and Learning.
Proceeding of the International Conference on Teaching and Learning. Strategising
Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century. 24th ă 25th November 2000, Putrajaya.
Bangi: Faculty of Education, University Kebangsaan Malaysia.

63
Unit 4 Pre – Web Publishing

4.0 Introduction
In this era, the web has become a necessity to most individuals not because it is a new technology,
but the benefits it can offer us. The internet has become a tool for communication, trading and
entertainment. There are lots of websites that provide services such as purchasing airline ticket,
providing information on products, services, university courses and ordering kitchen supplies.
Before we go any further in learning to build a website, basic knowledge in web publishing
planning is essential.

4.1 Objectives
By the end of the unit, you should be able to:
 describe the 4 early steps in building a website
 compare the various types of ISP and know
 list the three types of internet connection
 explain project management methods
 compare the type of web base structure
 list three types of web server and know how to set-up a server

4.2 The Beginning Step

A web building process must begin with good planning. Among the strategies that must be
considered include the target and potential that can be offered by the website, the building method
to reached the web base, the building technique and the maintaining of website projects.

4.3 Website Target

The first step that must be done is to recognise the website’s requirements and to decide whether it
can solve the problems that you or your company is facing. Regardless of what the background or
target is in building a website, you must understand that the main target is to ensure that the
website can increase productivity.

Figure 4.1 shows you the aspects that can assist you to decide on your website’s target.

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Figure 4.1: Website targets

The explanations for each of the website target are as below:

1. Strategic objective. You must set the m a i n t a r g e t t h a t w i l l b e t h e fundamental

of the website building. Therefore, all of your operation must be set to achieve this objective. For
example, if you are someone who is actively involved in business, maybe the main target for the
website building is to promote the products or services of your company.

2. Target user. The website can be used for sharing information, e-commerce, promoting a
product or service, or spreading public information. Recognising your target user can help to
ensure the website meets its building objective.

3. Handler capability. The cost involves the renting of website base on the web server,
the initial website design work and the subsequent maintenance of website. Time is also a
cost because you will need sufficient time to update the website information.

4. Reputation evaluator. You must set the criteria that can measure your website’s
effectiveness to determine whether the desired targets have been achieved. For example, if your
website is disseminating public information, then the total user visit is important. Whereas, if you
are a teacher who puts his class notes on the website, the increase in total students who make the
grade can be the measuring stick.

5. Website promotion. This strategy is to encourage visitors to your website is very crucial. If
neglected, the existence of your website may not be known to anyone at all. You can register your
website address (URL) to a search engine for free. So users get to visit your website by searching
for information that has a link to your website theme. You can also spend a little cost to put your
URL on a business card or put a banner on other websites.

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4.4 Internet or Intranet Application
After decide the target of your website, you must decide whether to build a website that will be
posted in the internet or the intranet. Both have the same characteristic and application of
technology such as web server and database application. The skills for building website for internet
and intranet are also the same. However, the website usually functions differently for the internet
and the intranet. The website posted in the internet will need a builder and users to visit the World
Wide Web that is rich with information. However, a website in the intranet is placed in a
geographical location such as in an office or a building. If your intranet has an internet connection,
this means your website is accessible to World Wide Web users (outside the intranet). Thus
attention must be given to security issues.

Even though both of the technologies are alike, the users’ needs are different. Usually the website
posted on the intranet is for the daily operational requirement of a company. So all the website
functions must be supportive of the company’s activities. Compare to the website in the intranet,
internet websites are usually just for distributing information.

The website owner’s right must be given attention. For example, a company intranet website is
not controlled by one person only. The information contents will be updated by all the staff. This
will raise security issues especially concerning the granting of access right to the rightful user only
and blocking internet user’s access from updating data that should not be exposed to people outside
the company.

4.5 Connection to the Website

Before you build a website, you must select the programming method that will update your files.
The selection that you must make includes the type of Internet Service Provider (ISP) and the
connection that will be used.

4.6 Selecting ISP

The first thing in building a website is to get the connection to the internet. For example, if you are
a personal user, you can use the services provided by the ISP. As a college or a university student,
you can also use the connection service that is provided in the campus area. There are a lot of
companies that provide access service to the internet. Examples of ISP in Zimbabwe are ZARNET,
TELONE and LIQUID. The ISP can be divided into several categories based on the services
provided, for example FreeISP, SubscriptionISP, Co- hosting and Inhouse. FreeISP is an ISP that
gives free web site to the user. SubscriptionISP means the user will have to subscribe to get the web
base service. Co-hosting allows the user to place a web server in the ISP. While In house, is an ISP
that gives a fixed Internet Protocol (IP) address so users can place the web server in their own place.

POWERTEL and TELONE are ISP examples i n Z i m b a b w e that provide SubscriptionISP,

Co-hosting and Inhouse. Table 4.1 shows the advantages and disadvantages of every ISP from the
service aspect provided in order to build a website.

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Table 4.1: The advantages and disadvantages of ISP

ISP Type Advantages Disadvantages

FreeISP Cheap, mostly provide web site Most of them do not allow the using
of script, due to high number of
users
SubscriptionISP Provides various services to Need comparison to select the ISP
businesses, supports script with the best service
Co-hosting Web server could perform all types Expensive because of the server
of script management cost in the ISP

In house You have total control on the web Requires a large broadband and
server, script and information high maintenance cost

4.7 Making a Connection

When you have chosen the ISP, the next step is to select the connection method to the internet. For
personal user, the most common method is by using a modem that is connected to a personal
computer. This method is the easiest and cost effective when compared to other methods as listed in
Table 4.2.

Table 4.2: Various types of connection to the internet

Connection Type Advantages Disadvantages

Modem Cheap, supported by all ISPs Slow (56Kb dial-up), easily

disconnected when number of
user increases, suitable for home
user
ISDN (Integrated Effective dial-up connection, Expensive adapter and line
Services Digital speedy connection from a modem compared to the modem
Network) (64Kb-128Kb)

Leased line Fixed line, suitable for In Connecting hardware very

house server application expensive

The right selection will depend on the web site requirements and the type of ISP that you have
chosen. Most of the telecom companies, for example TelOne , has the above connecting services for
personal and business users.

4.8 Planning
The important thing before you start to operate a web site, is to think of several planning aspects
first. Some of the important matters when planning are project management, domain registration and
site structure selection.

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4.8.1 Project management
One of the aspects that is frequently forgotten in website publishing is the method to manage the
project. A successful project is one where its resources are distributed fairly, the important dates
monitored and tasks completed.

Most of the website publishing projects have shortcomings such as lack of staff, time and money.
The first step is to divide the project into smaller tasks with its own deadline. The smaller tasks
must be executed in sequence which ultimately will result in the completion of a website.
Resources such as money must be allocated for each task. The website builder must also give a
warning if his assignment is going to take a longer period than planned.

Besides that, it must be ensured that the time allocated is sufficient for completing the task based
on the given time and money. If there are any changes to the resources, for example, the reduction
in money allocated, the project schedule must be altered according to the task’s priority.

The project can be planned by using two approaches, which are:

 Fix the project’s start date and the schedule will be planned according to the project
deadline; or

 Fix the project’s final date first. So the schedule will be planned backward according to the
expected available time.

4.8.2 Domain registration

A website can be accessed by referring to its domain name, which is the address typed by user in
the web server. Aside from the web base location, the domain name must also be given
consideration because a suitable domain name would be easier for users to visit your website. For
example, you need to choose a name that is easy to remember or the same name as the company
name or services that your company offers.

The domain name must be registered with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN, www.icann.org) who will appoint valid registrars.

Below are some guidelines for domain name registration:

 The b u s i n e s s dom ai n nam e i n Zimbabwe ends w i t h .com.zw. If your business is an

international one, the .com name would be best.

 To avoid your competitors from using your company’s domain name, register for all types
of name for example .com, .com.zw, .net.

 A domain name is a connecting word made up of alphabets, numbers and hyphens (-).
Other characters (! #, $, ^, & and others) cannot be used.

 The registering fee for one domain name in Zimbabwe is US$120.00. The annual fee is
US$120.00.

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4.8.3 Selecting web site structure
There are several types of structure or technique for connecting web files in the completed web site.
Among the popular structures are linear, hierarchy and grid. Structure selection depends on the
presentation manner and the suitability of information that you want to present. Next, the website
structures will be discussed in detail.

(a) Linear

Linear structure is the condition where every file in the website is connected to the webpage before
and after it in a chain form. It can be pictured as if you are in a long corridor. The corridor is
partitioned by doors to form smaller divisions. If you are at the end of the corridor and you want to
go to the other end, you must open all the doors and go through each division until you
reached the end. See Figure 4.3.

Figure 4.3: Linear website structure

This structure is suitable if the information that you want to present have a certain sequence.
Presentation website, slide show and exploration are examples of website categories suitable for this
structure.

To feel the experience of going through a linear structured website, study this website at
https://www.aconex.com/register-on-aconex.

(b) Hierarchy

Hierarchy structure is a website arrangement that starts with a general topic and then connects to
other specific topics. A specific website can also be connected to other detailed topics and so on.
You can picture the website just like your family tree. Figure 4.4 illustrates a hierarchy website.

69
 Figure 4.4: Hierarchy website structure

Examples of website that uses this structure are search engines such as Yahoo. The homepage has
general topics such as Images, News, Maps, Sports, Entertainment and many more. In the
Entertainment topic, there are specific topics such as Movies, Tvs, and other related topics.

ACTIVITY 4.2

Visit these websites to look closer at hierarchy structured websites.

? • www.excite.com

www.looksmart.com

www.lycos.com

Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the hierarchy structure of all website.

(c) Grid

Grid structure is a website that is arranged in a matrix form with a certain number of row and
column. This web structure is very rare and least used by website builders. It is only suitable for
websites that require direction to guide you to move up, down, left or right.

This structure is suitable for websites that display catalogue items with the column to represent item
set and the row to represent item type. Figure 4.5 shows a grid structure website.

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 Figure 4.5: Shows a grid structure website

ACTIVITY 4.3

?
Give examples of website that uses a grid structure

(d) Others

When building a website, you do not have to stick to one type of structure only. You can combine
two or more types of structure. For example, you can combine the linear and the hierarchy
structure as in Figure 4.6.

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 Figure 4.6: Combination of linear and hierarchy structures website

You can use any structure. Figure 4.7 shows a random structure.

Figure 4.7: A random structure

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The application of a random structure may be confusing because visitors can easily get lost and
cannot be certain whether he has visited your entire website or not.

ACTIVITY 4.4

?What What is the website structure that you think is suitable to present the organisation
structure of a company?
Why did you choose this structure? Share your answers in class.

4.9 Setting Up Web Server

After you have done a detailed planning on the building tasks, registered a suitable domain name
and selected the best website structure, you can now prepare the base for your website. The
important aspect in preparing the web server is the location where you place the server and the type
of web server that you will use.

4.10 Identifying Server Location

A website developer usually wants to locate the website in a personal web server located in the
company or Inhouse. With this method, the web publisher has full control. Business organisations or
institutions such as university that have leased line are capable of doing this because of their speedy
connection to the ISP. However, if you are renting a web base in the internet, there won’t be any
issue on server location because it will be handled by the company that rents out the web server.

If you are using a leased line, it has its own problems. The website that you built cannot function
continuously by just using a modem that is connected to your office network. You will need a
router to transfer data from LAN to the internet because your web server will be connected to the
internet all the time. You may also need a firewall to prevent internet hackers from intruding other
computers that are in your LAN.

Usually, the responsibility to execute the server set-up and maintenance is not the responsibility
of the programmer. It is the responsible of the IT department or unit. However, if you are a
programmer, it is better that you know as much as possible about your web server’s operating
system, especially if you were granted the responsibility to manage and to maintain the web site.

4.11 Sever Set Up

Web server is required for the test of certain parts of your website design. A website that does not
involved script can be tested by the web server. However, a website that uses script, for example, to
access data from the database, will need a web server for testing.

In this module, you will get to know in brief on how to prepare a web server such as Microsoft
Internet Information Services (IIS), Apache and Microsoft Personal Web Server (PWS).

73
(a) Microsoft IIS in Platform Windows 2000
The Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) is a powerful web server that comes free in the
Windows 2000 operating system. It provides services for web base, FTP and database access.

If your operating system does not have an IIS, you can start with these steps:
1. Click Start> Settings> Control Panel> Add/Remove Programs.
2. In the display window, click on the Add/Remove Windows Components button.
3. Select Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS).
4. Click the Apply button.

The IIS will install several components such as Internet Service Manager, wide website service and
FTP service. After that, it will create a folder for web base service, usually at c:\Inetpub\wwwroot.

Then, you can test whether the IIS has been installed into your server by typing your IP address into
the web server by using a computer in the same network. For example, type http://202.185.23.45.
Then, an ISS website will be displayed. If you test by using a web browser in the server itself, you
can type a loop back address, for example, http://127.0.0.1. You will be able to see the same IIS
website.

If the IIS cannot be run, the World Wide Web service may not be able to start once you have
installed the IIS. To start the service, you can follow these steps:
1. Click Start> Setting> Control Panel> Administrator Tools> Services
2. In the displayed window, select World Wide Web service.

You can also set the service to start automatically by selecting Startup and click at the Automatic
selection.

