17 December 2001

Netscape 6.2 really does remove the effect of the LINKed style sheet when you choose View -> Use Stylesheet -> None (Netscape 6.1 would leave the blue background). The effect of the imported stylesheet cannot be removed (yet, to the extent that I am aware). Nevertheless, I have placed a {border: none;} declaration for the div.content element class in the @IMPORTed stylesheet to override the declaration in the LINKed stylesheet Blue Soothe. The {border: 0.01px solid #FFFFFF;} declaration is needed solely to color in the entire background, rather than only the background behind the elements (like the text), in Netscape Communicator 4.x on both Windows and Macintosh platforms.

Why not visit the Web Standards Project and see why they recommend YOU UPGRADE YOUR BROWSER ALREADY?!

I’ve spent some interesting time reading at BugZilla (your source for tracking the bugs in Mozilla, the open source project underpinning the Netscape 6.x releases). The developers guiding the project are very serious in not permitting display of the alt= text when the image is visible in the user agent and insist that the only W3C-acceptable method is to display the title= attribute string. Did you know that target= is a deprecated attribute in HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0? Argh, more things I have to change to maintain validity.

08 December 2001

I copied the Ultimate JavaScript Client Sniffer, version 3.03, and implemented the example code for dynamically generating HTML markup to comment on the suitability of your user agent (browser) in viewing this web space. If you are not in the habit of scrolling down on the home page, why not do so now and see what I have to say?

04 December 2001

There is just more and more to learn about Netscape 6 and its Mozilla underpinnings. For <IMG> tags, Netscape 6 does not display the text assigned to the alt= attribute but rather the string assigned to the title= attribute. Since the title= attribute is a core attribute within HTML/XHTML, it can be applied to any tag. So, in addition to doing so for most of the images on the this web space, I have assigned a title to the link on the home page for the site map in Serbian. What’s that you say? A tool tip does not appear when you try hovering the mouse over that link? Tsk, tsk. If only you had a browser that was standards-compliant.

02 December 2001

There’s been a tremendous amount of work behind the scenes trying to take advantage of all the features that the tags and attributes of HTML and XHTML and CSS offer without making Netscape Communicator 4 choke on the results again. I have removed every inline style applied to images and assigned class selectors to them instead which has allowed me to remove the text links I describe below. I noticed last night the View->Use Stylesheet menu option in Netscape 6, so I had to change the title of the LINKed stylesheet in each file in this webspace. Apparently it is NOT true that Netscape Communicator will cascade multiple LINKed stylesheets, so I have had to make do with one LINKed stylesheet for all styles-aware browsers and one @IMPORTed stylesheet for those cascading sheet properties that break Netscape Communicator 4 or which it should not for whatever reason see. Oh, and I’m really sorry that Netscape Navigator 3 displays (instead of ignoring) the XML declaration at the top of each page. (It’s not even a part of the BODY tag! Sheesh!)

01 December 2001

Aye, I’m asking for it. I’ve applied a DOCTYPE (asserting XHTML 1.0 Transitional compatibility which has only been validated for the index page) to each page in this web space, which will trigger the standards mode of each of the most modern browsers. Also, there’s new <LINK> tags in relevant pages for users of the latest Mozilla builds and an upcoming version of Netscape. Oh, but this is too funny! Netscape 6.1 can already take advantage of the "lang" attribute of elements, and the "hreflang" attribute of anchors, I’ve been adding. In at least the Windows version, obtain the context menu (right click with the mouse) for an element or a link and choose Properties. Whee! Even the "longdesc" attribute for the <IMG> tag is now useful! It just so happens I can take advantage of the Cover Photo page to offer a longdesc of the photograph on the home page.

Netscape 6.1+ works. Dump Netscape Communicator 4 NOW!

29 November 2001

It’s a terrible thing to say to my valued visitors who are using Netscape Communicator 4, but give it up already! If you are reading this (the text of this paragraph is styled to appear in green) and you could use Netscape 6 or Internet Explorer 4+, do so, please! It will make things SO much easier for ME. Ahem. Back to our regularly scheduled reportage.

The reason that the Diversions page wouldn’t render in Netscape Communicator 4 turns out to be an almost fatal bug in the rendering engine therein (explanation courtesy of the RichInStyle site): encountering an image (<IMG> tag) with a style applied inline causes all sorts of havoc. Like I did on the index page, I’ve supplied text links for the image anchors and hidden the additional links from other browsers.

