ThomasNet ®
HTML Specifications
(Click here for Custom e-Catalog Specifications)

  1. Overview
  2. File Naming
  3. File Format
  4. Style/Content
  5. HTML Documents
  6. Markup Tags
  7. Graphics Specifications
  8. Submission of Final Files
  HTML 3.2 is now the basis for this specification.
Acceptable tags are now based as much as possible on HTML 3.2 as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Many of the extensions to the 3.0 versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator are also acceptable. To learn more about the specific tags supported in HTML 3.2, visit the W3C site

The following file names, regardless of extension, are restricted and may not be included in your catalog. Files with these names will automatically be deleted upon upload, rendering the submission invalid:
CON, AUX, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, PRN, NUL

The following are not supported (despite their inclusion in HTML 3.2):

Overview

Sets of web pages ("Internet catalogs") are to be constructed. The contents of these web pages describe TR advertisers' products and services.

An advertiser's web pages will be reachable through Thomas Register on the Internet. They will also be reachable directly, via their own URL (in the form "www.thomasregister.com/urlfragment" or "www.urlfragment.thomasregister.com").

The 'urlfragment' is requested by the Thomas Register Sales Rep on behalf of the advertiser. All subsequent online content hosted by Thomas Register for that account will utilize the requested 'urlfragment' as applicable.

All advertiser web pages will be structured so that they link from their home page to the Thomas Register home page. This is handled programmatically by inclusion of an automatic 'footer' at the time of publication and reqires no coding on the part of the catalog developer.

From time to time, additional capabilities may be added to the way in which a user can traverse between the Thomas Register and advertisers' web pages.

Standards
This document describes standards to which advertiser web pages must be constructed. The general goals of the TR HTML standards are:

Consistency in Tagging
To assist in future changes to the Thomas Register site (including advertiser web pages) by creating a consistency of tagging among the Thomas Register content and the various advertiser web pages and external web sites.
Consistency in Navigation
To enable future navigation enhancements in the combined Thomas Register site, a consistent entry and exit navigation method has been defined.
Compatibility
It is important to Thomas to provide a consistent set of web pages that are broadly compatible, so as to convey to the user consistent, stable quality.

The Internet is full of "Totally Awesome" web sites that crash a large percentage of browsers. These browser crashes are often attributed to the last page seen by the user (in this case, the Thomas Register). In such situations, the user could say "the Thomas Register crashed."). Now Internet sophisticates know that it is the browser that crashed, but (for better or worse) the world is not full of Internet sophisticates.

In order to maintain our quality image, it is imperative that our sites are compatible with a broad variety of browsers in use in the field. With this version of our HTML specification, we are expanding the set of permitted HTML tags and functionalities. However be aware that some browsers do not fully support the features marked Alert in this document. Alternate "low tech" content should be provided if your goal is maximum browser compatibility.

Process
The web page construction process occurs in stages, with review, validation and checking done at various stages. Here is a brief overview of the process.

Create the set of Web Pages
Construct the web pages to these specifications on your own system (Mac/PC/UNIX). After receiving approval for the catalog from the Thomas Register sales rep and/or the advertiser, electronically submit the final content via ProofStat.
Checking the Web Pages
Thomas Register Production will check the site with automated and manual procedures, and accept or reject, at their discretion, the pages and/or any of their individual components.
Proofing
Once Thomas Register Production has reviewed the set of web pages, the web pages will be made live on the Internet at the next applicable scheduled upload.
Final Acceptance
After final acceptance by the Advertiser, the site will be made live on the Internet.

Disclaimer
Thomas Publishing Company reserves the right to change any information herein, at any time, for any reason, without notice.

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File Naming

All file names (and references to linked files) to be lower case with no spaces, in this form:

1-8 character file name, period, 3 character extension.

  • xxxxxxxx.htm (HTML documents)
  • xxxxxxxx.gif (graphic files)
  • or xxxxxxxx.jpg

This format is known in the DOS world as 8.3, and is required because during various phases, these files are used on UNIX servers, Windows/DOS machines, and Macs.

Note that even though in a DOS machine the filenames will be handled as upper case, Thomas load procedures will convert all filenames to lower case on the server, and all references to linked files must presume that the filenames are lower case.

For Example:

  • home.htm
  • smilefac.gif

Except for hyphens and the period separator, no internal punctuation is permitted in file names. And hyphens, although allowed within a filename, are not allowed at the beginning of a filename (-myfile.htm is illegal).