(b) Apache in Linux

Apache (www.apache.org) is currently the most popular web server and mostly used w i t h a
Linux (www.linux.org) operating system. In the beginning, Apache was obtained from the
NCSA server, an organisation that is responsible in setting server specification in the internet.
While Linux
is commonly used because it fully supports script, used by most ISP and capable of providing an
affordable environment for website testing.

Linux comes in several versions depending on the company that built it such as Red Hat,
Caldera, Slackware and SuSE. This is because Linux is in the form of open source, that is its code
source can be obtained. In order to determine whether the Apache is in the operating system, you
can use a loopback address like the one you used in Windows 2000 previously. Usually, the
folder for web base service is /lusr/local/httpd or /usr/etc/httpd.

(c) Microsoft Personal Web Server

The Apache and IIS web server require a high level of technical skill in order to start and to
maintain.

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For Windows 98 users, this web server can be retrieved from the operating system’CD. You
can also download this web server from www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/pws. Before
you install the PWS, you must ensure that Microsoft Internet Explorer the latest one is in your
operating system.

1. Click twice on the setup file in the Microsoft Windows CDROM, or the file that you have
downloaded from the Microsoft website.

2. Follow the displayed wizard’s instruction.

3. When asked for the default directory for web publishing, type the directory c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\
if it is different.
4. Click on the Finish button to close the wizard.

4.12 Summary
So far, you have been exposed to the introduction in website publishing planning. This
includes the selection of web base, ISP, connection, domain registration, web base structure and
web server. You will learn further about the principles of website design in the next topic.

KEY TERMS

ISP Web Server

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Reference
Lemay, L. (2000). Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 Days Professional
Reference Edition. (2nd ed.). Indiana: SAMS.

Lowe, D . & H a l l , W. (1999). H y p e r m e d i a and The Web: An Engineering Approach.

Chichester Wiley.

Martin, J. (1990). Hyperdocument and How to Create Them. Englewood: Prentice Hall.

Salim, J. & Yaakob, Y. (2000). Hyper document: An Innovative Tool for Teaching and Learning.
Proceeding of the International Conference on Teaching and Learning. Strategising
Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century. 24th ă 25th November 2000, Putrajaya.
Bangi: Faculty of Education, University Kebangsaan Malaysia.

76
Unit 5 Web Design

5.0 Introduction
Web designing is not just about the application of graphic and text only. It is the combination of
both elements for presenting information to the user in the most interesting and efficient way. In this
chapter, you will learn in further detail on some issues in web design before you start on website
coding.

5.1 Objectives
By the end of the unit, you should be able to:
 state the 4 main principles in website designing
 explain the use of main details in website
 explain the use of web elements during coding

5.2 Designing Principles

Design is commonly associated with a website’s appearance. In other words, the design will
determine whether the website display is good or not good to users. Besides that, designing issue
will also raise the question of functionality. It is because a design will not always appear to be
attractive because every day there will be other better designs than the current ones. There are
important principles of design that we are going to discuss in this topic. They are navigation,
dimension, length, header and footer.

5.3 Navigation
A well-designed website does not only have good interface features. It should be easy to explore.
Actually you can design a good interface by focusing on the navigation and image usage and other
designing elements.

A good navigation will depend on the users’ level of comfort to explore the information at the
website. For example, users with a slow connection speed may choose to operate your website
without displaying the images. This means that they can only see the texts while the files can
be opened faster by the web browser. If your website has too many images, this type of user will
not be able to fully utilise the information that you want to present. The best method is to provide a
text only website that can be accessed in the homepage. You must also use the property ALT on
image tag to insert texts that describe the image.

For users with disability, for example colour blindness (unable to differentiate between red and
green) or unable to use the mouse to click on the website link, navigating the website will be a
problem for them. The application of green-red colour must be avoided for colour blind users if
they need to differentiate something. For those with difficulty in mouse clicking, a website that
operates solely on keystroke must be provided.

Buttons or navigation menus on your website must be uniform, as well as consistent placement as
in Figure 5.1. If you frequently alter the navigation menu design or place it at different positions at
every new website, the display on the web browser will be disorderly. This will confuse users. You

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can also differentiate the link that has been visited or cannot be used. For example, you can use a
blur or grey button or change the link colour of a link that has been visited to another colour.

Figure 5.1: Example of a website that has a uniform navigation menu

Most websites have the same characteristics in terms of homepage content. Every time a user visits
your website, the homepage, commonly entitled index.html or default.asp, will be displayed. The
homepage is like the contents page in a book. It contains a rough description of all the sections in
your website. Usually, you need to provide a link to those sections. Mapping your website with this
method will make your website navigation function a success.

You can also provide the Next and Back buttons like in Figure 5.2 for your website that has a
certain linear arrangement. This way, the user will be able to understand your presentation
structure more easily. This is a technique for introducing a topic to the user.

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Figure 5.2: The application of the ‘Next’ and ‘Back’ buttons

Below are navigating methods that you can take into consideration:

1. Sidebar or top bar. This will provide a consistent design in your entire website. The
top bar usually has a general link. While the sidebar will list a more specific link on certain topics.

2. Frame. Too much of it in a website can confuse users. Things would get worse if the
frames are not well designed. For example, a user who wants to open a different website linked from
your website will have to preserve the frame from your website. Besides that, older versions of
web browser do not support frame application. Usually, frames are used for website with a
permanent link that requires a one-time download to increase file opening speed.

3. JavaScript. You can use JavaScript to change the buttons, menu, images or navigation
links to differentiate the websites that have been visited with the ones which has not. You can also
change the colour of the button or link that has been mouse over. A complex website can also
use JavaScript to produce a tree like structure that depicts the whole of your website.

4. Text. Build an alternative website that contains only text. This website is suitable for
those who are searching for information in your website.

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5. Plug-in. The invention of the plug-in button such as Flash is not a good idea. Users will
have to download the plug-in before they can open your website. However, there are plug-ins that
are widely used in the internet, for example Flash.

6. Floating navigation panel. There are navigation menus that are designed to float at the top
of your web browser. Although it may impress the users, but sometimes the window panel can
be accidentally hidden by other windows.

7. Java. A lot of applets are invented and distributed freely especially for navigation
menu. However, it is quite slow to download this class of files. Besides that, most of the older
versions of web browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 and below and Netscape Navigator 2.0
and below do not support these applets.

ACTIVITY 5.1

?
.1.2 Give 3 examples of good navigation features

5.4 Dimension
Website display is the same as you print a document with graphic and table on paper. However, the
display that can be seen by the user is just part of your website depending on the user’s monitor size.
The display screen is relatively smaller than the width of an open book or magazine. It is
inappropriate for you to design the website’s dimension to be larger than the area that can be seen
by the user on their computer screen like in Figure 5.3.

Figure 5.3: An 800 x 600 pixel area on the computer screen

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The area that is considered safe for website display depends on two factors, for example, the
commonly used screen size and the paper used for printing.

Most of the screens used in the business industry are set to the size of 800 x 600 pixel because their
computer screen size is between 17 inches to 19 inches. So, this size is the best guide for you to
design your website. A website that exceeds this size will be troublesome to the user. User will be
forced to scroll vertically or horizontally at the same time.

Below are the safe dimension areas for print and display by using a 800 x 600 pixel screen (the
display is like in Figure 5.4):

Perfect Print Perfect Display

Maximum width 569 pixel 760 pixel

Maximum length 410 pixel (can be seen 410 pixel (can be seen with
without scrolling) scrolling)

Figure 5.4: Safe dimension areas

5.5 Length
Consider these four factors when deciding on the ideal length of a website:
1. The relation between website and screen size.
2. Document content.

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3. Whether the user will navigate all of the contents or the contents will be printed.

4. The broadband on the user’s computer.

The length of a website is important due to its effect on the users’ focus. When users scroll the
screen downwards, they will lose track of navigation such as title, links or menu button that are
usually placed at the top or at the bottom of the website. Besides that, if your website is too
long, a little change on the scrolling will cause a big difference on the users’ computer screen.
In this situation, users do not have a choice but to use the cursor to slowly look at each screen.

However, a long website also has its advantages. You can easily manage the information and the
users can easily download all the information. You do not have to handle a lot of links to the files
that you have already separated its contents. Users also do not have to download a lot of files in
order to gather information on a subject. This type of website is also suitable if you are sure that
users will not read the information online but rather print directly from it. However, you can aid
users’ navigation by providing links for users to return to the top of the website such as the link
example in Figure 5.5.

Figure 5.5: Link to the top of the website

5.6 Header and Footer

The header area or four inches (10cm) from the top of a website is the area that users will first see,
while the footer is the website’s bottom area that usually provides brief information on the website’s
origin.

(a) Header
For users, an efficient website will provide a header with multiple selection of links. You can put
the basic element of navigation such as the menu and the link to your main page. The header will
also represent the website’s identity. Users will also be able to distinguish your website from other
websites. Figure 5.6 shows the header for The Sun website that lists the menu and main links of the
website.

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Figure 5.6: An example of the www.sun.com header

A large-size graphic that takes a long time to download should not be posted on this section.
It is sufficient enough with a small and neat logo. The writing on graphics must not be larger
than the main title or the website’s introductory words. In order to make your website neat, the
header section must be uniform for all of your websites.

(b) Footer
Every website must state its origin or date of publication. The website footer or the bottom of
a website is suitable for this type of information. You can also provide a link to the header on
the website footer because users may have forgotten about the links situated at the top such as the
example in Figure 5.7 below.

Figure 5.7: A website footer example from www.ibm.com

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5.7 The Basic Characteristics of the Web
There are several basic web elements that you need to plan for its application such as graphic,
colour, text and link.

5.7.1 Graphic
Graphic or image can be inserted into your website by using tag <IMG> and property SRC. For
example, if you want to insert a klcc.gif image file, the syntax is <IMG SRC=„klcc.gif‰>. Syntax
will be further discussed in Unit 6. The application of graphic on your website will usually
involve the issue between an attractive display and a long download time. A website decorated
with interesting images but takes a long time to download will not be liked by the users. Users
usually use a modem that could download a file for 5-7 Kb per second. Thus, a common graphic
file, for example in size 30 Kb, will require at least 4 minutes to be downloaded. Filling the website
with lots of graphics will bore the users.

The important aspect for inserting graphics into the website is compression. A compressed graphic
will be displayed faster than a regular graphic. However, there will be the issue of choosing a high
quality image or a small size graphic. You can do the compression by using specific application
such as Fireworks or ImageReady that can minimise graphic files by compressing a complex image
at a certain area with a certain rate.

GIF type image is an image that can support as many as 256 types of colour. It is suitable for
images that do not use too many colours such as image logo, menu and button. While JPEG type
graphic is a graphic that can display up to 1.6 million colours and is suitable for photos.

The advantage of GIF is its capability to produce transparent images. However, there is the issue
whereby the transparent image is not suitable to be placed in a background with a different colour
as the colour that was made transparent. Figure 5.8 shows the result of the halo light problem.

Figure 5.8: A transparent white placed on a grey background

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Another guideline to enable the image to be displayed faster in your website is by using the height
and width property in the IMG tag. If this property is not inserted, your web browser will have to
count the image’s dimension before displaying it. The counting burden will increase if there are a
lot of images in your website. Besides that, you can insert ALT property to help navigation by
preparing an explanation text for the image that was not displayed. For instance, ALT = “link to the
main page”

5.7.2 Colour
A website with an attractive graphic effect is not necessarily done with the aid of a complex
graphic. It can also be done by using the appropriate combination of colours. There are many
suitable colours when combined together such as black and yellow, and yellow and blue. On the
other hand, the use of colours that are too varied or too much in contrast will cause a website to
look unattractive and difficult to navigate. You must also realise that users with colour blind will
have difficulty to differentiate between the colour red and green.

When creating a graphic for your website, one factor that must be considered is that there are only
216 types of colour that are safe to be used. The reason why there are just 216 colours and not 256
is because there is a colour difference in Windows and Macintosh operating systems. There are
only 216 types of matching colours for both systems. By using those colours, the users in your web
will get the same display even though they are using different operating system. Figure 5.9
differentiates the safe colours and the colours supported in the Windows and Macintosh operating
systems.

Figure 5.9: Colour differences in Windows and Macintosh

It is undeniable that most of the graphics that you create or scan from photos are more than 216
colours. This graphic can be displayed clearly and perfectly on your computer that supports millions
of colours. However, not all computers are the same as your computer. There are computers that can
only use 16 colours (may not be in use anymore) while some can only support 256 colours. A
graphic saved with millions of colours will appear grey and unattractive when displayed on those
computers.

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There are two ways for computers that support 256 colours to display a graphic that is not within its
capacity. First is by combining two or more colours in a certain pattern which is also known as
dithering. The second way is by changing the unsupported colour with the closest tone. The
conclusion is that if you want your graphic to be seen by as many users as possible, you must set it
to 256 colours. Figure 5.10 shows a photo graphic that has been changed into an image with 256
colours.

Figure 5.10: A photo graphic in 256 colours

5.7.3 Text
The first detail in text that you must think of is the row’s length. A long text can be hard to read.
The row in the web may be longer than the row in your textbook. It is better for you to set your
text column width by using a table. The recommended text length does not exceed 365 pixels. By
using a size 12 Times New Roman font, every row of your text will have at least 50 characters or
an average of nine to ten words.

