Updates: Spring 2001

27 March 2001

I've rearranged my journal a bit (again), putting everything about Germany in the same folder and adding an index page for that. Eventually (once this year isn't current any more), those entries will have to be accessed through that sub-index page, but for the moment the links are still on the main journal page, though slightly reordered. There are also (badly scanned) pictures here and there in past entries. Oh, and I've finally figured out how to make Netscape stop messing up my links on the left (non-breaking spaces!), though I can't make it pay attention to my style sheets. :-( New page about Kevin, and I put this updates page in a subdirectory (thinking about archiving older entries, since I can never simply throw anything away).

17 March 2001

Tried to govern table widths with styles, but Netscape breaks my tables, darn it. So I had to go back to the way it was before. A hint for the future: if anything with my styles ends up broken (it shouldn't, but it probably will since I'm still learning), just disable style sheets. You'll lose the background and some formatting, but it'll make things readable at least.

16 March 2001

Search removed, because the search engine doesn't index personal pages so it probably wouldn't be much use anyway, apparently.

13 March 2001

I've minorly altered the code in my Javascript madlib; it doesn't make any real difference, actually, but it makes the code just a bit more elegant. I've also attempted to make expanding and collapsing menus in the entries index in my journal... Unfortunately it hasn't worked. I've got a book which is supposed to tell me how to do it, but it doesn't work, and I can't figure out why. :-( (If you know, tell me.)

Oh, btw, I've got a domain name, niceperson.org. More detail in my journal.

12 March 2001

I now have an alternate style sheet, if anybody has a browser that can see it. :-)

Small addition to Emily.

9 March 2001

Emily's background is now blue; I made a gif from her jeans in our punk photo, so it's slightly symbolic, and I think it looks quite nice, too. (Many thanks to Leanne for the gif I used before.)

7 March 2001

Pratchett quotes have been moved from quotes to Pratchett. Emily's style sheet is now embedded rather than linked. The code in HTML is now color-coded.

6 March 2001

Whee, JavaScript! Check out JavaScript Surprise. Blatantly useless, but it was fun to code. I also added a bit about JavaScript and copyright to HTML.

5 March 2001

I changed the navigation gifs; they were flat and oval, but I got a comment saying the old (stylesheet-created) buttons were better, so I thought I'd see what I could knock up in the rectangular department. Then someone else said the oval was better, but the 3-D effect and yellow text of the others was nice, so I made yet another set of buttons. I think they look much better now.

Incidentally, I also changed the directory for the navigation buttons from navigation/ to nav/, so if any of the buttons don't work, that's why. If the green button doesn't appear when the page is first loaded, the mistake is in the included text file; if the red doesn't come up or the green doesn't reappear, the mistake is in the javascript file. I checked pretty carefully, but there still might be mistakes. There always are.

I should also note that yesterday, when I made subdirectories in my journal, I had to change the JavaScript files too (or, more specifically, create copies for the third directory level; if you look at the source code you'll see what I mean). I changed them but forgot to change the name, and then once I'd realized my mistake, WS_FTP (or MHC's ftp server, or whatever) wouldn't cooperate enough to let me upload those two files. I decided to give up and try again today. That's the reason that the buttons were screwed up if you tried them yesterday evening or early today. I may have the same type of problem (things only being half-altered, because I couldn't transfer all the files at once) for the next couple of weeks, so be warned.

4 March 2001

More fiddling with JavaScript - I fiddled with the preloading, trying to make it work, and only succeeded in making the code a little bit cleaner (which is always nice, but only for those who fiddle with the code themselves). I've decided that the preloading must work; it's only that Kevin's connection is slower than I'm used to, and it takes a little while for the images to load, even with preloading. In any case, if it doesn't work I have no idea how to fix it, so I really hope it does.

There have been major organizational changes in the realm of my journal; I decided that if I'm going to keep expanding it, the sooner I develop a less-confusing structure the better, so I took the opportunity to do it, before I get any more files which need to be changed. Other than that, I've made relatively minor changes to several pages (journal-index, 1979-2000, AFP).

Incidentally, a couple of days ago (when I put up the navigation gifs) I changed the Emily page back around and put the buttons back at the bottom.

3 March 2001

Mostly minor changes today; I made the validation buttons and other standard text at the bottom of each page an included file (it takes up very slightly less space, but mostly it makes the code look cleaner; unfortunately it means that my systematic changes two days ago have now been rendered completely irrelevant). I also figured out why my WebMail won't work (I'd have to register for it, and they don't allow it for personal web pages), so I've done it another way now. I don't yet know if it works, because as I'm writing this I haven't uploaded the changes in order to check them, but at the bottom of every page there should be line saying "This page created and maintained by Laurabelle (WebMail)" with links on both "Laurabelle" and "WebMail." Once I upload, I'll test it myself. In any case, that line has replaced the "Email" button in the navigation bar, since as far as I know it's impossible to use MHC's WebMail thing (part of the document interface) in conjunction with an image rather than text.

More JavaScript fun - now when you pass the mouse over my navigation buttons, you should see the name (rather than the URL) of the link in the status bar. (That's from the JavaScript tutorial I'm working through atm.) However, unfortunately the rollover doesn't quite work, because the images need to be preloaded, and we haven't gotten that sorted out yet.

