|
Design
Funny 'ol thing design. Very subjective. What one person finds appealing and wonderful, another thinks is awful and hurts the eyes. I have tried to make this site visually pleasing, informative, interesting, and perhaps a nice place to visit.
The HTML bit I originally wrote all the code by hand using Windows Notepad (what a hero!) and enjoyed doing it. There must be a certain creative masochism about it? I have played with one or two HTML editors (Hot Metal 2.0 being one), but have not had the time to really appreciate what they can do. I've no doubt they are useful if you have no knowledge of HTML coding, but as they seemed to assume at least a nodding acquaintance with the code - why not get in there and learn it? Time? Then I discovered HTML Notepad by Cranial Software which is not an HTML bells and whistles, do-it-all-for-you editor, but rather like a super version of Windows Notepad - highly recommended! Here are some helpful sites. A search on Google for "HTML Tutorial" or similar should yield more info.
TIP: After uploading the site I found that some graphics would not appear, or links wouldn't work. This despite them working fine internally on our machine at home. I eventually discovered is was to do with file names being case-sensitive on some web-servers i.e. those running on UNIX! So as a matter of course I ensure all file names are lower-case. Even one letter in upper-case and it fails.
TIP: If you are getting into HTML and live in the U.K. (where we spell things correctly!!), be aware that HTML uses American spelling: ie. COLOR and CENTER. Of course if you cannot see what the problem is, check out your dictionary ....ho hum!
Colour codes: (or if you prefer, color) can be a bit daunting at first, and who can remember the code for azure? Not me for one, so put some colour in your life with my helpful colour listing page.
Graphics
Initially the site is not exactly over-burdened with graphics, but I persuaded a friend to scan stuff for me so at least there were a few pickies. Then the 'wish-list' came up and we acquired a scanner of our own; an OpticPro 4830P. It has made quite a difference. All the scan-ins on our church pages were done using this scanner, as were the shots of my guitars on my guitar page. All the background gif's (love 'em or hate 'em) were created by me and Joel using PAINT SHOP PRO. It's a great shareware (30 days trial) programme (see below under 'Software').
The animated GIFs come from various resourse sites on the web, but the rotating "Peddie Zone" and "Welcome" gif's (among others) were created using the Xara-3D Gif Animator at: http://www.xara.com/. Clickthe link for a free trial.
For other animations I refuse to use Gif Construction Set from Alchemy, as it has a lot of advertising for pagan material that comes with it. This is a personal thing - BUT all is not lost as "Gif MovieGear", another excellent package which is also really easy to use, came to the rescue. Download from the Movie Gear site.
Here are a few places to visit that have suitable resources. A search on Google for "animated GIF" or similar should yield more info.
Software
Browsers: The site was originally designed to run happily on Netscape Navigator 2.0 & above and Internet Explorer 2.1 & above. But things move on and I am now using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and some absolute positioning using <DIV> tags, which require Netscape 4.5 and Internet Explorer 4.0 and above.
Plug-ins: There are no complex plug-ins required. I don't know about you, but I find it rather tedious to visit a site and to be told I need to spend anything from 20 mins to an hour downloading a piece of software to view the site in all it's glory. Recently I had to detour and download the latest version of a certain plug-in to view a certain site. It worked fine, then the very next site I visited told me I needed an even later version - Hmmmm! Boring!
Music: I have moved away from the thought that background music is a good thing on a web site. It can drive visitors mad. However, there is an intriguing piece of software from SSEYO called the KOAN plug-in (yes, I know!). It's billed as an program which will produce everchanging, real-time generated music. You design the parameters, and the program does the rest. One day when I have the time.....!
However, if you must, you can easily embed a midi file on your page. The code is below. Joel still has a couple on his pages - spot the tunes! The full code is:
<EMBED src="./opimage/jazz.mid" WIDTH=n HEIGHT=n AUTOSTART=TRUE LOOP=1>.
Where 'n' gives you the width and height of the playback graphic. 'n'=0 means that no playback icon shows.
Off-line Browsing: If you are still using old versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer, you might be interested in a very good off-line browser for those times when there is lots to read and you want to keep the phone bills down. SECRET AGENT from Ariel Communications Ltd class="text1t". takes every document in your cache, plus all the associated graphics and saves them to an indexed linked dump, allowing you to view the pages as though you were on line, via your browser, but you are in fact, off-line. Brilliant. You can down load a trial version from their web site (see below). Later browsers; Netscape 4.6 and I.E. 4.0 allow off-line browsing.
All the above product copyrights and trademarks are acknowledged
Site Submission: So, now you've created that wonderful site, you're going to want the world to see it. Can I recommend a really great way of submitting your site to a number of the major search engines. I can? OK.
Go to ADD IT! However, I found I needed to register at specific mainstream search engines as well:
Alta Vista: http://www.altavista.digital.com/
Yahoo UK: http://www.yahoo.co.uk/
Web Crawler: http://webcrawler.com/
That pretty well wraps up the technical stuff - I hope it was helpful.
Happy HTML'ing!: May the code be with you ....
|
This is a most excellent piece of software created for the sole purpose of animating text - and it does it really well, so 10/10; 5 Star; Gold Medal!. 
Netscape Navigator at 
Microsoft Internet Explorer at 
JASC's Paint Shop Pro 
Sseyo Koan Demo 
Ariel's Secret Agent 