The selection of font type for the text will depend on the website builder’s taste. If you use an
uncommon font, users who do not have the font type in their computer would not be able to see it.
The recommended font is the Times New Roman because it is easy to be read on the screen and
on print. Font that are considered safe, for example, available in the Windows and Macintosh
operating systems are Times New Roman, Georgia, Verdana, Arial and Trebuchet. You can also
combine the usage or just stick to one type.

One must remember that a website filled with text of the same size would be difficult for scanning
its important contents. You must also emphasise on several matters such as title, pronoun and
certain phrases. With this, you would be able to attract the users’ attention on those words. This can
be done by applying bold, italic, and underline on the word. You can also use capital letters on all the
words that you want to emphasise.

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The text format on the text rows will be able to aid users to distinguish one text row from the
other. There are three types of arrangement that you can choose, for example, the left justified,
centre justified, and right justified as in Figure 5.11. If you have a title on top of your text, you must
ensure that all of it uses the same format.

Figure 5.11: Title format according to the whole text arrangement

5.7.4 Link
The link is the main method of navigating. Users will be able to open websites that are inside or
outside of your website. There are two designing issues on link, which are:
•Link disrupts the content flow by encouraging the user to leave your website;
and
•Link changes the information environment by placing the user in an unfamiliar
environment

You are encouraged to put all of the reference sources in your own website that have the same
graphic design, navigation, and theme as in Figure 5.12. This will prevent users from being
transferred to the text of an unknown website outside of your website. If necessary, you can put a
notice on the link informing users that they will be transferred out of your website.

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Figure 5.12: Link to the same website

5.7.5 Intermediate level features

The application of table and frame elements will require a high understanding. For this module, we
will learn how to use table and frame based on the intermediate level features only. There are
several designing issues that can be discussed on both of the elements.

5.7.6 Table
Other than arranging a certain text in the form of row and column, tables can also be used for
combining several types of text in a single website such as in Figure 5.13

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Figure 5.13: Text arrangement using table

You can also arrange a form by using table so the form elements such as textbox and combobox are
in the same arrangement. Figure 5.14 below is an example of table application in a registration
form.

Figure 5.14: Arrangement of form elements using table

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Tables can also be used for putting colours on certain areas. Insert the BGCOLOR property onto the
row, column or cell that you want to colour. This method can avoid the application of graphic file.
You can also do a trick such as the one below. The text appears as if it is in the image. The
trick is to break the picture into 2 parts and then combine them by using tables as in Figure 5.15.
You must be certain that the CELLPADING, CELLSPACING, and BORDER properties are set to
0.

Figure 5.15: Picture breaking by using tables

5.7.7 Frame
Frame allows the user to display several websites in just one web browser window. Example of
frame application is like in Figure 5.16. Frames are excellent if you want to preserve a website only
for links.

Figure 5.16: Example of frames

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The weakness of frame application is that users will be confused when they want to print your
website. This is because users are not sure which frame will be printed out when printing instruction
is given.

Users will also be confused in identifying the website when they push the ‘back’ and ‘forward’
b u t t o n . This situation will happen because users will find it difficult to know which frame link
they had click. If space is the main issue, frame application is not suitable because it will force
users to scroll horizontally or vertically at the same time in order to read the information in your
website.

A website that requires a high level of interaction will need frames. However, you must be
certain that the website that you open will be displayed in the right frame. It is recommended that
you open a new web browser when opening a document that is outside of your website. If not, you
might open a website that also uses frames. Hence, this can be confusing.

5.8 Summary
You have seen in depth on web design such as navigation, dimension, length, web header and footer.
You also know several issues on web element applications such as graphic, colour, text, link, table
and frame. Next, you will learn the methods and technology of web building.

KEY TERMS
Colour Graphic
Dimension Navigation

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References
Lemay, L. (2000). Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 Days Professional
Reference Edition. (2nd ed.). Indiana: SAMS.

Lowe, D . & H a l l , W. (1999). H y p e r m e d i a and The Web: An Engineering Approach.

Chichester Wiley.

Martin, J. (1990). Hyperdocument and How to Create Them. Englewood: Prentice Hall.

Salim, J. & Yaakob, Y. (2000). Hyper document: An Innovative Tool for Teaching and Learning.
Proceeding of the International Conference on Teaching and Learning. Strategising
Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century. 24th ă 25th November 2000, Putrajaya.
Bangi: Faculty of Education, University Kebangsaan Malaysia.

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Unit 6 Web Development

6.0 Introduction
After you have planned and think of a suitable design for your website, the next step is web
development. Before that, you must know some of the approaches in web development. In this topic
you will see the development from the traditional angle, for example, from scratch, and by using a
web editor software.

6.1Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
 describe the concept of development from the start
 explain the types of scripting languages and their applications
 explain the types of web technology and their applications
 describe the web editor features such as Microsoft FrontPage

6.2 Web Publishing from Scratch

Web development from scratch means you execute the programming to create the website from the
start, meaning with an empty file. Usually you would use the common editor such as Notepad or
WordPad and start to type your programming code. You will publish script languages such as
DHTML, JavaScript, VBScript and XML by using this technique. Besides that, you can also
apply web technology such as Java, CGI, ActiveX and ASP.

6.3 Script Language

Script is a programming code that does not need to be compiled or ran. It is different when compared
to other programming languages such as C++, Java or Visual Basic that need to be compiled or ran.
The script code is interpreted in real time. Example of its application is the Perl script in the CGI-
BIN folder that will be interpreted by a Perl interpreter and its result displayed to your website.
Examples of the script language that will be discussed are HTML, DHTML, JavaScript, VBScript
and XML.

(a) Dynamic HTML (DHTML)

Dynamic HTML or DHTML refers to the combination of HTML, style sheets (CSS) and client
script such as JavaScript in order to produce a document or website that has animation features.
DHTML allows your website to change in the web browser even after it has been downloaded to
your web browser (no more interaction with the web server).

An example of DHTML that can be inserted into your website is texts that can change from one
colour to another colour or graphic that can move from one location to another location with the
click of a user’s button. In other words, DHTML is an animated HTML.

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DHTML gives you the control to manipulate any web elements such as font, graphic, line and
others. With a touch of creativity, you can change the web element’s property, position, and content.
It will make your website even more dynamic, rich with animation, transform it as if it is a
software and provide a content that is not static.

Dynamic HTML presents a website that far exceed the usual HTML capability by using CSS and
allows you to interact with the website content without downloading any extra content from the
web server. This means the website can continue to respond to the user’s reaction, such as a clicked
mouse, without having to open a new website from the server. There are three components in
DHTML, which are:

1. Location specification: placing the content block at a certain position in the website.

2. Form modification: altering the content property in real time.

3. Incident or event: altering the position or form based on incident such as a clicked mouse.

There is a huge issue in executing DHTML, which is the tag difference used by Internet Explorer
(IE) and Netscape Navigator to represent the layer element. Generally, layer is like a window
without a header that can be placed in a certain position in the website. IE uses the DIV and SPAN
tags while Netscape Navigator uses the LAYER and ILAYER tags. So, you must ensure that your
script will be able to differentiate the users that use both of the web browsers and to use the
appropriate tags.
The following is a DHTML example for displaying today’s date by using a
JavaScript:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=“JavaScript”> document.write (“<B>Date:</B>”) document.write (Date())

</SCRIPT>

(b) JavaScript and VBScript

JavaScript is a script language based on small-scale object that can be used for developing web-
based application for client and server. JavaScript can be directly inserted into your website along

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with a HTML tag. This script can identify and react to the user’s command such as form sending
or clicked link.

An example of JavaScript application is to verify a HTML form before it is sent. You must be
certain that all the information in the form has been filled in. You can also ensure that no
information that has been submitted is incorrect, for example an e-mail address without the @’.
Without requiring a connection to the server, JavaScript can read the information in the form and
then display a warning message if there is any wrong or incomplete information. JavaScript can
also execute directions such as opening a new web browser, running java application (applet) on
the web server, and playing an audio file.

The most important matter in script application such as JavaScript is the restriction imposed by
users to their web browser. There are some users who switch off the JavaScript option on their
web browser due to certain reasons. You must inform visitors to your website that the JavaScript
option must be switched on.

VBScript is actually the short form for Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition. It is a
simplified version of Visual Basic and Visual Basic for Application programming language
family. It can be considered similar to the BASIC programming language.
The VBScript Syntax is much easier than the JavaScript. (The VBScript Syntax will be
discussed further in Unit 7. You will also have the chance to build several examples of VBScript.)

(d) Extensible markup language (XML)

XML is a short form for Extensible Markup Language. XML allows you to create your own tag for
your own tag collection. Actually HTML and XML are related just like brothers and sisters. Their
mother is the SGML, Standard Generalised Markup Language. SGML is a complete standard that
has both the XML and HTML.

HTML and XML have been interpreted in SGML. By using SGML, you only need to be equipped
with a SGML scanner. However, SGML is very complex to be implemented and contains a lot of
features that are not commonly used. So, a simple version of SGML has been developed and
introduced, for example, the XML.

XML allows you to create your own tag for your own markup. You can present more accurate
information than what HTML is capable of doing.The tag that you developed is the information
semantic that you display. For example, compare the two scripts:

<h1> Staff Performance Report </h1>

<title> Staff Performance Report </title>

The script on the first row is HTML while the second row is a XML. The first script only
informs the web browser to display the information in header form. However, the script on the
second row states that the information is actually a document title. If there is any other
complication that requires this information, it will be easily identified and processed. For example,
when submitting the information above into the database.

XML has been used in different applications. The aim of its application is for sharing information
from different sources. For example, the sending of document from one company to another
company. Who will fix the tag? This will require a council that will standardise the appropriate

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XML tag for each business field. This standard XML tag is called Data Type Definition (DTD).
Examples of DTD that have been created are RecipeML, WeatherML, PROSE-ML, and SwiftML.

If you want to see more examples of script language, you can surf the website www.w3schools.com.
You can also test your knowledge and understanding through the questions provided.

The HTML does not cause any problem; thus it will continue to be a popular script in the internet.
We still need to study HTML, but it must be realised that the script direction points toward XML.

When developing your own website, it is not impossible that you will have to deal with another
party that requires you to prepare a document in XML. In this case, you first need to
understand the DTD used before developing the XML document.

ACTIVITY 6.1

Differentiate the applications for the script languages below.

?
Script Language Application
DHTML
JavaScript
VBScript
XML

6.3.1 Web technology

Web technologies are Java, CGI, ActiveX and ASP.

Figure 6.1: Web technologies

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(a) Java

Java is a language based on object that has been created in the year 1995 by James Gosling. Java
will change the Java source code into a bite code and not an object code. Bite code can be run in
any operating system by using a virtual Java machine without any changes. This method enables
Java software to be transferable between many computer systems and different web browsers.

Java has developed into a web technology that has captured the attention of many website
publishers. It is due to its capability to make a website more interactive. Java was the first to
introduce the method to insert sound and animation into the website. Besides reading information
and sending form, users who use Java can now run games application, chat in real time,
update databases and others.

The following are several applications that your website is capable of building:

• Play background music when the website is opened;

• Run cartoon animation;
• Play video in real time;
• Run multi-player game; and
• Run simulation.

In order to publish a Java application, you need a Java environment, for example, Java
Development Kit (JDK). JDK consists of a web browser that will run the Java applet, a Java
compiler that will change Java source code into bite code, and a Java interpreter that runs the Java
programming. You will also need an editor such as Kawa, or BBEdit to type your Java code.

Java code source is a file that ends with .java. While a compiled Java bite code is a file that ends
with .class. The Java application type that can be ran in the web browser is Applet. The following
are an example of applet source code for displaying the word “Hello World “:
import java.applet.Applet;
import java.awt.Graphics;
public class HelloWorldApplet extends Applet {
public void paint (Graphics g) {
g.drawString (“Hello World!”, 50, 25) ;
}
}

The Applet application for the HelloWorldApplet above in your website is as follows:

HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> Hello World </TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
This is the applet: <P>
<APPLET codebase=“classes” code= “HelloWorldApplet.class”
width=200 height=200 ></APPLET>
</BODY>
</HTML>

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The issue in the usage of applet in websites is the size of the created applet. A large sized applet
requires a long time to be downloaded by the web browser and thus cripples the functions in
your website. You must also manage the Java code bite by placing it in the same folder because an
applet accessed from the wrong folder will not be displayed in the website.

(e) Computer-generated imagery (CGI)

If there is a lot of information that you want to place in your website, what is the method that a
website publisher can use to handle the problem of users getting bored or losing their way in
navigation? It is a gateway software that connects with the web server. It also allows interaction
between the client (web server) and the web browser’s operating system.

The usual HTML website is static. However, a CGI programming is run in real time so that it can
give a dynamic output. For example, the latest weather information or a certain stock price that can
be obtained through data access from the database.

This gateway programming is a program that can be ran on its own. It can be built by any
programming language that produces a file that can be ran. Among the programming languages
commonly used to produce a CGI program are C, C++, Perl, Python, TCL and others. You can
also use any programming language, as long as you develop it correctly and have the right to run
it.

The following is an example of CGI application with Perl language. Some web servers allow you
to place the CGI file at any place in your website, as long as the file ends with .cgi. However, there
are some that require you to place it in the ‘cgi-bin’ folder. You will have to refer to your
administrating system. Let’s try one CGI programming.