24 November 2001

After a day of building a high-nose B-truck LEGO® GP locomotive, fixing the C-truck LEGO® Dash-8 locomotives so they would ride through switches, modifying the two LEGO® hopper cars for that TOP GON look, I chose to spend today scanning negatives and writing web pages. There’s twelve new pages available over at the Police Vehicles menu! Enjoy. Those of you in the know will find a fifth entity somewhere.

22 November 2001

As part of my continuing drive to be current with the evolving standards, I am beginning to make these pages more compatible with XHTML 1.0. There should be no visible change in anyone’s user agent.

17 November 2001

Sure seems like I have abandoned my Netscape 4.x-using visitors, doesn’t it? The index page is hopelessly broken and the Diversions page won’t even render past the header. Yet all the HTML is valid and all the cascading style sheet properties are valid. For the index page, I suspect the JavaScript for the tracking program. For the Diversions page, I have no idea. One solution is to turn off support for style sheets.

09 November 2001

Testing on the Macintosh clients Internet Explorer 4.01 and Netscape Communicator 4.04 has occurred, and they behave about as expected. I remembered a potential trick this morning about the display cascading style sheet property and it works! Only visitors using Netscape 4.x will see the row of text links on the index page! Don’t believe me that my pages validate as HTML 4.01? I’ve attempted to add forms to the Tools page to automate the submission of validation requests.

08 November 2001

Whew! One of the advantages to designing a web space in private (or one that gets visited only rarely) is that the mistakes in coding along the way aren’t so apparent. I had finally completed the elimination of tables as formatting and crafted well-formed HTML code and cascading style sheet properties when I discovered that Netscape Navigator 4.7x (and I suspect all 4.x versions) choked very badly on the results. So badly that the main photograph on the index page wouldn’t load on the first visit, graphics were placed in very inappropriate locations, and most of the anchors on images no longer worked. It might be very well to say that, oh, everyone who is anyone is already using Internet Explorer. But my statistics indicate I have loyal daily visitors at work, most of whom are willing to use the Netscape 4.75 we’re supplied with (we also get IE5.5 but it’s a newcomer to our desktops). I’ve found some tricks to get around the buggy implementation of style in Netscape 4 to make this web space presentable to its users (with an unfortunate concession of a row of text links on the index page) without impairing the experience of users of Netscape 6 (and Opera, maybe) and, to a lesser extent, of Internet Explorer 5.5 (and those of you still using IE4). Testing on the Macintosh is still in the future. User agents that do not understand styles (and this includes Netscape 3 on both the Windows and Macintosh platforms) should deliver left-aligned content over a white (or gray) background. By the way, at least some of these pages will validate in accordance with the DTD for HTML 4.01 Strict.

05 November 2001

Just to annoy partisans of a certain convicted monopolist’s browser, apparently, I have started to validate my HTML coding at the W3C online validator. I just wish I had known earlier that the id= attribute must start with a letter. [Update: the restriction on naming the id attribute may only be effective for CSS1, not CSS2.]

04 November 2001

Your browser is not standards compliant. I have continued to edit my web pages to remove almost all of the tables and place the formatting in the style sheet. The site looks great (that is, the rendering is as expected given the formatting properties specified) in Netscape 6.1, but curiousity of curiousities, Internet Explorer 5.5 is unable to appreciate the margin: auto commands that center the content.

21 October 2001

Your browser is too old. I have purchased the AOL Time Warner browser Netscape 6.1 on CD and installed it and it is not as rickety as Netscape 6.01. So as an experiment I have edited most of my pages to remove all the tag-level background colors and text alignments (except for the table align="center" tag) that kept the site appearance the same in older browsers even though they were unaware of style and stylesheets. Note that if you or your employer uses Netscape 4.x as a browser, the menus of photographs are in a single column only for your browser.

18 September 2001

I have consolidated the photographs I have found of myself taken by others and posted to Brickshelf (that is to say, publicly) over on the Photographs menu page.

01 September 2001

A little rearrangement of the structure of the What’s New section. Fans of the Back button in the browser will be disappointed.

18 August 2001

Having sold only a few DVD titles in a year, it was time to deemphasize the Garage. Replacing it in the navigation menu is the Diversions page. I’ve also added the <meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE"> tag to each page in an excess of caution.

08 July 2001

I changed the email address. There were just too many demands for a cookie to wade through at AOL/Netscape. By request, I have included a photograph of my own house (as opposed to the many pictures of the houses of others I have taken with or without permission over the years). A few minor corrections here and there.

07 July 2001

While others CLAIM to be designing their own web site while never managing to cough up a URL (oh, oh, I am assured, it is on diskette somewhere), I keep adding content and features. Check out one of the latter (a new feature) at the privacy policy page.

05 July 2001

I already found two Hannahers using the web site I now mention on my privacy policy page.

