HTML Just Say No

Dedicated to personal Web publishing

HTML Just Say No
Founded: February 22, 1997
Purpose: To support and encourage World Wide Web publishing by individuals

The transforming power of the Web

The transforming power of the Web is that it enables you as an individual to become an international author and publisher.

In recognition of this transformation, HTML Just Say No empahsizes what you as an individual can publish on the Web. We leave to others the task of emphasizing what you can find on the Web.

In the world of publishing on paper, editors and publishers serve to ration an author's access to the scarce publishing medium. In the world of Web publishing, this role is unnecessary. Any individual may reach a world-wide audience using inexpensive computer software and communication resources. This concept is discussed at greater length in the paper "Teaching and Publishing in the World Wide Web" by Harry M. Kriz, founder of HTML Just Say No.

HTML

Web documents are plain text files (ASCII files) in which the content is augmented by descriptive tags using the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). In the past, the need to learn HTML tags, and to do tedious manual editing, was an obstacle to widespread Web publishing by individuals. Many, when faced with a multi-hundred page textbook on HTML, could easily be led to the mistaken notion that Web publishing is a skill beyond their abilities. References to HTML markup as "code," as if it were a programming language, may further intimidate prospective Web authors and Web publishers. Yet even in the mid-1980's, anyone doing simple word processing on a mainframe computer probably was augmenting a text file with a markup language. It wasn't called "coding" then, it was simply called word processing.

Web publishing has evolved just as word processing evolved. Today it is a routine matter to create complex Web sites in a purely WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) software environment without ever seeing an HTML tag. For example, the HTML Just Say No Web site was created with Microsoft FrontPage, a WYSIWYG site manager and page editor that is as simple to use as Word for Windows. FrontPage does far more than merely create Web pages. It can implement keyword searching of the pages in your Web, create Web-based threaded discussion groups, and use frames to more clearly reveal the structure of complex, nested document depositories.

Logo - Authorized Use

To increase awareness of the simplicity of Web publishing, to encourage individuals to publish on the Web, and to dispell the myth that you must learn HTML in order to be a Web author, HTML Just Say No has established a logo program for qualified Web sites and Web publications.

Authorization

You may,
as an author or publisher on the World Wide Web, display the official HTML Just Say No logo on any Web site or pages you create and maintain
Provided that
your publications meet one of the following criteria:
New Web site or pages Your Web site and pages are created and maintained without
manual editing of HTML tags
Legacy Web sites and pages Your existing Web sites and pages, created previously by manually editing
HTML tags, are now maintained completely without manual tag editing
The official logo

Revised: December 03, 1997

© Harry M. Kriz
University Libraries
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
Blacksburg, VA
Harry M. Kriz (hmkriz@vt.edu)