The following CGI programming will print the word “Hello World!”
#!/usr/bin/perl
$t = “Hello World!”; Print <<EOT;
Content-type:text/html
<Title> $t </Title>
<H1> $t </H1>
EOT

The issue in CGI application is its complex coding. You will require a high level of programming
skill. Besides that, the programming that you build usually is appropriate for that web server only.
It is because there are web servers that have different operating systems and environments.

(f) ActiveX

ActiveX Control is an individual component that does certain functions such as displaying list
box, button, grid, accessing the database and others. Several of these controls can be combined and
used at the same time to produce a navigation tool or a complex online application.

ActiveX is an open platform that combines desktop and web technologies. It allows a web
application developer and web publisher to choose various types of tool and control for easy and
fast common application or interactive web publishing.

ActiveX is actually a file that is widely used in the Windows management system. It is called the
OCX file, which is around you. If you click the File menu in IE, the drop down menu list is an
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OCX. The IE Address box is also an OCX. When surfing the internet, if the OCX is absent in your
computer, your web server will start to download the OCX by enquiring whether you want to
proceed or not.
ActiveX is:
• Open, supports Machintosh, Windows and Unix platforms;
• Supports various tools such as Microsoft Visual Basic, Macromedia Shockwave, Adobe
Photoshop, Borland Delphi and others; and

• Standard, for example, uses the standard HTML, TCP/IP and COM.

ActiveX is fast and easy for you as a website builder to create an interactive application and web
content. It is because there are thousands of available ActiveX that can be reused in the market.
You just need to think of its application because you do not have to build the components from
scratch.

(d) A c t i v e S e r v e r P a g e s ( ASP)
ASP is the short form for a Microsoft product, for example, the Active Server Pages.
The ASP technology explains:
• ActiveX refers to the fact that ASP creates the HTML dynamically.
• Server refers to the fact that the process executed is part of the server not the client.
• Pages refers to the fact that ASP is a file.

ASP is a server technology. The ASP code is written by using JavaScript or VBScript. With ASP,
you can produce various dynamic websites from a discussion group to a shopping cart. Table 6.1
is part of the common applications in ASP.

Table 6.1: Common applications in ASP

Individual Application Company Application

Displays a different advice every time a
website is opened Shopping cart
Displays calendar Discussion group
Visitor book Customer information
Personal diary ID and password for client
Address and phone books Search products and services

6.4 WYSIWYG Approach

Website development using the WYSIWYG approach is different from t he starting from scratch
publishing method. WYSIWYG means “What You See Is What You Get.” This method uses a
programming specifically for designing your website. This programming will aid you by just
dragging and releasing the web elements that you want to use. Any display that you can see on the
software will also be displayed on your web browser. Example of a web editor software for this
category is the Microsoft FrontPage.

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6.5 Microsoft FrontPage Application
The Microsoft FrontPage application is a popular web editor software. It allows you to write and
edit HTML, DHTML and ASP scripts easily just like a regular text editor. Figure 6.2 is an example
of an interface that allows you to edit script. You can also explore the hard disc and see the latest
files.

Figure 6.2: Script editing

You can directly type your website content, either in text or in image form, just like h o w yo u
w o u l d c r e a t e a d o c u m e n t i n t h e M i c r o s o f t Word software. FrontPage could instantly
display the output display that you have done. Figures 6.2 and 6.3 are interface examples for
designing and displaying the website output.

Figure 6.3: Designing a website

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Figure 6.4: Output display

The wizard is among the interesting features in FrontPage. It is a tool that helps you to execute a
difficult operation by using an interactive enquiry. Figure 6.5 is a wizard example that has 5 enquiry
steps on creating a connection to the database.

Figure 6.5: Wizard database

ACTIVITY 6.2
The “Wizard” is available in most of the software applications such as
Microsoft Word. Give other software application examples that have
?
“Wizard”
State your opinion on its importance.

The FrontPage also has various categories of graphic collection that you can include into your
website. Selection of images is as in Figure 6.6 below.
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Figure 6.6: Free graphic collection

FrontPage has the a d v a n t a ge s of providing several interesting ready-made templates as in

Figure 6.7.

Figure 6.7: Ready-made templates

Template i s a file that will determine your website’s theme. It will standardise the font type,
colour, link and graphic used in all of your websites. FrontPage also provides the aid to manage
your web file. For example, you can do a report on file count, link or image displayed in your
website. You can also display the complete information on individual file and file figures that
form your entire website such as in Figure 6.8.

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Figure 6.8: File server

6.6 Summary
The building from scratch concept has been discussed. The scripts discussed are DHTML,
JavaScript, VBScript, and XML. Web technologies such as Java, CGI, ActiveX and ASP must be
understood. Web authoring software such as the Microsoft FrontPage is a simple way to build a
website.

KEY TERMS

Scripting Language WYSIWYG Approach

Web Publishing

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References
http://www.dhtmlshock.com/articlesasp?ArticleD=1

Lemay, L. (2000). Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 Days Professional
Reference Edition. (2nd ed.). Indiana: SAMS.

Lowe, D . & H a l l , W. (1999). H y p e r m e d i a and The Web: An Engineering Approach.

Chichester Wiley.

Martin, J. (1990). Hyperdocument and How to Create Them. Englewood: Prentice Hall.

Salim, J. & Yaakob, Y. (2000). Hyper document: An Innovative Tool for Teaching and Learning.
Proceeding of the International Conference on Teaching and Learning. Strategising
Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century. 24th ă 25th November 2000, Putrajaya.
Bangi: Faculty of Education, University Kebangsaan Malaysia.

www.w3schools.com

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Unit 7 Web Maintenance

7.0 Introduction
After a website has been designed and built, it must be tested and included into the web server for
internet or intranet users’ access. Testing is important for identifying inactive link, error during
access and web element that cannot be opened in certain web browsers. The failure to test these
matters will give a bad image to your website.At the same time, you must also think of the
maintenance and management aspects for your website. This topic will discuss on the tools for
publishing your website in the web server.An accessible website must be promoted for the purpose
of attracting users to visit your website. The methods that will be discussed are by using search
engine, newsgroup and advertisement.

7.1 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
 describe the two main principles in web testing
 explain the issues on publishing and managing website
 evaluate the efforts / methods for promoting a website

7.2 Webtesting
The development of a dynamic website must go through various careful designing process so that it
will achieved the website’s objectives. Does a website need to go through a testing process before it is
published? A website that fails to give optimum information to its users is not due to restriction
in the computer but rather the website publisher’s failure to test the script code published. This is
because the testing phase is a matter that is commonly taken lightly by the website publisher.
Figure 7.1 shows the script code testing phases.

Figure 7.1: Script code testing phases

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7.3 Benefits and Functionality
The testing process for your website is actually a feedback process. Users will not be able to see
your website’s importance or search for information on your website if there is an error or it
cannot be displayed. Thus the website will need to be redesign again. There is a situation where
you have to redesign your current website because the repairing of the error involves all of the
websites. However, you are advised to look again at the publishing process so that repairing the
error will not change the website’s original target. In testing, benefits and functionality are the two
keywords that can be used as guideline. Both terms have different meanings. A beneficial website
may not be beneficial if users could not access the information. There are websites with good
navigation but do not give any benefit to its users. Sometimes, functionality cannot be anticipated by
the publisher. A website may be able to be displayed on the publisher’s computer, but there
can be problems coming from the user’s computer. This is because the publisher failed to test his
website on many types of computer with different operating systems by using different types of
web server. You must realise the differences that will appear when a website is opened by the
Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator web browsers in the Windows and Macintosh operating
systems. A good practice in testing is to do a consistent website publishing testing to avoid excessive
repairing in the future.

7.4 Linking and Updating

The general consideration about things which need to be tested is the website’s integration
structure. These include matters such as none functional link to a website, graphic, and files that are
inside and outside of the website. It is undeniable that the time consumed for testing will be long
according to the number of your website. However, it is a process that needs to be done as
frequently as possible.

If there are too many websites and hundreds of link to be tested, it is worthwhile getting a web
editor such as Dreamweaver, GoLive or FrontPage. That software contains managing and web
reporting tools that can test on none functional links. If you are online, it also can check the links to
external websites.

Besides link, updating the website structure is also important. The decision to change the website
structure maybe needed after receiving feedback from users who find the website structure
unsuitable. Changing the whole website structure is not easy unless you use the same structure in all
of your websites. Web editor application such as Dreamweaver for example, provides template aid
that help to update the website structure. By altering an element in the template, all the websites that
use the template will also be updated.

You must also update the content of your website. However, the frequency will depend on the type
of information on the website. If the website only contains opinions and general information, the
contents do not need to be updated so frequently. However, website that contains news, product or
educational texts, must be updated frequently when there is a news update, product or research
addition.

Whatever your website type is, the important information that you need to provide to users are
the date you executed the update and the website text content writer. This information is
important for those who want to copy parts of the text and then refer to your website. This

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information is required in academic references and also for acknowledgement whether the text was
written by a field expert or the website builder’s own idea.

But the important thing is that you must have a strategy in the updating process. The frequency will
depend on daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly. This is to help you from making unnecessary
updating.

7.5 Publishing and Managing Website

Website file that is prepared for publishing must be placed in one web server. Only with this way,
the internet or intranet users can access it. If you work in a lab or in the same room as a web
server, inserting the website file would not be a problem. This is because files can be sent to the web
server by using a diskette or by transferring the files through a network. However, most web servers
are situated further from our expectation. For example, you may be working at home while your
web server is in the office. Or your company rents a web server outside of the country, then the file
would have to be sent by using FTP software. Then, the files that need to be downloaded must
be managed so that it will be in a proper condition.

7.6 File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Function

Until now, your understanding on file sending in the internet is by using a web browser and e-mail.
You access a website or HTML file from the web server and then the file will be displayed on the
web browser. You also know that you can attach files to e-mails and send to a certain individual or
group. However, how do you send website files that you have done on your computer to the web
server so that it can be accessed by users?

The application that can send files to the web server is called File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
Compared to e-mail, FTP sends file to the web server and not between individuals. The obvious
difference between hypertext transfer protocol and FTP is that FTP could execute both uploading
and downloading operations from the web server. The FTP client application is like WS_FTP to
Windows and Fetch to Macintosh. The FTP function has also been included and can be used in web
browsers such as IE and Netscape Navigator. Figure 7.1 shows a WS_FTP software interface
example, for example, a type of FTP software.

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Figure 7.1: A WS_FTP software interface example

FTP requires information on the type of file that will be sent, for example, either sending of a text
or binary file. A text sending would not change the file’s content. Thus, this is suitable for sending
your HTML file to the web server. On the other hand, sending via binary is suitable for all type of
files including text file too.

7.7 FTP Application

Web browsers such as IE and Netscape Navigator are FTP client applications that are easily available.
The method to make a connection to the FTP server is by keying in the address that starts with
ftp:// and not http:// into the web browser. If your FTP server could only be accessed by certain
users only, please ensure that you know your user ID and password. Then, key it in the format
ftp://UserID:Password@ServerName.

From the web browser you can download a file by clicking twice onto the file icon. By using
Navigator, the file can be downloaded by selecting the menu File> Upload File. All of the operations
in IE are easier, for example, you can just drag and drop files between the folders in your computer
and web browser by using the mouse. The FTP function in the web browser is very useful to website
builders when downloading website files. However, web browsers that cannot differentiate text or
binary sending file may create a problem. This happens when FTP server software uses a different
setting from the default.

A non-public FTP server can only be accessed by a registered user. When you make a connection
to the web server, you will be in the folder that has been allocated to you. You can add, delete and
update files in this folder only.

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Usually, the methods to update script code in your website file are:
1. Download the file from the web server;
2. Update the code script by using web editor or common text editor such as notepad that is
available in your computer.
3. Save the file in .htm or .html type; and
4. Upload again the file into the web server folder.

From managing files in the web server, you should preserve the important files only. It is because
there are web servers that set folder size limit for every application. Besides that, it is better to
collect the same file type in the same folder. For example, you can insert all graphic files
(.gif and .jpeg) into the “picture’ folder. This way, you can manage the file accordingly and the
downloading and uploading operations would be easier.

7.8 Website Promotion

A website would not function on its own to be effective. It needs to be connected to other users who
are searching for information on a subject. Website can become a marketing medium for a
product and introduce a product or service to users. The following are steps that you can perform to
encourage users to come to your website.

7.9 Early Step

As covered in Unit 1, an effective website is a website that is visited by web users. So the first
effort that is free is to spread it among your friends. Besides promoting your website when you meet
them, you can also use e-mail. However, e-mail usage is sensitive especially on sending e-mails
that contain none permitted advertisement. As the website builder you should not send an e-mail
without the user’s permission because this will damage the websites image in attracting users’
attention.

Besides e-mail, the newsgroup is also a suitable place for introducing your website. For this
purpose, you must subscribe to the newsgroup. One advantage of the newsgroup is that members
would only discuss on the same topic or subject. However, you should search a relevant
newsgroup only. Make sure your announcement or notice is brief and relevant except when you
want to give a comment.

Most visitors that come to your website are directed from another website link. Usually to post a
link on another website depends on the other website builder’s willingness and also your willingness
to link the website in return. The link could be in the form of the usual link, icon or banner.

