Size Matters
Just a few notes about the structure of the pages of this web site.
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Screen Size: I do most of my
writing on a small notebook computer with a screen size of 1024 x 768 pixels.
So, naturally I've tried to make things look good on that size screen.
However, I also try out the pages on an old desktop PC with a screen size
of 800 x 600 - so I'm sensitive to having the items fit on to that size
of screen as well, although I don't optimise for it.
-
Navigation: Yes, I know the fashionable
thing to do is to divide the screen into frames so that a navigation bar
can be slotted across the top or down the side (or even both). But no,
I have chosen not to do this as I'm greedy for screen area for my images
and text. Instead, at strategic places on each page - usually you just
need to scroll down a screen or two to the bottom - you'll find all the
links you need to navigate (backwards, forwards or sideways!).
-
Graphics Images: The pictures
are either drawn from scratch, or scanned from various sources. Occasionally,
the JPG version turns out smaller than the GIF format. Most of the images,
though, are GIF files usually with the background colour set as transparent.
Some loss of quality is sometimes tolerated as I usually manage to reduce
the number of colours to 16 to keep the file size down and speed up the
downloading.
-
Be patient: I like to devise rollover
animations, which is another reason for minimising the size of graphics
files. You might find them very slow on first encounter, but if everything's
working as it should then the software (caching and all those other hidden
tricks that are generally transparent to us) should mean that they run
faster on subsequent occasions. Of course, if you're really impatient
and don't appreciate the nice colours, you could just switch off the graphics
(your browser can do this). Where it might be really annoying (like the
jazzy index to monthly spiders), I've usually provided a text alternative
- though the graphics are usually there for a purpose.
-
Browser Version: If you've followed
the development of this site, you may have noticed how adventurous I'm
getting in my attempts to do fancy stuff with JavaScript programming. I've
also started to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to control the appearance
of things. These sorts of web content are best (sometimes, only) rendered
properly by version 4 or later of Netscape and Internet Explorer.
So if things are looking a bit strange, try downloading the latest version
of your favourite browser. Occasionally, some of the JavaScript tricks
only work in the latest browser versions (using what's called the Document
Object Model - DOM); so the page script may test for this and only execute
statements as appropriate. In particular, the rather splendid (if
I say so myself) and colourful index to the "Spider of the Month" does
not display well in Netscape 4 but needs Netscape 6, if you have the patience
for it, and it also looks good in Internet Explorer 5 and Opera 5.