The following file names (regardless of extention):
CON, AUX, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, PRN, NUL
are restricted and may not be included in your catalog. Files with these names will automatically be deleted upon upload, rendering the submission invalid.

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File Format

All files must reside within the same directory; no sub-directories are allowed.

Files should be delivered in:

HTML files
ASCII format with HTML tags as described in this document. These files should be named with the .htm extension.

Image files
GIF format (including transparent and interlaced). Filename extension: .gif

JPEG format. Filename extension: .jpg

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Style/Content

Catalog Home Page
The starting page for any catalog must always be named home.htm
Every internal page in the catalog should have a hypertext link back to that catalog's "home" page.

Title Element

Every page in the catalog must include a <title> element.

Catalog Home Page title format:

The <title> for the catalog's home page must:
*State the company's name
*Be in Upper/lower case (not ALL CAPS)
*Be followed by "Home Page"
Examples:
<title>ABC Company Home Page</title>
<title>Jones, Smith, and Yamyaz Home Page</title>

Inside Catalog Pages title format:

Title text for inside catalog pages (i.e., pages other than the catalog's home page) will be used to construct menus displayed to the user, and all titles for inside catalog pages must:

*Describe the content of the current page
*Be in Upper/lower case (not ALL CAPS)
*Not mention the company name (uses up characters needed to describe the content)
*Omit all punctuation unless punctuation is essential for meaning
*Be unique within this company's catalog
Examples:
<title>Bolts, Screws and Fasteners</title>
<title>Metric Conversion Chart for Tubing </title>
Character set
Please make sure your HTML includes only characters from the lower half of the ASCII character table (0-127). To display other characters, use the HTML Special Character References: List of HTML Special Character References
Email Messaging

A catalog's home page (home.htm) automatically receives email messaging capability. Users who click on the EMAIL graphic will be presented with a message form which, when executed, transmits the user's message to the email address you supply.

Additional email messaging may be added to any catalog page, and must be coded using the Thomas Register email script as follows:

<a href="msgform.cgi?ejsmith@abccorp.com"><img src="/art/emailn.gif" alt="EMAIL" border="0"></a>

In the example, jsmith@abccorp.com represents any valid Internet email address.

The 'e' following the ? is mandatory for e-mail to be sent successfully.

The result of this coding will display as:

Email this company

The 'emailn.gif' graphic (shown above) is the standard e-mail graphic used throughout the Thomas Register website. Client-supplied email graphics are accepted.

You can also indicate that text to be used in place of a graphic, such as:

<a href="msgform.cgi?ejsmith@abccorp.com">jsmith@abccorp.com</a>

Which will display as: jsmith@abccorp.com

You may also combine an email graphic with text, as follows:

<a href="msgform.cgi?ejsmith@abccorp.com"><img src="/art/emailn.gif" alt="EMAIL" border="0">jsmith@abccorp.com</a>

This version will display as:

jsmith@abccorp.com
External Links

Hypertext links to external URLs (i.e., to external web sites NOT hosted by Thomas Register) are permitted and may be placed on any page within the advertiser's catalog. External links must be coded using the Thomas Register 'byebye.cgi' email script as follows:

External Links in an <a href> tag:

<a href="http://www.thomasregister.com/byebye.cgi?http://www.somewhere.com">ABC Company Home Page</a>

The above example will render as: ABC Company Home Page and when clicked will take the user to: www.somewhere.com

An External link may include a graphic. In this case, the HTML for the link would be:

<a href="http://www.thomasregister.com/byebye.cgi?http://www.somewhere .com"><img src="abclogo.gif" border = 0>ABC Company Home Page</a>

The above example will render as:

Logo Picture ABC Company Home Page

and when clicked will take the user to: www.somewhere.com

External Links in a <meta> tag:

Just precede the external link with the same reference to the 'byebye.cgi' in the examples above, i.e.:

<meta HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="3; url=http://www.thomasregister.com/byebye.cgi?http://www.somewhere.com">

The "content=3" attribute tells the browser to wait 3 seconds before loading the new URL.

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HTML Documents

Minimal Coding of Advertiser's Internet Catalog
The minimal HTML elements for an Internet catalog's HOME page are:

<HTML>
<head>
<title>Text of the Title </title>
</head>
<body>
.....All the advertiser's real content for this page goes here.

.....Advertiser's complete name and contact information goes here on every page.