Website that provides the facility to search for other websites is the search engine. Examples of
search engines are Yahoo, Excite, Infoseek and many more. Most of this search engines provide a
website for registering information on your website. The difference is that there are some that
charge a nominal fee while mostly are free. By registering your website into the database, users
will be able to find your website easily.

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7.10 Meta Tag Application
All of your website contents such as text, graphic, link and other elements will be placed in the
<BODY> tag. The <HEAD> tag is usually paid less attention by builders can contain useful
information for your website when it is downloaded to the website. Usually the development of
the <HEAD> tag focuses on the web browser’s window title, for example, by using the
<TITLE> tag application. This tag has been used by most search engines to identify a website in
the internet. Besides the <TITLE> tag, another tag that is very useful is the <META> tag that
provides a complete coverage of the information to the web browser, web server and search engine.

The common properties used in the <META> tag are NAME and CONTENT. The following is
an example of its application:
<META NAME= “Keywords” CONTENT= “Masvingo: Historical Town in Zimbabwe”>

The <META> tag above will give information to the search engine that this website is about the
topic “Masvingo”, “Historical Town””or “Zimbabwe” in general.

Besides providing keywords to your website, <META> tag can also help you to perform website
maintenance.

The following script will bring users to the website placed in the URLproperty in
15 seconds:
<META HTTP-EQUIV=“refresh” CONTENT=“I5”;
URL=“http://localhost/lamanweb.htm”>

However, you still need to insert the link in the <BODY> tag part as an alternative for old web
servers that do not support this type of tag.

7.11 Advertisement
Unit 2 has discussed on banner advertisement in brief. There are advertisements that are posted
automatically by the web base on your website. Users who click on the advertisement will be
transferred to the advertised company’s website to get further information on a subject.

There are several issues that you need to pay attention to when posting advertisement on your
website. The most important issue is the payment method that is applicable to you for the
advertisement. The first method depends on the number of advertisement displayed to the users.
For example, $150 for one thousand displays. If the website was visited by 100 000 visitors thus
your advertisement will be displayed for 100 000 times. Thus, the cost that you need to bear is $1
500. You can set the maximum amount of display. Your advertisement would not be displayed
anymore if the amount has been achieved.

The second payment method does not only depend on display but based on the number of users who
click on the advertisement. However, this method is more expensive. It is better if you compare the
cost of both methods before making any decision.

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ACTIVITY 7.1

Discuss the methods to promote your website without having

? to incur a high cost.

7.12 Summarry
In this topic, the main principles in web testing and their importance have been discussed. Issues
concerning website life span management and maintenance have also been touched. Make sure you
understand the methods and issues in website promoting.

KEY TERMS
FTP Web Testing
Meta Tag

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References
http://www.google.com/addurl.html

Lemay, L. (2000). Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 Days Professional
Reference Edition. (2nd ed.). Indiana: SAMS.

Lowe, D . & H a l l , W. (1999). H y p e r m e d i a and The Web: An Engineering Approach.

Chichester Wiley.

Martin, J. (1990). Hyperdocument and How to Create Them. Englewood: Prentice Hall.

Salim, J. & Yaakob, Y. (2000). Hyper document: An Innovative Tool for Teaching and Learning.
Proceeding of the International Conference on Teaching and Learning. Strategising
Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century. 24th ă 25th November 2000, Putrajaya.
Bangi: Faculty of Education, University Kebangsaan Malaysia.

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Unit 8 Web Security

8.0 Introduction
As of late, the issue on web security has gotten the full attention from most web builders. Hacker
attacks have caused a Denial of Service on popular websites such as cnn.com, amazon.com,
buy.com and ebay.com and had disrupted the businesses of those companies. This shows just how
serious the web security issues need to be considered by you as a website builder. Web security has
always been neglected due to limited knowledge on the danger and effect or destruction that can
happened to a website. You do not have to be an expert programmer in order to perform the basic
security technique in your website. In this topic, you will know in detail the issues and methods in
web security.

8.1 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
 define the meaning of web security
 discuss the security issues in website publishing plus the prevention steps to avoid website
hacking
 differentiate between the concepts of data encryption and firewall
 identify the latest issues in web security

8.2 What is the Meaning of Web Security?

The frequently asked questions on web security issues are as following:
What does it mean with web security?
Why has the internet become unsafe?
What are the resources in your website that could be manipulated by the irresponsible party?
What is the connection of these issues to you as a website builder?

Security, when discussed in the web context, is given a different definition. The meaning depends
on how it is defined in a situation. The following are several interpretations on web security:

1. Prevent visitors from opening certain website in your web base. In order to open the website,
visitors would have to register as a member.
2. Ensure every online credit card transaction in your website prevents any irresponsible
individual from getting the credit card number information.
3. Place control (for example, Denial of Service) so that a bogus access could be averted. For
example, a bogus access that increases network traffic and then stop the web server’s service.
4. Prevent valuable information and graphic in your website from being duplicated and used
without consent.

Based on the web security definitions above, it can be concluded that web security is an attempt
to prevent irresponsible parties from gaining profit, excitement, or destroying the web source by
taking advantage of your current web base’s weakness.

8.3 Web Source is Valuable

There is not a single website server that is completely safe from attacks by hackers. According
to PCWorld.com, on average, big companies such as AT&T is attacked once daily. Small companies
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or individual website maybe paid less attention. However, for a web server that is connected 24
hours to the internet, web source security is a main issue. The sources in your website must be
controlled so that it would not be used by an irresponsible party. The more invaluable a web source
is, the more attractive it is for hackers to own it.

ACTIVITY 8.1
1. What do you understand by the meaning of web security?
? 2. Give 5 examples of company data that need to be saved from
hackers.

3. Discuss 3 steps to increase your web base’s security level.

4. What is the difference between encryption and firewall?

5. What does it mean by cookies? How do cookies weaken your

website’s security level?

8.4 Your Responsibility

This web security issue should not totally prevent you from publishing a website. Most hackers such
as virus, is not harmful if your web sources are well protected and there is a backup. You as a
website publisher should be more proactive by searching the weak points in your web server
and anticipate the consequences that may occur if the system is attacked. Then, amend the
weakness. You must also always update your knowledge on web security issues and quickly put a
patch on your web server if there is a newly found weakness.

8.5 Prevention Steps

Usually web server maintenance is the system administrator’s responsibility. The administrator’s
responsibilities are to ensure that the web server has a perfect server configuration, to maintain all
the software inside, and to take early prevention steps to avoid system encroachment. As a website
publisher, you should know the method to increase the web server’s security especially the one that
involves your web base.

The following are several prevention steps:

1. The number of user account must be limited for every web base. It is because users
might give their ID and password to other individuals. User accounts that are not used must be
eliminated.
2. For every user account, give a fixed ID and password. So that users would not get to
choose their own ID and password. The purpose is to prevent users from choosing a password that
is predictable, too simple, or same as their identity such as identity card number or name. If this
could not be done, you can force users to change their password as frequently as possible as in
every 2 months.
3. If your web’s server has other services such as FTP and e-mail that are unused, stop the
services completely. These services could be a route for hackers to get into your system.
4. Usually, a web server would have a FTP service that could be used by users to upload and
download HTML files in their web base. You should ensure that the anonymous FTP (allows just
about anyone into the server) is not active. Only users who had logged in can access certain files
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and folders. Usually, those folders are folders for their web base. Then, give users the necessary
right such as ‘Read’, ‘Write’, ‘Execute’ and ‘Delete’ to access the folders.
5. Delete all programming, script, and interpreter that are unused in your server. These
could be used by hackers as tools to control your server from afar.
6. Make sure that a routine check is done on the server and server log file. The purpose is for
early prevention of unusual and suspected activities done by hackers.

8.6 Security Policy

It is a must for a system administrator or network administrator to make a written policy on
system security. The policy should state in detail every aspect of conserving each source that is in
the server.

The policy should answer the questions below:

The questions above are only a part of the security system aspect in general. For web server, there
is a need for a policy regarding the types of web file (.htm, .asp, .exe,. c f m ) that are permitted,
type and method to access the database and others.

8.7 Verification for Restricted Website

In website management, there will usually be some restricted websites accessible by:

• Web administrator only;

• Staff only; and
• Members only.

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For restricted website, every user, as listed above, has different rights to access certain information
only. The usual method to execute this restricted website is through ID and password confirmation.
User confirmation can also be done by restricting access to your website based on IP address. In this
case, the programmer needs to insert a script that can check the visitor’s address and compare it
with a permitted address list. This method is used by online library website in university campus to
only allow campus student to access it.

8.8 Encryption Data and Firewall

An effective data safety method for protecting E-commerce transaction data is by encrypting it.
Encryption is an operation that jumbles up data so that it cannot be read or copied by any
irrelevant person.

E-Commerce transaction usually involves confidential information such as price, quantity and credit
card number. Companies that provide data encryption service to E-commerce websites are Verysign
(www.verysign.com) and Cybercash (www.cybercash.com). Both companies are the most popular
and among the earliest. However, there are hundreds of other companies that offer this kind of
service too. Besides encrypting transaction data, you can also protect art work such as graphics that
are in your website. Software such as SafeImage for example, can protect your graphics. Besides
that, watermarking technology has also become a choice for website builders.

Firewall is a software that restricts your network from being accessed from the internet and allows
confirmed access only. This can prevent hackers from easily surfing your network and searching for
a weakness point in your system. Examples of firewall software are Sygate, LANGuard, Firewall-1
and WinGate. Figure 8.2 is an example of the Firewall-1 software interface.

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Figure 8.2: Firewall-1 interface example

8.9 Other safety issues

Among the safety issues that you need to know as a website builder are:
1. E-mail is an unsafe communication tool. Your e-mail could be trespass in the network by
using certain software and hardware. This is important because most of your communication with
the system administrator or your client is through e-mail. Vital information such as ID and
password that you send through e-mail is exposed to the danger of being trespassed.
The best way to handle this problem is by encrypting the e-mail content. Example of an e-mail
encrypting method is Pretty Good Piracy (PGP). User who received the e-mail will have to
decrypt the e-mail content.
2. Cookies is a file that has 256 text characters’ data structure and it is send by web server to
web browser. It will be saved in your hard disc. Cookies is used as a way to save individual
selection in a website such as colour choice, font, and user’s name. However, it can expose your
security feature if it is not used properly. There are publishers who used cookies for saving ID and
password to aid users’ login operation. Therefore, users only have to login into the system using the
computer that has saved the cookies. This will encourage another individual to use the computer
that had logged in, when it is left by the owner.
3. CGI script and server-side include (SSC) file have the potential to create a weak point in
the server. Even though CGI in its original form is safe, but a CGI that is not perfectly designed
based on the server’s configuration can bring problems. A web base that allows website builders to
create their own CGI will be more exposed to this problem.
4. Virus is a problem that should be discussed in web development. Web files such as HTML
are not spared from virus. The concern about virus emerges when a website builder uploads web
files from his computer into the web server. A web server that does not have an anti-virus software
installed will not be able to scan the files that have entered. The damages that can be caused by a
virus are software damage, data lost and suspended web services. You must ensure that your
antivirus software is ran as frequently as possible and is updated with the latest virus pattern list.

As discussed in Unit 5, Denial of Service (DOS) attack is actually the hacker’s effort to raise the
web server’s network traffic by flooding it with fake access until it cannot support and stop its
web service. Company such as Internet Security Systems (www.iis.net) provides solution on any
such attack.

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8.10 Summary
This topic has exposed to you on the meaning of web security. You now know about web
sources that can be used by an irresponsible party. Thus, you need to perform the prevention
steps for your website. You now understand data encryption and firewall concepts plus the latest
issues in web security. With the knowledge that you have gained in this topic, you will start to build
a website in the next unit.

KEY TERMS

Cookies
Virus Web Security

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References
http://webreference.com/multimedia/watermarks.html

Lemay, L. (2000). Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 Days Professional
Reference Edition. (2nd ed.). Indiana: SAMS.

Lowe, D . & H a l l , W. (1999). H y p e r m e d i a and The Web: An Engineering Approach.

Chichester Wiley.

Martin, J. (1990). Hyperdocument and How to Create Them. Englewood: Prentice Hall.

Salim, J. & Yaakob, Y. (2000). Hyper document: An Innovative Tool for Teaching and Learning.
Proceeding of the International Conference on Teaching and Learning. Strategising
Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century. 24th ă 25th November 2000, Putrajaya. Bangi:
Faculty of Education, University Kebangsaan Malaysia.

119
Unit 9 Web Organisation Planning

9.0Introduction

The process of writing and designing a website, like the traditional communication media, requires
an orderly planning and thinking. The early stage practice of website writing process is actually
not much different from the practice of writing printed materials such as books, articles, newspapers
or journals, whereby the writer will usually plan before writing. Writing on websites emphasises
more on early planning because the writing process does not only involved writing rules, like
in books and other traditional communication media, but it also covers the online hypertext
design. If the web form documents are not designed according to careful planning and attention to
good hypermedia features, it would cause the creation of a website that is unorganised, cluttered
and difficult to update or expand.

9.1 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
 discuss the importance of content analysis and scope analysis that you need to do before
publishing a web
 analyse the content and scope of your website
 identify the objective in building a target website
 organise the content in main titles

9.2 Content and scope analysis

The important thing to answer the question about what you want to put in your website is related to
content and scope analysis. The purpose of content analysis is to identify the content needed, the
currently available content in other related websites or publication, and the expert who will be able
to provide the latest information when needed. The analysis stage is useful for deciding on the
content structure of a website that is to be published.

