Number 196 - September 1999

Viewing HTML Files
by Bob Thomson, Tacoma Open Group
This may not be a revelation to our more advanced members or those who are Internet veterans, however, I believe it may be of interest to those of you who consider yourselves to be beginners, especially in matters concerning the Internet communications.    When you visit a website, the screen display you are looking at was created as an HTML file. That means, it was composed using the Hyper Text Markup Language which is interpreted by your browser and displayed on your computer's screen. My browser is Internet Explorer 5. If I place my cursor on the webpage, right clicking (i.e. clicking the right-hand mouse button) displays a menu which includes an option to View Source. Left clicking on this option opens a window displaying a portion of the HTML source code which created the displayed screen. To save the source file, I click on File, then the Save As... option, but I change the filename and destination directory, from those offered (which are a filename and directory on the page author's computer or server), to something that makes sense to me, like C:\Windows\Junk\Myfile.html. I presume other browsers act in a similar way.	I save this file on my hard disk in directory C:\JUNK as myfile.htm, or html, say, (you choose a directory and filename, but keep the .html or .htm extension). I can then display it on my screen off-line. To do this I open my browser as though I was going to enter the internet address of a website. Instead, I enter C:\JUNK\myfile.htm on my browser's command line. (File is case sensitive.) Lo and behold, the page will display just the way it did on-line. If there were graphics displayed on-line they will not display off-line unless I also downloaded the graphic files called for and put them in the same C:\JUNK directory. To do this place the cursor or arrow on the graphic. Right click and Save Picture As.... and save it with its existing filename and extension but in the C:\JUNK (or whatever) directory so the .html file can find it and display it..    If you are a budding HTML programmer, you may find it instructive to look at the code which produced the page to see how various effects were produced. You can also play around changing the commands to see what on-screen effects the changes produce.     See also Q&A for August 1999 for an alternative method.
Number 196 - September 1999