</body>
</HTML>

Internal Catalog Pages minimal HTML elements:

The minimal HTML elements for an Internet catalog's inside pages (i.e., every page except the catalog's home page) consists of:

<HTML>
<head>
<title>Text of the Title </title>
</head>
<body>
.....All the advertiser's real content for this page goes here.

</body>
</HTML>

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Accepted Markup Tags

Acceptable markup is based as much as possible on HTML 3.2 as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium. For a detailed description of a specific tag and what it does, refer to the HTML 3.2 Quick Reference

From time to time, we will alter/expand the range of acceptable markup tags and attributes to accept markup that has been shown to be broadly compatible.

The following is an alphabetical list of supported tags. Items in red are Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer extensions.
<ADDRESS> - Address information
<AREA> - Hotzone in imagemap
<A> - Anchor
<BIG> - Larger text
<BLOCKQUOTE> - Large quotation
<BODY> - Document body
<BR> - Line break
<B> - Bold
<CAPTION> - Table caption
<CENTER> - Centered division
<DD> - Definition
<DFN> - Definition of a term
<DIV> - Logical division
<DL> - Definition list
<DT> - Definition term
<EM> - Emphasized text
<FONT> - Font modification
<FORM> - Form
<H1> - Level 1 header
<H2> - Level 2 header
<H3> - Level 3 header
<H4> - Level 4 header
<H5> - Level 5 header
<H6> - Level 6 header
<HEAD> - Document head
<HR> - Horizontal rule
<HTML> - HTML Document
<IMG> - Images 		  <I> - Italics
<LINK> - Site structure
<LI> - List item
<MAP> - Client-side imagemap
<MARQUEE> - Scrolling Banner
<NOBR> - No Break
<OL> - Ordered list
<PRE> - Preformatted text
<P> - Paragraph
<SAMP> - Sample text
<SCRIPT> - Inline script
<SMALL> - Smaller text
<STRIKE> - Strikeout
<STRONG> - Strongly emphasized
<SUB> - Subscript
<SUP> - Superscript
<TABLE> - Tables
<TD> - Table cell
<TH> - Header cell
<TITLE> - Document title
<TR> - Table row
<TT> - Teletype
<UL> - Unordered list
<U> - Underline
<WBR> - Word Break
Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading style sheets may be authored into your catalog. Thomas Register applies no restrictions to your implementation of CSS technology.

Statistics that track current browser traffic suggest that authoring CSS into your catalog will be supported by the vast majority of today's WWW users. But before releasing a catalog with CSS code, the author should make every effort to test it's performance in a selection of browsers and platforms. You may also wish to view the catalog with an older browser that does not support CSS to determine how best to handle that percentage of internet traffic.
'Cold' Forms.

The Thomas Register Internet Site will accept HTML coded with the <form> tag to satisfy those customers who wish to include forms. However, form actions are still illegal and forms coded with action attributes will be rejected.

This is legal: <form>
This is legal but unnecessary: <form method="post">
This is illegal: <form method="post" action="customerCGI">

Allowing a <form> even without the ability to execute it allows you to include a form page that customers can print for subsequent faxing or mailing.
Server Side and Client Side Image Maps

The Thomas Register Internet Site accepts both Server Side and Client Side image maps.

Server Side Image Maps

<a href="imagemap.cgi/image.map"><img src="image.gif" ismap></a>

where "image.map" and "image.gif" are variables to be supplied by the creator of the document.

  • Every imagemap needs a SEPARATE .map file to reference through the .cgi script ('imagemap.cgi' provided on the TR server) which must be located in the same directory as ALL the image and HTML files.
  • This file MUST follow the 8.3 naming standard and end in ".map".
  • The '.map' file MUST follow the NCSA standard which follows the format:

    image_shape document_reference coordinates

    For Example: 

    rect abc.htm 8,75 258,103
rect def.htm 7,152 259,173
rect ghi.htm 282,115 531,138
default home.htm
(The default item indicates what file gets referenced when no particular set of coordinates is chosen -- in this case, 'home.htm')

Client-Side Image Maps

Adding a USEMAP attribute to an IMG tag indicates a client-side image map. The USEMAP attribute can be used in conjunction with server-side image mapping.

The different regions of an image used for image mapping are coded in a MAP element that describes each region and the corresponding link for that area. The basic format for the MAP element is as follows:

<MAP NAME="name">
<AREA SHAPE="shape" COORDS="x,y,..." href="abc.htm">
</MAP>

An example of Server Side and Client-Side Image Mapping would look like this:

<a href="imagemap.cgi/image.map"><img src="image.gif" ismap usemap="#mapcoords"></a>
<map name="mapcoords">
<area shape=rect coords="0,0,125,27" href="home.HTML">
<area shape=circle coords="4,4,2" href="abc.HTML">
<area shape=polygon coords="20,20,30,40,10,40" href="xyz.HTML">
<area shape=default href="home.HTML">
</map>
CGI, Java & Javascript

CGI scripts are not accepted.
Java programs are not accepted.