Scope analysis is another type of analysis that must be done so that it can help you decide how
wide you intend to cover the title that you have chosen for your website. In other words, content and
scope analysis actually serve to identify the coverage of a topic or an aspect, a matter and other
affairs that you want to include in your website. The important thing in the analysis phase is to
decide on the website’s content because the content that will be included must be in line with the
publishing’s objective. In order to ensure the accuracy of the content, you need to visit other
websites that have the same concept as the one that you want to publish. This step in gathering
sources helps the publisher to obtain guideline and further knowledge as well as skills from
information sources when establishing the website’s content.

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Example 9.1: Content and scope analysis

When you want to publish a searching guide system in the World Wide Web for assisting internet
users to search for information, you need to collect all the information regarding application target,
purpose and objective, website specification and website presentation. In this case, the sources that
can help to decide the content for the system on WWW searching are the University of
California website, Watch search engine, books on information and communication skills
(Halimah & Norhayati1998, Nor Azan & Juhana 2000), and other information literacy material on
digital era (Juhana 2002).An in-depth research on the sources of information related to the website
title in focus can further increase its standard and quality not only in terms of content and scope, but
can also make a website more attractive and effective.

9.3 User analysis

The purpose of user analysis is to know the profile of users who will use your website application.
Users will face difficulties in surfing a website and in using it if it is published without a detailed
application plan. Thus, it is important to precisely profile your website’s targeted users at the user
analysis stage. The user aspects that need to be considered are:

• Computer literacy level;

• Language ă main communication language and second language;
• Past experience of using the same application;
• Cultural background;
• User’s expectation of what your website could offer; and
• User’s population age

ACTIVITY 9.1

? Browse through this websites for further information on the planning

process in web document publishing:
http://www.webstyleguide.com/index.html?/contents.html
1. List six factors that need to be thought of while planning the website.
2. Explain the critic’s session suggested for the above website.

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9.4 Implication Analysis
The purpose of the implication analysis is to determine the implications when it is introduced to
the real environment. For example, when introducing an application, it is necessary to do some
changes to the current infrastructure, procedure, management structure and others. Sometimes an
introduction to a new information application could bring a negative effect to some of the staff in
an organisation. For example, if the building of a website will have caused a job loss to a certain
party, it will be difficult to get information from the staff who are involved.

9.5 Website Content Type

What you want to include in your website is called content. A website content consists of text,
graphic, interactive media, database, form and others. What type of content could you insert into
your website? Figure 9.1 shows the content examples that are considered suitable for a website.

Figure 9.1: Web content examples

The purposes of website content as in Figure 9.1 are the following:

(a) Personal information
You can write every aspect of yourself that you want the reader to know, for example, self-
biodata such as family background, interest, education background, experience, photos, important
video clips of your life or other things that you have done and accomplished.
(b) Publication
Newspaper articles, magazines and journals, lecture notes and others are suitable materials to be
included in a website. Besides that, your publication could be easily updated from time to time when
compared to your publication in print.

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(c) Company profile
Disseminating information on a company could be done in an effective way through website. You
can give information on the company’s activities, basic information such as location and company
branches, product demonstration, services, marketing opportunity, jobs and staff who can be
contacted by those who are interested.
(d) Online Documentary
Online documentary covers all types of information that could be treated as reference material; from
simple reference to a complete reference source such as guideline, directory, encyclopaedia and
others. Online documentary could also cover an interactive tutorial and exercise module.
Examples of online documentary that are based on a job or a task are cooking, house interior
design, changing motor oil, and learning performance technique.
(e) Online shopping
Users can buy their daily grocery through the WWW. The company website can provide a list of
items supported by the product’s picture and price, so that customers can make their choices and
orders online. By marketing the products online, all of the information especially the prices could
be displayed easily and efficiently.
(f) Online learning
Your website can contain notes or basic reading of a course, tutorial, and discussion forum to
encourage interaction. The facility provided by the internet enables the information to be
disseminated at a cheaper cost and supports online learning.

9.6 Identifying Web Publishing Target

When identifying the target of your website publishing, there are some questions that need to be
answered. Some of them are:

• What is it that you want the users to gain from your website?
• Does the reader / user want to search for a specific information on how to do something?

If you want to publish a company website that gives basic information on the company, you can
assume that there might be users who are interested to know about your company’s career
opportunity, its location and company product. If you want to publish a website for a new journal
published by your company, you can presume that the user will want to know about the article titles
that have been published plus the fields covered. This way, they could send articles that have been
written for publication in the next coming journal. Information on how to subscribe journal, article
writing guide and others must be clearly thought of and determined clearly so that the web
publishing steps can be planned with more structure, order and comprehensively.

For a website selling company products, the website’s target may be one or two, for example, to
enable the website reader to browse the products listed and to make an order after selecting the item
that he wants to buy. For an individual website or a website specialising in a certain field or
favourite interest, you might need just one target, for example, to enable the reader to observe and
to read the information posted on your website. All of the questions and matters discussed above are
important and they can help you to list the general objective and specific objective. The following
are example to determine the objectives for the title “Application Guideline for Web Based Internet
Tool”

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Example 9.3: Determining the objectives

Title: Application Guideline for Web Based Internet Tool Objectives:

1. To provide an information technology learning environment, specifically internet

tools, that is informative and interactive.
2. To a s s i s t t h e t e a c h i n g p r o c e s s o f i n f o r m a t i o n ac c ess t e c h n o l o g y through the
internet by using an interactive tutorial approach.
3. To provide a technology reference source, specifically FTP and Telnet technology in
Zimbabwean language.

9.7 Identifying the Main Title in a Website

After you have identified the purpose and target in publishing a website, the next step is to think of a
way to organise the related information under one title and according to the main titles.

Website publishing does not require the need to list the title in specific but sufficient enough to list
the main ideas that you will load into your website. You can expand ideas specifically and organise
the information more effectively when you write every page of your website in detail. Example 9.4
shows the way to identify the main title in a website.

Example 9.4: Identifying the Main Title

If you want to publish a website on the application of internet facility tool to let users experience
environments such as FTP and Telnet, the suitable titles are:

Internet Basic Tool Archie

FTP Gopher
TELNET Veronica
USENET Ping
World Wide Web Video Communication
E-mail Voice Communication
Other internet facilities Look up host
User manual

Example 9.5: Identifying the Main Title

If you want to publish a website for an online bookstore, the target of enabling customers to order
books is very suitable under the book ordering title. Other relevant titles are:

Company Profile
Product list (information source database)
Product managing page
Book ordering information
Online ordering form

Ordering Record
Customer record
User record
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User feedback

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If you need to build a website that is not task oriented, such as the history of a place, a prominent
figure’s profile or a sport figure and others, you can list your ideas as in Example 9.6.

Example 9.6: Identifying the Main Title

If you are publishing a website on Langkawi Island, the related ideas are: History of Langkawi
Historical places
Islands
Hotel / lodging
How to go to Langkawi Island
Eating places
People and tradition
Island images, relaxing places
Cultural and social activity images
Interesting activities all year round

Make sure that the titles you have listed are not too broad. If there are too many things to cover in
one title, the next step to take is to divide them into sub titles. You can also cluster sub titles under
one general title.

9.8 Summary
Designing a website or web document is like drafting a book content that involves a complex
process. A detailed planning before building the website can assist in smoothing the publishing
process and in ensuring that the publisher does not make many mistakes.

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References
Lemay, L. (2000). Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 Days Professional
Reference Edition. (2nd ed.). Indiana: SAMS.

Lowe, D . & H a l l , W. (1999). H y p e r m e d i a and The Web: An Engineering Approach.

Chichester Wiley.

Martin, J. (1990). Hyperdocument and How to Create Them. Englewood: Prentice Hall.

Salim, J. & Yaakob, Y. (2000). Hyper document: An Innovative Tool for Teaching and Learning.
Proceeding of the International Conference on Teaching and Learning. Strategising
Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century. 24th ă 25th November 2000, Putrajaya.
Bangi: Faculty of Education, University Kebangsaan Malaysia.

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Unit 10 Web Information Structuring

10.0 Introduction
A published website or web document must have a clear structure and ideas that are arranged in an
orderly manner. This topic will elaborate on how to build web documents that are clear and useful.
An unplanned website will cause a chaotic situation. We can also follow the same guidelines used
in writing research report or textbook for the best techniques in building web document.
Besides that, we must make sure that the hypermedia technique or approach is clear and has good
structure.

10.1Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
 list the best techniques that can be used as guidelines for building a clear and useful web
document or website
 explain the methods to create a clear and smart web document
 design an orderly web document structure
 apply the hypertext system in the web design

10.2 Web Structure Explanation

In the process of building and interlinking the web document’s text module, the author might need
to build a table and a picture and relate them to the text. In order to assist readers to access the web
information more effectively, the author needs to create menu and signs so that readers can surf
those documents. The most important aspect when creating a web document is that it must be
designed with a c l e a r s t r u c t u r e so t h a t r e a d e r s woul d n ot g e t l o s t w h i l e navigating
from one subp age to another subpage. Getting lost can happen if there are many branches or the
website is not orderly.

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Figure 10.1: The navigation structure needs to be clear to avoid being loss

10.3 A Clear Structure

Website publishing actually involves the hypertext system application. In a hypertext system, one
piece of information can be linked to another piece of information. This enables ideas to be related
in a beneficial way. However, an unskilled author in website publishing will create a messy
connection whereby the readers could easily get lost. As a result, readers will not be able to find all
the information that might be useful to them or face difficulties getting back to the information that
they want to see again. Unlike books, no information could be read until the reader surfs to the
correct website. Furthermore, reading must be done via the small computer screen.

ACTIVITY 10.1

?
The following website gives an early exposure on web structures.
http://www.webstyleguide.com/site/basic_structures.html
Based on each of the structures, state the types of website that are suitable
with the given structures

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In order to create a good quality hypertext based web document, a clear structure must be built. The
common form of structure used is the hierarchy form. Before discussing the hierarchy structure, it is
important to understand the arrangement of small idea information (sub titles) to the main titles in a
website.

10.4 Envelope
A web document can be divided into several main titles called envelope. In every envelope there are
several information clusters. This information clusters can be arranged in various structures. Figure
10.2 shows the main titles in an envelope and how the information clusters are arranged to form a
structure.

Figure 10.2: Several examples of envelope and information cluster in a hierarchy structure

Every envelope needs to have a title. When the envelope is sealed, readers can read its title and in
most cases, when the envelope is opened, readers can see its content. Figure 10.3 shows an
envelope hierarchy, where the main envelope “INTERNET” contains other envelopes inside for
example “What is the Internet”, “Internet History”, “Internet User” and others.

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Figure 10.3: Example of a website that shows the main envelope that contains other small sub
envelopes.

In order to understand the title arrangement that uses envelope, observe Figure 10.4 on the position
of sub titles in Unit 3.

Figure 10.4: Title arrangement using envelope

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For example, the text that you are reading is in the smallest envelope entitled “Envelope” and it
is within a sub envelope entitled “A Clear Structure”. All the sub envelopes are placed in one
bigger envelope entitled “Unit 10: WEBSITE STRUCTURING”. This big envelope is placed in
the biggest envelope entitled “Unit 3: EVALUATION OF WEB ORGANISATION”. This envelope
is placed in the outer most envelope that is equivalent to the whole of the course guidebook (for
example, Unit 1 until Unit 3).

10.5 Hierarchies
A good website or web document has a logical method in structuring a web document. The best
way to construct is by using hierarchy or menu. Hierarchy must be built clearly.

Website publisher can start with the list or main titles menu and by selecting one main title, the
related subtitles can then be considered.

The envelopes listed in Figure 10.2 allow the website publisher to see the relation between the
content structures that are contained in the bigger envelopes. Then the envelopes are arranged to
form structures. The most common structure is a single hierarchy.

Figure 10.5 shows a hierarchy like a paper document structure. The segments of the document or
web are numbered. There is a software that can automatically number them and even re-number
them after the author had made changes

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Figure 10.5: The „Internet Facility website hierarchy structure

In the hierarchy organisation, readers can know their position in the structure. Readers can choose
to either explore upwards for information that are more general or downwards for more specific
information. If the publisher provides the link to the highest level (main title), readers can easily
and quickly return to a familiar position. In the hierarchy, the home page gives a complete picture of
its website content. The home page also relates to the specific websites under the hierarchy
structure.

A web document can contain one or more hierarchies. A book or a technical report may only
need a single hierarchy that can be simplified in its content schedule. A web document can also
have various hierarchies that are inter- related. For example, a web document about the future of
computerisation can contain a hierarchy concerning technology, one concerning application, and
another one concerning the social impact. There are various cross-relation that can link these
hierarchies.

10.6 Overlapping between Hierarchies

In a book, every topic or piece of information appears only once in the table of contents. In a web
document, information can be referred from various hierarchies or several places within the
same hierarchy. Different pages can contain different buttons that relate to the same information.

