Site Design Notes

In general, I try to design this site so that the content is easily accessable under any browser. Yes, I use lynx too, and I try to accomodate text-mode browsers both in style and accessability whenever possible. If you find this site difficult to navigate in your browser, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

I do not attempt to make all elements of the style visible under all browsers. Currently I design for Konqueror, Mozilla and lynx; this site makes use of CSS which is not properly supported in the legacy 4.x browsers, and uses the PNG format for most images which are again not available in some older browsers. I do not intend to go out of my way supporting old browsers in the site style (I will, however, continue to design with lynx and other text-only browsers in mind).

This site is periodically checked for compliance with the HTML 4.0 and CSS standards. Please send any suggestions for the site design to me by e-mail (my email address is in the footer of this page), and I will try to accomodate your suggestions.

Currently, my design platform is Konqueror 2.2.1 and Mozilla 0.9.5 on X11R6.3. The default set of fonts used are from the Adobe foundry. The generic font alternatives are provided so the site should be viewable on most platforms.

This site is constructed using a combination of offline scripts, CGI applications, and Apache SSI. The site is served using the Apache web browser from Linux-based machines. Currently, other than the counter there are very few active CGI scripts on the webpages -- most of the dynamic content is generated either with SSI, or via offline scripts (e.g. the signatures on most pages are built using a script run from a cron job).

• All (non-deprecated) tables have been converted to using CSS for cell spacing, padding, and cell alignment.
• Most of the FF pages are now based on a stronger template and/or offline-generated files; there was a lot of duplication there and it was a pain to keep it all in sync, especially for soundtracks; hence the switchover.
• I'm currently debating whether to keep the link highlighting feature (the hover style elements). Older browsers don't properly support it, but it gives a noticable effect in some newer browsers (e.g. Mozilla).
• Link underlining is always a murky issue. Currently I disable link underlining in all areas (e.g. long lists, and in the toolbars).
• Recently added support so various sections of the site can load a custom CSS sheet or CSS style data in the HEAD section, instead of putting a STYLE block into the BODY section (which is illegal in HTML 4.0 and causes some pages on this site not to validate).