Finnie, J.F. and J. van Staden. 1985. The Has a home page already been effect of seaweed concentrate and applied Scientific Home created for this purpose? The web has hormones on in vitro cultured tomato become very popular and increased roots. J. Plant Physiol. 120:215–222. Pages on the use has resulted in declining perfor- Goatley J.M., Jr., and R.E. Schmidt. 1990. World Wide Web mance. If a similar or related page Seedling Kentucky bluegrass growth re- already exits, check with the author to sponses to chelated iron and biostimulator see if your information can be pro- materials. Agron. J. 82:901–905. Gary W. Lightner1 vided for inclusion at the existing site Goatley J.M., Jr., and R.E. Schmidt. 1991. or to establish a link to your new page. Biostimulator enhancement of Kentucky How? The first requirement is to bluegrass sod. HortScience 26:254–255. obtain a link to the Internet. Faculty Additional index words. World Wide members should contact their campus Kuhn, S. 1992. Fertilizer: Trends, blends Web, horticulture, home page computer center. Universities often and programs. The Florida Green July/ Aug.:28–30. Summary. As the World Wide Web will provide access for nonprofit or increases in popularity, it has become government researchers at little or no Metting, B., W.J. Zimmerman, I. Crouch, easier to create and maintain home cost. Assistance will vary with the work and J. van Staden. 1990. Agronomic uses pages on the network. How this is load and abilities of the computer cen- of seaweed and microalgae, p. 589–627. accomplished is as varied as those ter staff. Students and other users also In: I. Akatsuka (ed.). Introduction to ap- using the web. The possibilities for can be good sources of information plied phycology. SPB Academic Publish- scientific sites create questions for the ing, The Hague, The Netherlands. and aid to the novice. Local network research page editor. This paper providers are usually the lowest priced Nabati, D.A., R.E. Schmidt, and D.J. provides a nontechnical discussion of and will provide the software to get why and how to create a scientific Parrish. 1994. Alleviation of salinity stress started. Once up and running, how- in Kentucky bluegrass by plant growth home page. Universal Resource Locators are given for home pages ever, the ability to educate the user on regulators and iron. Crop Sci. 34:198– how to use the software provided may 202. that may benefit the reader. be lacking. If a web site becomes ac- Nus, J. 1993. Merging science and nature: cessed heavily, the author may have to Biostimulants. Golf Course Mgt. 61(3):76– pay increased server fees for the popu- 86. s the World Wide Web increases larity. Although the disk space used in popularity, it has become Schmidt, R.E. 1990. Growth-enhancing remains the same, a popular web site biostimulants. Grounds Maintenance Aeasier to create and maintain means that a large number of users will 25(6):34–54. home pages on the network. How this be using the telecommunication abili- is accomplished is as varied as those ties of the host site for access. With using the web. The possibilities for either of these options, the user must scientific sites create questions for the learn to use some file transfer method research page editor. to place the finished document in a Why? The first question to be location on the provider’s system. The asked is, “Why create a home page?” method and directory information will Communication among colleagues is be supplied by the Internet provider. better handled with direct e-mail. Data National providers, such as can be transferred with e-mail or FTP America Online or CompuServe, pro- exchanges. Many scientific interest vide free software and generally are groups have established electronic mail- easier to use but more expensive than ing lists to communicate effectively local or area providers. Creating home with most or all researchers in specific pages through these companies may research areas. Home pages are de- be the easiest means, with ample on- signed for public access by a world line help available. audience (Burger et al., 1995). A home As the use of the web increases, so page publisher must have a reason or does the amount of software available desire to share the information with all to create and view home pages. Any that might pause at that location while ASCII text editor can be used to create scanning the web. The effort and costs a home page using hypertext markup associated with the creation and main- language (HTML), but software de- tenance of the page should be offset by signed for the job such as FrontPage the perceived benefits of presenting (http://www.vermeer.com) or the information to the public. HotDog (http://www.sausage.com) make the task easier (Fig. 1). Most 1USDA, Agricultural Research Service, Appalachian companies provide free software down- Fruit Research Station, 45 Wiltshire Road, Kearneysville, loads of either their actual products or WV 25430. trial versions of their software. When The cost of publishing this paper was defrayed in part by assistance is required to create the home the payment of page charges. Under postal regulations, this paper therefore must be hereby marked advertise- page, the software preference of those ment solely to indicate this fact. providing the technical assistance HortTechnology ● July/Sept. 1996 6(3) 263 TECHNOLOGY AND PRODUCT REPORTS should be used. Online tutorials are effective presentation of the informa- used by search engines to index your available to aid in the understanding of tion is the reason for the site, and it site, so they should be as descriptive HTML. Netscape has an excellent should not be sacrificed for the sake of and concise as possible. The body section online tutorial on creating web sites spectacular special effects. provides the bulk of the site informa- found at the Netscape home page It is important to keep the infor- tion. In this example, Netscape- (http://home.netscape.com). Topics mation current. Old e-mail addresses specific commands are used for for- include “A Beginner’s Guide to HTML,” are a nuisance and out-of-date links to matting text. The <B> command ini- “Composing Good HTML,” and other sites waste the user’s time. Plan tiates the bold attribute for text and “Guide to Writing HTML Docu- monthly tests of the links and remove the </B> terminates the bold effect. ments.” Examples are included with or update as needed. Do not leave out- Other font effects such as italics and each section. This source is but one of of-date listings of meetings, events, or font size are implemented in a similar many sites that exist to educate novice deadlines on the page. manner. Font size is relative and is and advanced users of HTML. Select Be open to suggestions from those enlarged by increasing the numeral the software that provides the infor- using the page. Provide an e-mail ad- associated with the font size instruc- mation necessary to allow its full use dress for correspondence regarding the tion. In this example, the font is in- based on your level of expertise. home page and its use. A scientific home creased +7 for the station name, +3 for Designing the page. Once the page could provide links to other re- the photograph description, and the decision has been made to connect to searchers in the field and other associ- default size is used for all other text. the Internet and present a home page ated web sites. Listings of current Non-Netscape-compatible browsers to the world, it is important to present projects, meetings, and publications are would view all of the text as identical. the information effectively (Flynn, appropriate. Provide information on To support all types of browsers, head- 1995). The purpose of the site should contacts should the viewer decide to ing tags should be used in place of the be readily discernible on opening the request a reprint or attend a function. font tags. Heading tags are identified home page. The title should stand out, The HTML tags. HTML was de- <H1> to <H6>. <H1> is the largest by increased size, color, or positioning signed to provide basic text formatting and <H6> the smallest font size. The (Fig. 2). Usually a list of options ap- capabilities for publishing scientific text <IMG> tag identifies an image loca- pears to provide the viewer a method on the Internet. The HTML tags used tion. SRC specifies the name of the of selecting a more specific area of in the web page example (Fig. 1) are image file to be displayed. In this case, interest. Take care not to use too many distinguished easily by the brackets the station.jpg file resides in the same pictures, or large pictures, as they slow surrounding each tag (Grobe, 1995). directory as the HTML page, and no the transfer of data. This is an impor- The beginning of the HTML docu- further description is necessary to lo- tant trade-off. The pictures and graph- ment is signified by <HTML> and the cate and display the image. The alt ics make the page more interesting but end with </HTML>. In this example, option is included to provide text that also consume on-line time to down- the document is broken into two sec- is displayed when the viewer is using a load. When using graphics for connec- tions, the heading <HEAD> to </ text-based browser or is not down- tions with other options, always provide HEAD> and the body <BODY> to </ loading images.