If teachers wish to use the Web to support their classroom endeavors, then the one factor that will "make or break" a student's experience with their web-site is communication. More than anything else in the arena of communication is the manner in which the e-mail link is formated. Sounds simple enough--type in your name, Dan, highlight the word Dan, and provide the "mailto:" command with Dan's e-mail address in the appropriate "box." Very simple to accomplish. But, and this is a very big BUT; many visitors to a web-site will not be able to contact the organization unless the visitor's web-browser is set up properly for handling electronic mail. This same problem will appear if a graphical link is used such as this one:

Many teachers, given a computer with internet access in their classroom, will not be able to set the browser email preferences because:

1. They do not have their own private e-mail (other than the e-mail address given to them by their school district).

2. The district will not give teachers the address to the district mail server.

3. If teachers who have their own private e-mail address (and know the e-mail server's address) and set up the preferences to accept their e-mail, the district's technology people will "spit nails" if anyone other than themselves "mess" with any of the preset preferences.

So, when visitors want to e-mail the teacher (or anyone else for that matter), and visitors' mail preferences are not set up properly, they get a message stating that the mail server can not be found. Clicking on the e-mail link Dan above will display the browser's e-mail message window with the address filled in. However, if the mail preferences are not set up. The message will go nowhere when the "send" button is clicked.

There are basically two ways to fix this problem. The first method is to provide the actual e-mail address as the link (Dan@proofofconcepts.com). Providing the e-mail address in this format will allow visitors to "copy and paste" the actual address into whatever mail program they are using. However, you might say, they could "copy and paste" the address from the e-mail message window. Yes, they could, but why make the visitor jump through an extra "hoop."

A second method for eliminating this problem is to use a form's based e-mail link. The form is designed and developed to be handled by a server with cgi scripting. The scripting "tells the form what to do." Almost every browser in existence today will handle a form. Forms are great to use for the graphical e-mail link. Clicking on the graphical e-mail link below will bring up a e-mail comment box.

Type in the message and click on submit. The form is then sent to an address encoded in the form-in this case Dan@proofofconcepts.com. If you are interested in developing your own forms, for whatever reason, visit http://response-o-matic.com for a quick tutorial and a template to begin your own development.

Hope this first tip helps in your quest to assist students. Next month (September), I will provide information on the use of tables in the basic layout of a web-page.