What is Web-Based Email ?

Web-Based Email is an Internet-based email system that lets you send and receive
email messages from a Web browser. All you need to use Web-Based Email is an Internet
connection and the Internet Explorer Web browser (Internet Explorer v5.5 or later).
How do I access my Web-Based Email account ?
You can log on to your Web-Based Email account from your Web browser by going
to the Web address for your account. The Web address is the same as your domain
name, except you replace “www” with “email”. For example, if your Web address
is “www.example.com”, your email address is “email.example.com”.

When creating a web site in HTML it is important to remember that popular browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and others are capable of displaying web pages even if their code is not 100% compliant with the accepted standards for HTML as set down by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

So, while a page may look fine onscreen, it could be riddled with HTML errors causing serious obstacles for the search engine spiders who visit your site to index it.

HTML coding errors are especially common with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) design programs such as Microsoft FrontPage or NetObjects Fusion and, since this type of software is often used by web designers with little or no experience of HTML, most of the time they can go unnoticed and thus cause long-term damage to a site’s search engine performance.

For those designers with only a minimal knowledge of HTML this can present an almost invincible problem since they cannot tell compliant code from its non-compliant counterpart.

But there’s nothing to worry, the W3C site includes a number of valuable tools designed to help web designers check their sites for any flaws and make the necessary corrections.

The most important among these are the HTML Validator and the Link Checker.

The HTML Validator detects and lists any coding errors present within a page and lists them in detail, thus enabling even designers with minimal HTML experience to make the necessary adjustments.

The Link Checker examines all links within the page both to other pages in the site and to images which are to be displayed onscreen.
Once again this enables the designer to pinpoint bad links or broken resources and take the required steps.

It should be noted that most quality web design programs have inbuilt link checking utilities which perform the same function, so a little reading up on your software can be of great help.

Web standards refer to standards for creating web sites that are internationally agreed on as the best practices, established by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and other standards bodies. Web Standards are basically open standards which are primarlity used on the World Wide Web. These include HTML, JavaScript and CSS. In order for the Web to reach its full potential, the most fundamental Web technologies must be compatible with one another and allow any hardware and software used to access the Web to work together. Therefore, to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential, protocols and guidelines have been developed that ensure long-term growth for the Web.

How does a business benefit by adopting web standards

Lower development costs due to simpler development and maintenance using more semantic and structured HTML. The site would work with all major browsers.

Lower hosting costs – Less HTML results in smaller file sizes and quicker downloads. Smaller file sizes mean lower bandwidth which will eventually lower the site’s hosting costs.

Increase in usability – The pages download faster due to the smaller file size. This will keep your site’s visitors interested and encourage them to checkout what you have to offer in your business.

Increase in accessibility – Semantic HTML, where structure is separated from presentation, makes it easier for screen readers and alternative browsing devices to decipher the content.

Increase in search ability – Semantic HTML, where structure is separated from presentation, makes the content represent a larger part of the total file content. Combined with semantic markup this will improve search engine rankings. As your site’s search ability increases, so is your potential clients.

Better brand control – When presentation is separated by content, you have much better control over the branding of your sites. Your sites that channels content to conventional browsers, on PDA and mobile phones can be controlled by just changing the style sheet(s).

An HTML editor is a software application for creating web pages. Although
the HTML markup of a web page can be written with any text editor
, specialised HTML editors can offer convenience and added functionality.
For example, many HTML editors work not only with HTML, but also with
related technologies such as CSS, XML and JavaScript or ECMAScript.
In some cases they also manage communication with remote web servers
via FTP and WebDAV, and version management systems such as CVS or Subversion.

Do You Want to Try It?

If you are running Windows, start Notepad.

If you are on a Mac start SimpleText.

In OSX start TextEdit and change the following preferences:
Select (in the preferences window) “Plain text” instead of “Rich text” and
then select “Ignore rich text commands in HTML files”.
This is very important because if you don’t do this HTML codes probably won’t work.

Type in the following text:

This is my first homepage. This text is bold

Save the file as “mypage.htm”.