Working with Notepad

1) Today we learned that a Web Server receives requests from a client machine for a specific web page and "serves" the page up to the user's (client) machine. For example, when you browse to ESPN.com you are asking ESPN's Web Server to deliver to your computer a specific web page, namely the ESPN home page. We also learned that Mr. Seiler's computer - SLABADMIN - is the web server for our class activities.

2) We learned how to MAP A DRIVE, which is just a fancy way of telling your desktop machine (client) where to find the special storage space that I have reserved for you on my web server, which, as you will recall, is named SLABADMIN.

3) We began working with notepad, which is a bare-bones text editor. Notepad does not have formatting features like BOLD, TEXT COLOR, INLINE PICTURES, etc. Just text!

4) We used notepad to create a text document on the desktop. We put a short message inside the text document. Then we converted the text document to an HTML document by saving the document with the name firstweb.htm and setting the FILE TYPE in the Save dialog box to "All Files." So at that point we almost had a finished web page.

5) Then, finally, we made our "firstweb.htm" page an official, functional web page by adding a bit of code (tags, actually) to politely alert the webserver that the page is a legitimate web page. (See color-coded code below.) Notice that the HTML "tags" work in pairs that include an "opening" tag and a "closing" tag.