So what am I up to now?
Back when I made the MVL website, each page was static, and it contained a collections of links at the bottom of the page. If one of the files ever changed names (or locations), I had to update each page with the new address. And each page would have it's own set of links to a related part of the website, and because we were actively redesigning the site as we went along, had to be changed almost daily. Then there was the logo (that I am quite proud of), but it had to be put on every page, then it had to be smaller, then it had to taller.
It was a nightmare.
When I learned of Microsoft's FrontPage "Share Borders", I was singing celebration from the rooftops. Now I could have a consistent look and feel across every page, and make sweeping changes with a few mouse clicks. If I didn't like the wording, or the color, or the logo, I could make a few mouse clicks and a hundred pages would form to my whim.
Then I started looking at my pages on a browser besides Internet Explorer.
I hid in my shell for a long time, telling myself that it didn't matter, I had found a solution, and I was sticking with it. Well I stuck with it, and here's where I am today: Two websites with various content spread from here to there, and it coming up looking all crazy in various browsers.
So now I need to make a change. I don't want it to look "perfect" for me, I want it to be "readable" by everyone. Letting the content speak for itself.
I'm thinking that server side processing would be the way to go. Your browser calls up the page, it's compiled from here, sent out in straight HTML, and displayed by your browser. I'm going to try and find some language that has stuff like "print=head" then "print=body:index01.htm" that way I can have a common head part of the page that all points to one file I can change at my whim and every file automatically has the new head.
***Update*** While playing around with my workspot.com account, and reading
up on some info at cgi101.com, I was able to create a page that would point to a
specific file and print out it's contents. Check it out:
open(INF,"borders/top.txt") or dienice("Can't open top.txt: $!:");
@topB = <INF>;
close(INF);
foreach $line (@topB) {
chomp($line);
print "$line\n";}
But this has a lot of holes in it. First off, I have to be on a server running CGI (and perl), secondly I have to have every page point to this single "top.txt" file, which means that they would either have to be in a folder and have a relative path (and get broken everytime a file gets moved from one folder to another, which I might be able to correct with some clever scripting), or I can put in it's absolute path: /beta/home/home41000/milescomer/public_html/cgi-bin/borders/top.txt, which will cause EVERY page to be broken if that specific path ever changes (again, which might be cured with some clever scripting), that or just get an account on a webserver where I could place the file in something generic like /web/top.txt.
***Update*** Well while trying to make the site look more acceptable and more "employment centered" I stumbled upon a book titled "HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS", Chapter 5: Building the Skeleton is online at http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1171 and described how to get the layout that is usually only accomplished by using tables. I'm thinking a combination of "include" files and common border elements may be the solution. I'll reveal more as it's discovered but I've already updated the first page of this website using CSS to define the layout, which I think is pretty impressive since I only found out about it that day. Still a slight problem though, if you have a to large or to small screen resolution, how the right side of the page looks will vary greatly.
If you are the person in your family who "knows computers". Then you know that you are often asked to troubleshoot a computer for family. To try and cut down on that as much as possible, I want to get a setup that I can recommend to my parents that comes with the least amount of downtime and easy maintenance.
I'm thinking the way to go is a "quality" laptop on a docking station. You hook up the familiar keyboard, monitor, mouse to it, as well as an external hard drive. Setup the OS, applications, and data to the laptop hard drive, and set up periodic backups to the external hard drive.
For some reason the printer stops working frequently, need to try and find the most reliable printer and set them up with that too.
Pretend you have just a cell phone, it's a problem making long phone calls,
even to toll-free numbers, on a weekday. And aside from reading postage stamp
sized news on CNN.com, how do you browse the internet?
Pretend you have just a land line, it's a problem making long distance phone
calls, and you can't talk to anyone when you aren't at the house.
Pretend you have just broadband internet, it's a problem talking to someone
(aside from telephony), but you still can't communicate when your are outside
your house.
So what combination can give you the most satisfaction without going all out on
all three?
My first solution was:
1. Home phone line that could only dial locally, set to busy call forward to my
cell phone.
2. Cell phone with the absolute lowest number of minutes.
3. Dial-up internet on the home phone line.
This worked quite well, although the internet was slow. And if I ever got a call
forwarded to me, and it was of any length, I'd have to disconnect from the
internet, and call them back from the home phone.
My second attempt was:
1. Cell phone with a few more minutes a month than I need, that would handle the
occasional long phone call as well as other talk all I wanted long-distance to
family during the evenings and weekends. The only problem was the occasional
call that was toll-free, but had a long wait time, my solution to this was the
occasional pay-phone call.
2. Cable Broadband Internet
This ROCKED, only problem was when I would have a problem with my cable
internet, I had to borrow a neighbors home phone line to call them in and
troubleshoot it. Between having to call them up and because my ONLY phone was
the cell phone, I had a couple of cell phone bills that got a little higher than
I expected.
Right now I've got:
1. Cell phone with way more minutes a month than I need.
2. DSL Broadband Internet
3. Home phone line that can dial long distance.
This basically gives me the options to do anything I'd like, except that it's so
EXPENSIVE, and I'm only watching basic TV.
I'm thinking the best would be:
1. Cell phone with way more minutes a month than I need.
2. Cable Broadband Internet
3. Some sort of "Internet Phone" thing hooked up to the cable.
I'm thinking this setup would work. I just need to find me a good
"Internet Phone" product and get with my local Cable provider.
My "NTLDR Fix" and "PS2PDF" gets quite a lot of hits oddly. I'm rather proud of that. I'm trying to make sure that those pages will be easy for others to read and gets them the information that they need. I ended up making a "PS2PDF" page in Portuguese after I noticed that one month a majority of this hits I got were from the Google search in Portuguese, and the "translated" version messed up some of the directory names.
***Update*** Just on a "well I wonder what it would do." I added banner ads to my tinyempire.com site. Oddly enough, within the first week I made enough money to run the website for a week. Hooray! I'm breaking even.
Any tips for the current projects I'm working on are welcome, just send a MSG2ME.
MilesComer.com | Site maintained by Miles Comer miles.comer@ttu.edu | MSG2ME