Javascript is accepted, within the framework described below:
Javascript is code that is integrated with, and embedded in an HTML document. Unlike Java, Javascript does not need to be compiled by the server before execution to the client. Anytime you include JavaScript the code should be inside a <script></script> tag.
Server Side Includes (SSI)
HTML pages coded with Server Side Include commands are not accepted.
<--#exec >
<--#include >
<--#config >
<--#flastmod >
<--#fsize >
<--#echo >
and their tags are all illegal.
Meta Tags

In addition to the Thomas Register generated <meta> tags, you may include your own keywords by authoring a <meta> tag with the name="keywords" attribute.

In the <head> section of an HTML document, include a <meta> tag containing a comma-delimited list of keywords/phrases like this:

<meta name="keywords" content="word1, word2, word3, etc...">

where 'word1, word2, word3, etc...' is authored by the catalog developer.

Catalogs submitted that contain the following meta tag names will be rejected:

name="ROBOTS"
name="DESCRIPTION"

Those meta tags, along with Thomas' own keywords meta tag are automatically inserted by Thomas software every time the catalog is served to a customer. This ensures that the most current information listed for your company is delivered to web indexers.

Other <meta> tags are allowed, i.e. "generator=My Publishing Tool"

HTTP-EQUIV attributes that reference an external URL must also be coded with the standard byebye.cgi.
See New coding for external links

Markup Don'ts:

The following tags are NOT acceptable, and must NEVER be used:
<!-- Comments -->
(Unfortunately, SGML comments are very poorly handled by many browsers.)

Frames

Frames are not currently supported within catalogs on the Thomas Register Web site.

In-Line Images:

<img src="htmlspecart/filename.jpg">
(to call inline images, including the align, alt, height, and width attribute.) Note: all references must be local relative references, in order for your catalog to load properly in the validation area and the live server area.

Hypertext Links:

Linking to local documents (i.e., other pages of this specific catalog) hosted within the Thomas Register domain:

All files and images must be located in one directory; NO SUBDIRECTORIES ARE PERMITTED.

Examples:
<a href="bearspec.htm">Bearings Specifications Document</a>
<a href="brspc2.htm"><img src="htmlspecart/bearspc2.gif">Bearing Spec Doc</a>

Linking to an external web site outside the Thomas Register domain:

State the complete URL.

Example:
<a href="http://www.thomasregister.com/byebye.cgi?http://www.somewhere .com"> ABC Corporation Home Page</a>

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Graphics Specifications

All graphic files must be saved in gif or jpeg format.
The suffixes for referencing these images within an HTML document are 'gif' and '.jpg' respectively.

Examples:

<img src="htmlspecart/image.gif">
<img src="htmlspecart/image.jpg">

GIF Files

  • Best used with images that have large areas of solid color.
  • Color and black and white images are accepted.
  • Final file resolutions should be 72 dpi.
  • Final image file size recommendations are 40k and under.
  • Final dimensions should not exceed 550 pixels or 6.5" in width (at 72 DPI).
  • Be aware that the most likely platform for display is an IBM Compatible computer, and it is better to keep the VGA (16 color) palette in the color table for the images, even if more color depth is used.
  • Transparent images are accepted.
  • Interlaced images are accepted (and encouraged for larger images).
  • Keep color depth to a minimum.

Please use the minimum color depth when converting images to index color.

JPEG Files

  • NOTE: Not all browsers display this image format in-line.
  • Best used with images with many mixed colors (like photographs).
  • Final .jpg file size recommendations are 40k or less.
  • Final dimensions should not exceed 550 pixels or 6.5" in width.
  • When saving a .jpg, a higher quality setting does not always mean a better image. In most cases the users' goal is to pick the lowest quality setting, or smallest file size, that decompresses into an image indistinguishable from the original.

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Submission of Final Files

Electronic File Delivery:

Deliver your complete set of files electronically via ProofStat

If you have any questions or need further clarification on these specifications please contact Thomas Register Production at 212-290-7300. Or via e-mail to proofstat@thomasnet.com.

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Copyright (c) Thomas Publishing Company