Figure 10.6 shows the relation among the hierarchies. In the envelope that has the hierarchy set
“Internet Facility”, the “E-mail” sub envelope is one of the Internet facilities and the application
aspects are loaded within it. From the “Social Impact” angle, e-mail is a new form of
communication that changes the way people communicates. Thus, in the small “New
Communication Pattern” sub envelope that contains information on e-mail’s effect on the relationship
between people, a hyperlink is made to the e-mail that contains further information on its

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application (see the dotted lines). While “New Communication Pattern” has a connection with “File
Transferring from the Server”.

Figure 10.6: The hierarchy structure that shows the overlapping between two hierarchies

Thus, a title that gives an explanation on an idea can be connected to many other titles. It becomes
the target navigation button in many different places. The whole hierarchy can be used to
explain an idea and thus, it becomes the target of buttons from other hierarchies.

ACTIVITY 10.2

Visit three websites and list the structure used. Give your comment on
? the structure’s suitability for every website that you have chosen.

10.7 Linear Structure

A method that can be used to organise web document is the linear or series organisation. This
method is similar to the way a printed document is organised. In the linear structure, every web
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page will be continuous as shown in Figure10.7. The linking method built between one web page
with another web page is the same as how it was arranged.

Figure 10.7: Linear structure

This structure helps the exploration and understanding of the context because users were not given
many choices to explore other documents. However, a rigid structure will limit the users’ exploration
and the presentation of the web writer’s own ideas.

Usually, this navigation structure starts with a home page that draws and summarises the contents of
all the other pages. Since the exploration process that happens is very linear, the resulting web
document does not have many buttons or links.

This rigid structure can be made flexible by allowing readers to take other route from the actual
link route. This can be done by giving a link to an alternative route from a position such as in
Figure 10.8. This alternative route can be connected to the original route at a different position or
end at one position.

Figure 10.8: A linear structure with alternative routes

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Besides using this method, web publisher can provide a link that allows readers to skip forward or
backwards if they need to see certain pages or to go directly to another page.

The linear structure is more suitable for web based exercise because readers could follow the
module in series. The web document author can provide questions for certain titles or further
information if the reader gives a wrong answer.

10.8 The Combination of the Linear and Hierarchy Structures

One method of web document content organisation that is commonly used is the combination o f
the linear and hierarchy s t r u c t u r e s . This organisation i s commonly seen on structured
document but with linear features, such as the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) segment on
most websites (see Figure 10.9). Thus combination is effective if readers are given a position sign.
Readers could easily get lost while moving from one hierarchy to another hierarchy.

Figure 10.9: Linear and hierarchy structures

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10.9 Network Structure
A hierarchy without any cross connection, as in Figure 10.5 is sometimes named as the tree
structure. Multiple hierarchies with cross connection between one another are named as network
structure, such as in Figure 10.6 and Figure 10.10.

Figure 10.10: Network structure

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A network structure built without order is hard to expand and maintain. Furthermore, it is hard for
readers to know in which part they are at and how to explore around the structure. A disorderly
network will cause the readers to feel as if they are in a maze.

The network structure or also known as the web structure or web is a set of document that has
little or no real whole structure. Links as shown in Figure10.10 connect one page with another
page.

Hypertexts must be built with a hierarchy that could be seen clearly and with an orderly
connection. Sometimes a connection will make several relations in a hierarchy and sometimes
will oppose the other hierarchies. Sometimes connection could also relate separate
documents. Readers need to see a titled hierarchy, like a table of contents that is arranged according
to alphabetical order in Figure 10.10.

The network structure is more suitable for organising information such as in guidebook,
encyclopaedia or directory. Network structure enables the same information to be accessed using
different context.

10.10 Other Managing Paradigms

There a r e a l s o s t r u c t u r e s t hat a r e d i f f e r e n t from t h e s t r u c t u r e s t hat w e r e explained.
If matrix, pyramid, or chart is used for structuring a document, we call them a “managing
paradigm”. The word “paradigm” means a pattern or a structure.

The text shown might be orderly in some hierarchy such as in Figure 10.11 that is a matrix.

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Figure 10.11: Tree structure (matrix)
The pyramid structure is similar to the food pyramid and every level represents an envelope.
Thus, the highest level might be entitled planning, the second entitled analysis, the third level
entitled design and the lowest level consist of construction, data and activity. Figure 10.12 shows a
pyramid structure.

Figure 10.12: The pyramid structure

Figure 10.13: The chart to build the web based Pre School Mathematics software course

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The following are several chart series used as a guide to structure a web document. (Please
see Figure 10.13, 10.15)

Figure 10.14: The chart that details the web based “Pre School Mathematics” software course

Figure 10.15: The chart that details the web based “Pre School Mathematics” software course

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Figure 10.16: An envelope diagram

10.11 Diagram
A good web based document provides a user-friendly technique to build, manipulate and explore
through the hierarchy and cross connection of the pages. Figure 10.16 shows the same envelope
diagram as in Figure 10.11. This is a useful way of representing a hierarchy. The outer most
envelope contains sub envelopes. These sub envelopes contain smaller sub envelopes and continue
on until the lowest level sub envelopes.

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Figure 10.17: An envelope diagram

The lowest level sub envelope (envelopes at the extreme right) is called the basic envelopes because
it cannot be divided anymore. These basic envelopes contain text, diagram, image, audio
conversation or video animation. It is easy to draw an envelope diagram on the computer screen by
only showing the left side of the envelope. Figure 10.17 is a bracket diagram that is a simple form
of Figure 10.16. Readers can scroll upwards and downwards of the envelope diagram, quickly
opening and closing the envelope. The line on top of every envelope is a title for one part of
information. It shows the envelopes content.

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10.12 Types of Envelope
A web document can have various types of envelope. Figure 10.18 shows the types of envelope
that may be present.

Figure 10.18: Types of envelope

Explanation for every type of envelope:

(a) Text. The envelope contains text c h a r a c t e r s e t . Usually, we scroll i t horizontally.

(b) Diagram. The envelope contains colourful diagram created with programs such as Paint or
Draw or with other software that creates chart from numbers.

(c) Image. The scanned envelope contains image details that are saved in bit- map form. There
might be no difference between an envelope that contains one diagram with the one that contains
one image. On the other hand, there can be a special envelope that has an automatic connection to
a certain Paint or Draw software.

(d) Animation. An envelope that contains software that can create moving images.

(e) Sound. The envelope that plays digitised sound such as speech or music.
This can be combined with an image on the screen.

(f) Video. The envelope that displ a ys an i m a ge like a t e l e v i s i o n on t h e computer

screen. It might fill up the whole screen or a small window. It might be powered from a computer
disc or from a laser disc.

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(g) Programming. Sometimes, when an envelope is opened, a programme will run automatically.
This programme might communicate with the audience. It might show a poll result or an expert
system.

Since there are many types of software, multiple types of software envelope can be provided.
Audience might think that an envelope contains a programme. Actually, the envelope is just an
entry-exit route or gateway to another software. A hyper document software should have an
opening i nt e rfa c e to another software. Web document software must know what is contained in an
envelope so that it can take the right steps when the envelope is opened. It must recognise many
types of envelope. Thus an envelope is a certain object and with certain features.

10.13 Searching for Visual Form of Thinking

In many aspects, the web document is a visual medium. Web publisher must expand the visual and
text conveying skills.
Good textbooks contain a lot of diagrams. A web document must have more visual representation
than a textbook. An author needs to check on the contents and decide on how to use the diagram,
list and hierarchy effectively. The questions such as If I present it as a lecture or What are the charts
that I could use must be thought of. The charts must be inserted into the right web document. If the
website author realised that the text written is excessively long, the author needs to ask:

• Can I represent half of the ideas as a bullet list or a chart?

• Can a menu help?
• Can a tree structure help in structuring ideas in the website?

The author needs to constantly categorise and do the categorisation visually. A web document or a
website on a subject that contains more than 200 continuous text lines in its envelopes must prepare
a bullet list, chart, diagram or summary.

Creating a good web document is more like creating a seminar than writing a book. The author
breaks the information into several parts and then decides on how the computer can present parts of
the information in the most effective way. Usually, a chart is the best way to present one part of
information. Just like an advertisement producer, a website producer or author must learn the
technique of communication effectively. Website publisher must analyse how the advertisement
producer uses brief words, design, graphic arrangement and interesting images. Information and
programmes that are hype and sensational must be avoided.

ACTIVITY 10.3

? Choose a topic and use the appropriate structure to

design a web document. Elaborate on the structure
used.

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10.14 The Creation of Connections
A hyper document can contain the diagram of several envelopes that are inter- related. As
discussed previously, a connection that enables readers to link the web document contains a
button, a connection, and a target. When an author builds a hypertext connection, it is beneficial if
he can see the button and target on screen.

10.15 The Generating and Organising of Ideas that are Orderly

A well-structured web document is not created from a sudden inspiration. The author has many
ideas at different times. The author needs to record these ideas and progressively the ideas will be
clearly structured. A good web document is like a sophisticated car; the ideas and document
structures are amended numerous times. The clarity of the concept will emerge slowly.

There is a software that enables a web author to manage his ideas and usually referred to as „idea
processor. An idea processor must enable an author to note down ideas as soon as they appear and to
arrange the ideas into structures. Idea processor software must enable an author to quickly rearrange
his ideas, cluster, connect, prioritise and arrange the ideas into a hierarchy or network. An idea
processor software must be able to test and put the ideas side by side in order to suggest new ideas
and to select the most useful idea. The easier all these activities are done, the more beneficial the idea
processor software is.

The following idea processing can be performed on several levels as shown in Table 10.1 below:

Table 10.1 Level of idea processing

A web document can be better built if the web document publisher

Early Stage: identifies or generates ideas and manage the ideas before writing.
Before Writing
Writing process to create many new ideas. The idea processor should
Middle Stage: be able to immediately jump from its word processor or graphic
Writing process tools to the idea group when a new idea emerges.

A lot of rearrangements can happen when a web document is

revised.
Final Stage: The more thorough the critique and revision are done, the
Correcting process higher the quality of the document.

The tool that enables an author to rearrange his ideas and arrange the ideas into a structure must use
the same idea processor software.

An author must think of his readers. When jotting down all the ideas that might be useful to the
readers, write down all the ideas and then use the software that can help you to manage the random
ideas into the most useful structure. Some other guidelines and constructing procedures and idea

145
arrangement will be discussed in further detail in the next part. The following website gives an
early exposure to the orderly way that ideas and web contents are generated and organised.
When writing an essay or presentation paper, students are sometimes taught to write their ideas on
note cards. Students can place the note cards on the table and arrange the cards in various ways.
When a student is connecting the ideas, he can clip the cards together by using paper clips. The note
cards are almost similar to an idea processor. Authors have a lot of ideas written in simple note
form, sometimes with reference (simplified into several letters) and page number. Authors should
be able to scroll quickly to see the ideas and cluster them. Authors can cluster the ideas into
brackets as in Figure 10.19 to scroll the brackets quickly and rearrange ideas.

Figure 10.19: Clustering ideas into a bracket

10.16 Single-Line and Multiple-Line Ideas

An idea maybe written on a single line or multiple lines. An author can place a collection of ideas
in an envelope as in Figure 10.16. An author can take an idea and write a few texts about the idea
when he is able to create interesting phrases. An author may be able to roughly draft a diagram or
expand the idea. The material should be placed in an envelope that can be opened and closed with a
touch of the mouse.

Thus, he can scroll and rearrange the lines on the screen where every line might contain a single-
line idea or a minimised envelope that contains a multiple-line idea, texts, pictures, animation
pictures, or a programme. Besides that, author could also cluster the single-line ideas into a bracket
as in Figure 10.20.

Figure 10.20: Clustering single-line idea into a bracket

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10.17 Clustering Ideas
When clustering ideas into the envelope, the web document’s author might want to place the
envelope into other envelopes. The author might develop an idea into sub components, thus
creating a hierarchy. These hierarchies can be minimised into a single line so the hierarchy could
be rearranged with other ideas. This way, the author could continuously collect the bigger
constructing blocks as in Figure 10.21.

Figure 10.21: Collecting the construction blocks

The two points at the beginning of a line show that the line is an envelope that can be opened.
Three points at the beginning of a line show that the envelope contains other envelopes. An author
can open any envelope from the previous envelopes; for example, he opens Idea 42 in Figure 10.22.

Figure 10.22: Development and arrangement of ideas

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10.18 Bottom-Top And Top-Bottom Thinkings
In creating a web document, we can make two types of designing. Firstly, we take the ideas in
detail and connect them to form a structure. This is named the bottom-top design as in Figure 10.23.

Figure 10.23: The bottom-top design

Secondly, we take the ideas from the high level and break them into detailed ideas. This is named
the top-bottom design as in Figure 10.24.

Figure 10.24: The top-bottom design

At the early stage of a document thinking process, the author must list the table of contents. The
table of contents can be divided into hierarchy as in Figure 10.25.

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Figure 10.25: A hierarchy table of contents

The table of contents would continuously change based on the changes in the author’s idea. For
example, when the author is writing topics, he might realise that the topic titles need to be
fragmented, combined or altered. Even though the first version is done, the critique and polishing
processes can cause the content to be rearranged. Rearrangement on a web document is more likely
to happen than a paper document. The design of t h e writing tools needs to take into
consideration the flexibility of the rearrangement. They must be able to rebuild the web
connections automatically when the author rearranges the content.

An author must create a table of contents that is free from his collection of ideas. He must do an
envelope for every topic. Then he must check on the collection of ideas for placing them into the
envelopes. The author might realise that some of the ideas could not be placed in the table of
contents. He can then change the table of contents to fit in the ideas.

