Part 4
Graphics
(this section provides very little info)

I know how to do graphics and scanning for my pages but I am not sure how a general B.U. user could do so. I have access to some computer equipment which makes it easy for me. I will have to check with Uche Onyebuchi to see if he can help me out on this one. I love using the Netscape feature of being able to easily steal graphics from other people's pages on the web. I know how to get these stolen images into my account but I don't know how to do so for the general user.

UPDATE:
I talked to Uche on Friday (circa Summer 1995) and here is the good word. If you have a picture or pictures that you want to scan and get onto your home page, here is what you need to do. You need to go to the Personal Computer Helper People at 100 Cummington Street and book time to scan and send pictures into your account. I wouldn't be too loud about the fact that you are doing this for the B.U. Student Web Server because of the disclaimers we see on the Student Web Server home pages but they should be helpful. At 100 Cummington, you should tell the people you are interested in scanning some things. You may need to book time and come back later. You should bring whatever you want to scan with you. You will then use a program called Ofoto to scan the images. Whenever they ask about compression, put the settings on a medium level. Then you will open whatever you scanned with a program called Photoshop. In Photoshop you can change the picture to either a .gif file or a .jpg file. Then you will fetch the graphics to your account. The people there should be able to help you get started.

PC users should investigate using Paint Shop Pro for working with graphics.

One frequent problem some people run into is that they forget to use the 'chmod ugo+r FILENAME.GIF' command on the graphics once they have them in their html directory. Remember to do this otherwise you will have broken (non-working) images pop up when you try to load them.

Here is how I do graphics. I use a program called Photoshop to either work on scanned images or on original pictures. I then make sure to save them as a Compuserve GIF file or a JPG (pronounced and sometimes written as JPEG) file. These are the two common graphics formats on the web. The GIF file takes up more space but is a higher quality while the JPG compresses the image and doesn't take up as much space. In Photoshop, the one tricky thing I have to do to save a file as a GIF is to make sure that I have switched the mode to indexed color. For GIF files make sure the FILENAME ends with a .gif and for JPG files make sure the FILENAME ends with a .jpg to let the browser easily know what it is looking at.

Once I have created an image, I then use a program called Fetch (if I was using a PC, I would use the shareware program WS_FTP) to transfer it into my account. To do this on my Mac, I need to supply the name of the machine (acs.bu.edu), my login, my name, and the directory I am going to. To figure out the exact pathname of my html directory in my acs account, I use the command 'pwd' at the acs [html]% prompt. I can then create a way to transfer the files. If you don't have Fetch, get it or find a similar program.

I guess this part is under development. Get familiar with HTML and the web and once you have done that, then you can work on getting some pictures onto your pages.

Move on to Part 5 - Proofing Your HTML