I've changed the content on my index and journal-index pages so that they're not copies of my journal or my updates page, and so that I don't have to change them every time I modify my pages (like I've been doing recently). I've also added a bit about frames and CSS to the HTML page, as well as links within the page to my three different rants.

Later today: I've had to undo lots of what I just did this morning, i.e. the included footers, because apparently the document interface is interpreted before included documents, so the command I stuck in the footer doesn't work. I had to go through all my files and change them back. :-(

1 March 2001

I've just typed in a couple of papers from last year and changed my style sheets for the writing pages (which is only noticeable if you look at the source code, since otherwise it doesn't make a difference to the look of my pages). Even more unnoticeably, I added comments to my main style sheet, which makes absolutely no difference except that it reminds me what that bit of code does. Another thing that doesn't make much difference (except that it does for some of you Netscape-users) is that I've systematically fixed the "Valid CSS!" button on all my pages, since the CSS in the button doesn't work in Netscrape. I don't know why. I didn't do it; I just copied the code from the W3C!

And the very gosh darn coolest thing I did today? I'm sure you've noticed it already. :-) With the help of my darling Kevin, I made green navigation buttons and put in a little JavaScript to make them roll over to red. Fun. I could not have done it myself (it's mostly Kevin who fiddled with it until it worked), but I do intend to learn more JavaScript in the future.

27 February 2001

I have changed a lot of stuff in the past few days, pretty much randomly, and I haven't uploaded it or noted it here, so I have no idea if I can remember everything. Today I'm attempting to get things in some sort of order, and uploading the changes I've made in the past five days. By the time your read this, it'll be mostly there, but there will probably be bugs and broken things in various places. Please tell me about those. I may find them eventually, myself, but comments make my life so much easier.

I've added a couple of papers to writings. Page with links to some of my favorite poetry (under fun), which will definitely grow in the future. New section about AFP. Navigation table in journal now at the top, where it will hopefully be more conveniently accessible than at the bottom.

22 February 2001

More fiddling, some less-noticeable things that are only noticeable to me because they'll make writing and maintaining my page easier in the future. Other than that, I created a frameset document to make my guestbook fit a little better into the layout of my page, and added a little bit about validation to HTML. Oh, and I changed around the images on my index page a little bit; I moved the banners to Fun deleted the British Empire thing, and added a jpg with a link to a webpage about copyright. (Beautiful jpg, I think.)

21 February 2001

I've changed lots of organizational things; photos changed name and location, now under journal, "1979 - 2000." Quotations, Links, and HTML are under the heading "Fun." Emily is now an index page in her own folder, the way she should have been before, and with a sidebar this time (though in different colors from the rest of the site).

20 February 2001

Today I've created a page about HTML, to replace the section of HTML links appended to the end of my other links. Actually, I used to have a file just called html.html (cute huh?) for my own reference, but then I decided to put those links with the others, and now I've put them back and added a bit about why I hand-code. Besides, now they're at the top of the page, so I don't have to scroll down to get at them.

I've also added a page for my writings. I used to have a "Creations" page on my first website, but I took that down because I got way too carried away with it. I was putting up everything I'd ever written, which was too much. At this point I've just got my paper for German up there. It's not the greatest, but it's the first research paper I've written in German, so it deserves a certain recognition. My history paper will get put up there too, and certainly my Orlando paper, which is looking at this point like it's going to be very long, but I have the feeling in my head that it's also going to be very good. The biggest problem will be structure. Virginia Woolf doesn't lend herself very well to structure.

As half-expected, neither webmail nor search works. Urgh. I'm going to have to investigate that later. Not now, because I've already done too much on here.

19 February 2001

This has to be a sort of summary entry, because I've been fiddling with my web page pretty much constantly for the past few weeks, as you, my faithful reader, must have noticed if you're looking at this at all. No frames, tables and server-side includes, blah blah blah.

Oh, btw, because I'm using server-side includes I have to also rename my files .shtml, which is interesting because MHC has a document interface which kicks in when a file has the extension .shtm or .shtml. Until I figured out how to turn them off, my pages had the MHC navigation banner at the top and an annoying dotted line at the bottom. However, one nice thing about the interface is that now my "Last modified on" date gets updated automagically. No more forgetting to change it!

Another alteration, which is perhaps more subtle than the others, is that all of my pages now validate, so I've got the right to put a button on them which says "Valid HTML 4.01" or something similar, as well as another for my valid CSS. If you ever want to check that it is, in fact, valid HTML, all you have to do is click on that button. It's at the bottom of this page, too. Go on, try it... You know you want to.

As for changes in content (content? what's that?), I've changed the text in my index and journal-index pages to reflect the recent changes in format. I've also added a couple of links and changed around the order of my quotations completely, as well as adding some new ones from my stash of sigs and from Orlando, which I'm currently rereading again for my paper.

Oh, new toy! I've put a search form on my journal page; I'm not yet sure if it works, because I haven't uploaded and tried it just yet, and it's probably not useful at all, but it's a new toy, anyway. And webmail! You can send me email from my web page, yay! If it works, that is...

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