NetCaster was Netscape Communicator’s push delivery system. It was basically a web environment that is always active and can update its onscreen appearance without going to a new URL or reloading. Like all push mechanisms, NetCaster doesn’t require the user to manually check for new content or sit through an update. It let the developer put new content in front of users instead of hoping they come looking for it.
The Netscape Communicator browser ceased development in 2002.
Conceptually, plug-ins are like Lego toys. They are software modules that add a specific feature or service to a larger system. A Lego wheel by itself isn’t that fun, but add that wheel to a Lego car, and you’re cooking with gas. Unfortunately, most plug-ins, whether for browsers or graphics programs, don’t provide as much functionality as a Lego wheel. For example, there are number of plug-ins for the Netscape Navigator browser that enable it to display different types of audio or video messages based on MIME types. However, if nobody develops those kinds of files, the plug-in is useless. There are some cool plug-ins for graphics programs, the best of which is Kai’s Power Tools. That adds a zillion effects that you can use on your images. By the way, in Photoshop you can activate plug-ins by holding down the command and shift keys when starting up the program.
Tables of data, that age-old way of comparing information by displaying items in columns and rows, weren’t possible in the earliest version of HTML. This is surprising since HTML was initially used by academics, and tables are their stock and trade. Eventually, however, tables came into existence and became officially supported with the release of HTML 3.2 in 1996. They have since evolved from their original purpose to become a convenient way to control the layout of text and images on a web page.
If you want to store your stylesheet somewhere on your site as a separate file, you can link to it on whatever pages you want to apply it to. Just use this line of code, which goes into the <head> of your HTML document:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/mysitestyle.css" />
In the beginning, all we had were hacks.
To lay out web pages the way our clients wanted, with pull quotes, text wrapping, multi-colored table cells with space between the rows (but not the columns), then we had to hack, hack, and hack some more. Our hacks resulted in some impressively gargantuan code:enormous, indecipherable, triple-nested tables up and down the page, each with its own border, padding, spacing, and alignment settings, packed to the rafters with bloated font tags. But what could we do’
It wasn’t our fault we had to build these monstrosities; all we had to work with was HTML, a markup language created by a British software consultant in his spare time to enable scientists in Switzerland to share information about particle physics! I mean, come on! HTML was designed to display plain text in a hierarchical manner, period — no images, no three-column layouts, no multi-color fonts. It was never intended to create the magazine-like layouts we see on the web today.
But that’s what our clients paid us for, and so we hacked.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, the browsers we were developing for all rendered our code differently, leading to more hacks and more bloated pages as we strove for “cross-platform compatibility” (the day my producer learned that term was a dark day indeed).
Well, the kind souls at the World Wide Web Consortium have taken pity on you, poor Web developer, and in their infinite wisdom have formulated a solution that’s so beautiful in its simplicity, so beneficial for all parties involved (developer, client/boss, user), that you’ll break down and weep like Tammy Faye on a Sunday when you realize how much easier things are about to get for you.
The solution? So, so simple: web standards.
Browse Our Tutorials
HTML, JavaScript, design and more
Cheat Sheets
HTML, CSS and special characters 
Color Charts
Brighten up your pages
Cut & Paste Code
Templates and snippets you can steal 
Recent Tweets