I've recently been thinking about putting together some information (as part of one of my other websites) to provide someone who was not familar with web design and search engines with some key answers to some simple questions - questions that someone outside the web design industry might have heard of but don't know the answer to; ultimately to 'Demystify the Web'. Does anyone have any suggestions on the sort of questions someone outside of the industry might have? Obviously already having the knowledge its a bit hard to predict what sort of question newbies (or indeed someone looking to have a website designed) would ask... Any ideas?
Yeah, you'd start with something like that, with the very next question being "What is HTML?" because the answer to Daddy's question would of could be something like, write an html text. A one or two-line description of HTML would suffice for a beginner. The following questions would have to do with, HOW do I write an HTML text? What tools do I need? Do I have to buy anything? I know I use a web browser to look at stuff on teh Interwebz, but what is it exactly and how are they all different (this means the main, most popular browsers, FF1.5 and 2.0, IE 5x 6 and 7, Safari (dunno what number they're on), Opera 9+ (because it passes the acid test), with mention of Lynx (text only) and JAWS (popular Windows audial browser for the blind))? After explaining all this, a final question would be something like, "Okay, I've written my page and I can see it fine on my web browser when I open a local file-- how do I get this thing on teh Interwebz?" Define servers and how to get one.
Cover the basic Dos and don'ts of web design. Like DO include a doctype, alt text, etc. DON'T use colors that are hard on the eyes, open links in a new window... Just basically "how to not be annoying" haha.