Jasper Blankman's Internet Clinic

By: Bob Mackey

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April 18, 2008

Note to Readers: With Bob Mackey away at the 2008 International Blogger Conference, “Blog is a Four-Letter Word” is taking this week off. Filling in for Bob is Jasper Blankman, designer of over two web pages, including “Welcome to Jasper Blankman’s Home Page” and “The Jasper Blankman HQ Zone.”  We sincerely hope you enjoy Jasper’s efforts in taking some of the mystery out of this whole “Internet” business.

Greetings, fellow superhighway travelers!  As an accomplished web page designer, I was tickled when Valley 24 asked me to write a column in my area of expertise: the Internet.  What with literally thousands of people jumping on the ‘Net through services like Prodigy and Compuserve, it won’t be long before disappointed mothers and aunts start asking, “Where’s your web page?”  And don’t think it’s enough to just have a web page; design is essential.  The following properties are what I consider to be the most important elements of fantastic web pages on the Internet.  Please read my bi-weekly postings on comp.internet.misc for more hot tips!

Backgrounds

Don’t think that black background will cut it, mister; this ain’t your daddy’s Internet.  While most agree that readable text is essential, having a solid color background on your Internet web page can cause “World Wide Web Fatigue,” a symptom commonly brought on by a lack of stimulus while searching for Deep Space Nine fan-fiction.  Frankly, I’m sick of napping.  That’s precisely why a star field background is “key” to adding some “zing” to your Internet web page, no matter what the topic!  It’s not only as exciting as a screen saver; having a star field background is like being able to project text and images onto the domes of one of your local planetariums!  I’m sure we’ve all dreamed about this at one point or another.



Fonts

Nothing’s wrong with some good old-fashioned Times New Roman.  Those serifs will give your web page that extra touch of class, and furthermore, centering all of your text will make you look like a man (or lady) who truly knows how to give words a sense of importance.  While we’re at it, our monitors can display hundreds of colors, so go nuts!  Reds, blues, yellows; each addition to your textual palette will show the world just how creative you are.  Heck, you may even want to experiment with Comic Sans MS if you want your text to reflect just how fun and playful others may find you.  AlTeRnAtInG cApS wOrK, ToO!

Speaking of fonts, the top of every web page should never be without a large welcoming message that informs others that they are indeed reading a web page.  If you get things right, it should look like this:


Images

So you’ve slapped some text on a star field, centered it, and added some marquee tags to make your visitors think they’re in some sort of wonderful virtual version of Times Square.  You’re not done yet, pal!  With current modem capabilities, your guests are going to want to see pictures to go with those words.  Luckily, the Internet is chock-full of interesting animated images known as .gif files that you can liberally pepper throughout your web page.  And if you think these images have to match your content, think again.  A web page I created about my dog was filled with animated characters from the Doom PC first-person-shooting video game.  So not only were my visitors given information about dogs, which are great, they were also shown images of a popular video game, increasing their enjoyment even further.  Here are some animated .gif files you can use on your own Internet web page!



Please do me the favor of linking to my page if you use any of these.  Thank you.

Multimedia

Multimedia is the wave of the future.  Soon school children will do all of their learning from personal CD-ROMs full of moving images and music!  But why wait for the future when it’s available at your fingertips?  Embed a MIDI version of your favorite Metallica song on your front page so visitors can “rock out” to the synthesized approximation of James Hetfield and Company!  Plant numerous .wav files of Simpsons quotes that will play randomly and unexpectedly!  And, if your visitors can spare the bandwidth, throw up a short humorous Quicktime movie you downloaded from Usenet (this technology is now possible!).  Your home web site can become a veritable theater of sights and sounds for the world-weary Internet traveler!

That’s all the advice I have for now…I don’t want to give away all of my secrets!  I leave you now to search for a rumored item that cannot possibly be true: an animated Internet web "cartoon" featuring a frog in a blender.  Join me next time as I debunk what can only be sheer lunacy!

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