Mastery is not in knowing all the tricks, grasshopper, but applying them wisely and well in the quest for perfection. This final meditation considers both technical and creative application of the concepts of HTML.
Running fast
The Web is often called the World Wide Wait. Some of this is due to the traffic on the Net itself, but much also comes from page developers forgetting that the phone line is a very narrow pipe. If your page consistently takes forever to load, it does not say "this was made by a master" no matter how beautiful the design.
In our Elements meditation we considered one of the most important things that you can do to make your site run fast -- use only elements that are on the same server as your pages.
Pay attention to the size of all of the elements in your page, and consider whether the time to download each is worth the value. WAV and AU files, for example, will add a lot of weight (and wait) for a very brief result. If you use them, make them HREFs instead of BGSOUND or EMBED; users can get them if they want, but they don't load in with your page.
Use height and width attributes with all your image commands. These allow the browser to "block out" where the image will go, and then continue rendering the rest of the page. Otherwise, it has to wait until the image comes in, or until it times out and just gives up on the image.
Use the Cache, Luke.
Everything that's already in the browser's cache is free in terms of download time. The WebTV cache is only about 350K, though (and WebTV is now stuffing those annoying ads into it), so if you're developing for WebTV display, you'll only be able to count on the last few pages still being in the cache.
So, re-use your graphic elements on the same pages and in successive pages, and see how fast your pages fly in. Use the height and width tags to make them do double or triple duty as backgrounds, bullets, and separator bars (with the added plus of getting a classy "theme" look to your page). Use table background colors and, if your target is WebTV, transparency effects on bgcolors, images and text. Click here to get an idea of what's possible on WebTV with just a single graphic and these effects.
You can even set height and width to zero to sneak an image into the cache that you're going to use on a later page. Don't be tempted to re-size an image that's just too big with HTML, though; a 30K image with dimensions of zero is still 30K and will still take the same time to load.
You can also use the little-known <LINK> command to pre-load the next page, when you know which page will be next. The command is:
<LINK REL="NEXT" HREF="URL">
Less is More.
Does your homepage service only let you have one page in your site? If not, then don't put every trick you know and every animated GIF you can find on one page! Your mastery is your expression of ideas. It is not how many tags and tricks you know.
Keep your pages clean and simple and, if you want to do more, make more pages. Remember, we're making television here, so don't just copy the tricks of computer-centric webmasters; they know less about the Web on TV than you do.
If you wish to achieve mastery, learn to look at pages with a critical eye. What is the central idea? Do the graphics and theme carry it off? If there's audio, does it enhance the experience, detract, or is it just there because the page creator happened to have it around? When you find a site that you think is good, try to figure out what are the aspects that make you think so. A bad site? Why -- what has the creator done that you want to avoid?
Above all, don't just look at other sites thinking "my site's cooler than this," and don't be afraid to admit that you don't know. All of us have learned what we know from others who are also learning, and the most powerful tool we have is the question: "How did you do that?"
Now, grasshopper, we have reached the end... and the beginning, because mastering HTML or any other aspect of life is not an accomplishment, but a journey.
Go forth and make great sites. And remember the Way of the Web -- when you learn, pass it on.
He who would teach, would learn twice. Ralph Waldo Emerson
would learn twice.