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10.19 Clusters
The success of writing a web document depends on the content partition that have been
fragmented. We will refer to a cluster. If separated from the document, a cluster can usually be
understood on its own. It is important to know the three main clusters. See Table 10.2.

Table 10.2: Main clusters

No Main Cluster Explanation

This is the lowest level envelope that contains one basic building idea.
Basic construction They are not always relevant when outside of context. Thus, on their
1. blocks own they may not be the target of a hyper connection.

This is the lowest level envelope that contains a diagram and some
2. Diagram Units relevant text. The diagram must have a caption of its own explanation,
so that it is meaningful outside of context.

This is the valid basic concept explanation regardless of its content.

3. Concept Units They could be linked to or from any document.

A solitary basic building block faces the possibility of becoming a web connection target. The
concept unit and diagram unit are considered web connection target. A concept unit can be linked to
or from any document.

The material that explains one basic concept is called one-unit concept. The one-unit concept might
contain one construction block or many construction blocks; it may contain a lower-level envelope
or several other envelopes. Thus, the unit concept can be divided, whereas the building blocks
cannot. One-unit concept can contain the units of other concepts, such as in Figure 10.26. Thus,
there must be a unit concept index. It may contain an envelope that is similar to a unit concept or
not. In this topic, the unit concept is drawn with a thicker higher- level envelope than the other
envelopes so that readers can identify them with more clarity.

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Figure 10.26: The Unit Concept

ACTIVITY 10.4

?
Select a title and arrange the ideas using the unit concept as in
Figure 10.26. Make sure you show your ideas by differentiating
between the unit concept, construction block and envelope
.

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10.20 Brain Storming
One way to increase inventive and idea generating abilities is through brain storming. Discussion
within a group about a problem, issue or matter can illuminate the group members’ mind. Through a
brain storming session, more productive ideas can be forwarded and discussed. The ideas
expressed in a discussion session can be recorded in a computer, expanded, explored and for
stimulating the generation of better and productive ideas. At the same time, the filtering and
throwing away of irrelevant ideas could be done. The ideas collected can then be categorised,
arranged and linked in the relevant hierarchy.

ACTIVITY 10.5

? State the recommended five steps of brain storming in the website above
and explain the application effect of every step.

10.21 Priority
Ideas need to be selected and given priority and arranged according to the idea’s quality level. The
emerged idea can be inserted into an envelope depending on its suitability. Ideas can also be
divided into categories by using colour, where the best idea is in white and the second best is red
and so forth.

10.22 Title Listing

Psychologist has performed research that shows that the human memory is limited and can only
remember seven or less items. So, when building a web- based document, it is better to avoid
listing more than seven titles. When using titles in chart, use less than seven ideas in a website. If
the titles for elaboration are more than seven, the items could be broken into two sub categories.

10.23 Structure Evaluation

A website builder needs to frequently raise questions on the envelopes that have been generated.
Among the questions that can be raised to help evaluate each content in an envelope are:

• Is there any relevant information inserted into the envelope?

• What title could be added into an envelope?
• Is there any unsuitable information inserted into an envelope?
• Does the envelope need to be divided into two parts?
• Is the idea arrangement in the envelope in order or does it need other arrangement?
• Can graphic, picture, sound chart and video be used?

• What topic should be supported by illustration, chart, figure and other graphics?

These questions need to be thought of for every envelope, unit concept, topic and the whole web
document.
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10.24 Understanding the Reader
The first tip for someone who is communicating is to understand the receiver. An author needs to
think of these matters:

Figure 10.27: Readers’ background consideration

Writing is a process of communicating with other people. In order to do it properly, you must
understand the receiver of a message. Try to imagine yourself as the readers and see your
writing from their perspective. Half web document is a free-reader mixture of unit concept that is
rigid and does not change. The other is fixed-reader material that can change and pay attention to the
needs of readers and link the units’ concept where suitable.

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10.25 Summary
The most important thing in planning document construction is to organise your information. You
need to think thoroughly on what and on how you want to express in your website or web
document. You need to know deeply the contents of your website. For achieving the above
purposes, this topic has explained the techniques for building a clear and valuable web document,
structuring an orderly document and applying the hypertext system to enable ideas to be connected
in a beneficial way. By visiting the websites recommended in this topic, you will be able to better
understand the web information structuring techniques and apply them effectively.

KEY TERMS
Diagram Linear Structure
Envelope Web Structure
Hierarchy Structure

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References
Lemay, L. (2000). Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 Days Professional
Reference Edition. (2nd ed.). Indiana: SAMS.

Lowe, D . & H a l l , W. (1999). H y p e r m e d i a and The Web: An Engineering Approach.

Chichester Wiley.

Martin, J. (1990). Hyperdocument and How to Create Them. Englewood: Prentice Hall.

Salim, J. & Yaakob, Y. (2000). Hyper document: An Innovative Tool for Teaching and Learning.
Proceeding of the International Conference on Teaching and Learning. Strategising
Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century. 24th ă 25th November 2000, Putrajaya.
Bangi: Faculty of Education, University Kebangsaan Malaysia.

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Unit 11 Navigation Structure Design

11.0 Introduction
Organising a web document is a must in order to make the navigating process smoother and to
enable good information dissemination. Website constructing structure can be made as a basic so
that users would not get lost in the digital world. Thus, it is important for web document creators to
pay detail attention in assisting readers to find useful and practical information so that readers would
not face any problem when surfing the website or web document. The navigation mechanism design
covers the navigation structure design based on users’ opinion, link selection and index approach in
finding information. When constructing the content, the main purpose is to build a data structure that
can assist in identifying the required content only. In the process of gathering opinion, it is important
to identify how readers will access the information and to think of other users’ opinion before
constructing the web document so that it could be easily explored.

11.1 Objectives
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
 explain the methods used to assist readers to navi gat e the web document effectively
 design the navigation mechanism based on users’ opinion
 structure the web document so that it is easy to explore
 produce two types of link and i ndex i ng approach for s e a r c h i n g information

11.2 Navigation System

Navigation system changes from one page to another page and it is not easy for a web user to
understand the navigation system. The navigation system could be divided into 3 parts, which are:
(i) Easy text system;
(ii) Image navigating system; button and icon; and
(iii) Frame set system.

A good approach to help users to understand your website or web document’s navigating system is
by providing an explanation or link to assist users to learn how to use it. The website or web
document exploration explanation must be made clear and easy to understand. For example, if your
navigating schedule looks like the following, readers would be able to easily navigate your website.

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The bar above might be clear and common for users who had visited such website. However,
the further explanation that is provided such as in Table 11.1 will help users who are less skilled in
navigating a website.

Table 11.1: An explanation on a website button

Button Explanation / Further description

Home page Use the “Home” link to return to the main page

Table of contents (TOC) provides the link to all the sites in the web base. The
Content TOC site is one of the ways that could be used by readers to easily and effectively
explore a website.

Someone who is newly exposed to internet application might not understand what
FAQ FAQ actually means. Thus, make sure that the publisher gives a bit of explanation
on FAQ, which means a site list that contains some questions received from
website visitors.
The link to the e-mail also needs an explanation such as Use e- mail to send any
E-mail question or comment on this website’.

Visitors Log For visitors to make comment.

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The application of image and icon as a way of navigation is not easily recognised. Figure 11.1 shows
a frame set, where the top part is arranged with icons for navigation while the bottom part displays
a text bar that has the explanation of its function.

Figure 11.1: Icon and button examples

ACTIVITY 11.1

? As an internet user, what other navigation system aid that you want to
get? List and discuss with your course mate.

11.3 Effective Navigation System Design

When designing a navigation system for a document or website, there are a lot of features that need
to be stressed on in drafting the web document. This is done so that the web document exploration
could be executed more effectively by the user. The features that need to be given attention in
structuring a navigating system are elaborated in the following sub titles:

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 Figure 11.2: Features of a good structuring system

(a) The document must show a clear structure

The structure displayed must be arranged according to hierarchy. There must be a connection
between concept, hierarchy and other aspects as shown in Figure 11.3 and Figure 11.4. This
enables the user to know where he is and to choose whether to continue exploring or turn back.

Figure 11.3: A clear structure for a web document entitled “Animal”

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Figure 11.4: Example of a clear exploration based on the structure in Figure 11.3

(b) Structure using Diagram

Structural representation in a diagram enables user to fully see what is inside a web document.
Connection between matters that is included can also be seen easily as shown in Figure 11.5.

Figure 11.5: Example of a structure using diagram

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(c) A Clear Structure has a Button on Every Block to Link to the Explanation
Text.
Just like graphic, every time you make a link, the question on why the link is made between two
sites must be asked. Is the link useful? Will it give the readers more information or help them
achieve their goal? Is the link relevant to the content that is currently being read? Every link
needs to have a certain purpose and relevant reasons. For example, see Figure 11.6. When the name
“Parameswara” appears in the website, the link to a website that provides the explanation
on Parameswara is not needed because the event that is being explained is related
to Parameswara’s arrival in Melaka. The links that are needed here might involve words such as
“Palembang” and the “Majapahit Government”. When Palembang is made into a button (that signals
the term Has a link), in effect the next link will display further information on the “Majapahit
Government” and its association with Parameswara’s journey.

(d) A Button to Return Back

A good navigation design must give users a choice to return back to the home page after going
through several existing links. This can be done by:
• clicking the “Back’ button; or
• use the mouse to instantaneously return to the home page. (refer Figure 11.6, where the
word „(Return) is a link button to return back to the original website).

(e) Understanding the Readers’ Requirement

A web document writer must be aware of the readers’ target. Why do readers read his web
document? How can the readers be assisted in achieving the written web document’s objective?

(f) Providing Two or More Hierarchies

Two or more hierarchies are needed when designing web document navigation. For example, a
hierarchy based on site content and another hierarchy based on users’ problem, issue and concept.

(g) Access Problem Between Disciplines

This problem can be solved by having two or more hierarchies that are connected to the appropriate
link and having multiple indexes. For example, the COMPASS system (refer Figure 10.10, section
10.2.6) provides an index based on company name, manufacturing output and services for the
users’ convenience. Figure 11.7 shows how links are made from a module of index. This way,
readers would be able to quickly and easily find the desired information.

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Figure 11.7: Index example and how it aids navigation

ACTIVITY 11.2

?
List 7 features that must be remembered when designing an effective
navigation system. Explain the importance of every feature.

ACTIVITY 11.3

?
The following websites are additional references to establish your
understanding on effective and useful navigation.
http://www.ahref.com/guides/design/199808/0831jef.html
http://www.webstyleguide.com/interface/user-centred.html
Read the information on navigation by the recommended websites above
when planning for your website. Compare the recommendation and
discuss with your course mate on the effectiveness of every
recommendation.

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11.4 Types of Link
There are two types of link that can be applied to assist an effective navigation, which are:
(a) Direct navigation link; and
(b) Indirect navigation link.

A direct navigation link shows the route that can be taken by the document /website visitor by
providing the link such as forward, back, top, return to home page. Direct navigation link is
commonly shown by using icon as in Figure 11.1. An indirect navigation link as shown in Figure
11.8 is different from the direct navigation link.

An indirect navigation link has a text that shows a link but does not clearly
show the navigation between several pages. An interlink menu as in Figure 11.4 shows the precise
example type of link using menu. An indirect navigation link can also use the content page or
structure that shows the whole of the web document (as in Figure 11.18).

Buttons

Figure 11.8: Example of a button that has link (an indirect navigation link)

A concept word or definition can be made a good link especially if you want to build a website
network with glossary. By linking a word or concept that appears for the first time to its
definition, the word’s or concept’s meaning could be verified by users who do not know, without
distracting other readers who already know the word’s definition as in Figure 11.9.

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Figure 11.9: Application of word or concept definition as a link

ACTIVITY 11.4

?
What are the benefits and weaknesses of using a direct link and
indirect link?

ACTIVITY 11.5

?
The following websites are clear and related examples of effective and
useful linking techniques:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sources
Compare the three pages of the website shown above. How does each
page ensure that the links selected are effective?
.

11.5 Summary
An important aspect in web document publishing is t h e n a v i g a t i o n , especially in the
complex hypertext structure that has a comprehensive content. Navigation difficulties happen
when readers could not match the goal of finding the desired information with the information
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structure and activity provided in the web environment. This topic has explained various
techniques and ways that could be used as guidelines for effective navigation through the hypertext
system. Navigation could be assisted by publishing a clear and logical structure where readers
would be able to easily understand; and by providing signs represented by buttons and information
positions that are orderly.

KEY TERMS
Link Navigation

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References
Lemay, L. (2000). Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 Days Professional
Reference Edition. (2nd ed.). Indiana: SAMS.

Lowe, D . & H a l l , W. (1999). H y p e r m e d i a and The Web: An Engineering Approach.

Chichester Wiley.

Martin, J. (1990). Hyperdocument and How to Create Them. Englewood: Prentice Hall.

Salim, J. & Yaakob, Y. (2000). Hyper document: An Innovative Tool for Teaching and Learning.
Proceeding of the International Conference on Teaching and Learning. Strategising
Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century. 24th ă 25th November 2000, Putrajaya.
Bangi: Faculty of Education, University Kebangsaan Malaysia.

189