Tips for Editing Special Effects on Web Pages
Background Information: Most of the special effects in this collection are special codes that most modern versions of web browsers can understand and execute. The majority of the codes in our collection are called JavaScripts. The scripts in this collection were obtained from the Internet in searches of sites that offer free scripts to users. That is, they can be copied and freely used. Most contain some information about the author of the script or the web site where the script was obtained. This information does not take up much space/weight and probably should remain with the special effect to give credit to the author if someone should look at the code for your web pages.
A few links are provided to some of the sites hosting free scripts. The number of places visited in collecting these scripts is too large to have a complete listing. Some sites have moved and others have folded. These places add new scripts to their collections, so you might want to visit them regularly to see if they have adding anything new that could be added to your collection. In no particular order...
JavaScript Source JavaScript Kit Web Developer Web Reference Dynamic Drive JavaScript Planet Free JavaScripts
The first, and most important tip is to make a copy of the pages(s) that contain the special effects you plan to modify. Then use the copy for your modification efforts. If something inexpected happens, you can always revert to the original version to start over.
The second tip is to carefully re-read the first tip. We have learned the folly of working with the original effect and messing it up. Not only have you wasted some of your time, you have eliminated the use of this script. Can you still get a fresh copy of the special effect or is it gone forever?
In order to edit the current version of the code offering the special effect, you must first have a general understanding of just a little HTML coding. The typical web page uses a special code that all Internet Browsers understand. There are a few conventions which are followed by the browsers that you need to understand.
Convention 1: The code is interpreted from first to last (top to bottom) in a left-to-right mode. You can think of the way you might read a book.
Convention 2: Pages typically have commands that indicate what is to be done on the page and when.
These commands are called "tags" and are enclosed by the '< and >' symbols. For instance, the tag <strong> directs the browser to begin displaying text after this tag in what you and I call a "bold" style. (Plain text vs. Bold Text). When the feature is supposed to stop, the tag used is similar to the 'start here' tag, but uses a '/'. For example, the <strong> tag starts making text bold and the </strong> tag indicates the text should no longer be displayed as bold. Other examples of starting and ending tags are found in the following:
<p> (begin a new paragraph) and </p> to end the paragraph
<font size = "4"> (begin displaying text at size 4 and </font> stop using that font feature.
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> (begin a particular JavaScript) and </script> to end that scriptConvention 3: Most Web pages are divided into two distinct sections: Head and Body
A typical web page might have some tags that look like this:
<HTML> - (indicates to the browser that this document is one of the HTML types)
<HEAD> - (begin the head section)Any code that needs to be offered to the browser in the head section goes here
</HEAD> - (end of the head section
<BODY> - (indicates where most objects will show on your web page - usually text or images)
Any code that needs to be displayed on the web page goes here
</BODY> - (indicates that all of the page content is finished
</HTML> - (indicates there is nothing more to be done on the page
With this background, you are ready to look at the process of moving special effects from some web page to your page.
More Tips on Copying Special Effects | View the Collection