22 June 2001

The link icon from the Creators Syndicate was too large for the welcome page, so I added the link to the Tools page.

15 June 2001

It was just time to change the cover photo. The AMC Hoffman Center 22 opened today, so a few adjustments were necessary. Three new photographs of its construction are available. I offer a few observations on my first visit. The Erol’s space checker has been decommissioned, so I have removed it from the Tools page.

14 May 2001

A minor correction to the first movie review in over a month. Some short statements on the dispatches page. The theater under construction now has an announced opening day.

04 May 2001

A minor correction to one of the links in the dispatch last Sunday. The online portal for University of Virginia alumni, HoosHome [link removed], has sent an email to its users that it will cease operations in June. I have changed the email address on the welcome page. Is it May already?

29 April 2001

There have been more complaints about the grammar on the Serbian language site map page, so some of this has been corrected. I have a rather lengthy dispatch regarding my adventures in downloading software and emulating the Macintosh.

09 April 2001

Keep those error reports coming! Because I am too cheap to upgrade from the CuteHTML LE that I use to edit these pages, I don’t have an integrated spell checker. I think I finally have all the relevant pages reconciled with the fact that it is already April. I have added a couple of buttons to the home page. LUGnet is the web site for the adult fan of LEGO® elements. The folks behind the DVDaria project seek to improve the quality of any eventual DVD release of this MTV series.

24 March 2001

The dispatches page finally has something new to convey. Some more searching has expanded the listing at the privacy policy page. Because convention attendee Faith Baker is not a personal acquaintance of mine (although my brother and I have plenty of photographs and even Super 8 movies of her appearances), I have supplied a link to the page I am alluding to. My error in referring to the holder of the trademark The Chrysler Building was exposed for only a day. Did you know that this web space (and probably any others established by Erol’s account holders) is accessible from the RCN and Starpower domains? Maybe it will save some of you some typing.

20 March 2001

The tools and links page is integrated with the site. There may be other unannounced pages lurking.

18 March 2001

Besides the new photograph on the welcome page and a few movie reviews, there is now a lang="sr" tag for the body of the Serbian language site map. I do have international visitors. There’s also a fourteenth frame to the sequence of the construction of the AMC Hoffman Center 22. I added a trailing slash to the href= tag in my anchors where appropriate.

17 March 2001

I have expanded the privacy policy to explain the results of the tracking program. Some grammatical repairs were made to the Serbian language site map. I am toying with a tools and links page, but have not integrated it with the rest of the site yet. I have checked most of my pages using Netscape Communicator 4.5, Netscape Navigator 3.01, and Internet Explorer 4.0. There is JavaScript on the welcome page to deal with the disappearance of elements when resizing the browser window in Netscape Communicator 4.x.

11 March 2001

This weekend I have been toying with a style sheet. Seems like Netscape 4.5 has some trouble with it. I don’t know why adding a class= to the IMG tag on the menus of photographs should be the same as adding a break or paragraph tags.

06 March 2001

There is a new link on the welcome page to a Serbian language site map. I expanded the menu for Movies to make it easier to browse. I scanned another photograph for the construction of the AMC Hoffman Center and took the opportunity to bring the photograph display pages into the table style.

27 February 2001

So much for philosophy. I added a little Javascript to the welcome page to enable a tracker. I was a little frustrated with the counter from Erol’s because the great proportion of counts were my visits from home and work. The tracker is supposed to supply much more information regarding visitors. Now we’ll see just who’s showing up (based on their domain) and whether I really do have international viewers. Let me know what you think.

16 February 2001

A little backdating and the explanation of the photographs which have appeared on the welcome page is expanded.

14 February 2001

I removed the Accessions page and instead established a Dispatches page. I want the What’s New page to alert visitors to new or revised portions of the web space, and the Dispatches page to be a more flexible communication tool. However, there have been unannounced changes to the copyright and trademark statement recently.

11 February 2001

There is a new link from the home page, it should not surprise anyone who has known me for any length of time that I like to, er, find things out. It bothered me that users (all right, one user) with a small screen resolution could not read entire lines of text because the 600 pixel width went off the edge of the screen. I have re-done all the tables to use percentage widths. Any visitors viewing the pages in a telephone should have less difficulty now.

08 February 2001

A modest redesign.

01 February 2001

Both the gallery of police vehicles and the sequence of the construction of the AMC Hoffman Center have been expanded. I had to remove the photographs from the Richmond cookout because they were taking up too much space. I’m scanning and compressing now to yield file sizes of about 20 kilobytes instead of 100.

20 January 2001

It’s been a while! I incorporated a REFRESH header in a file linked from the welcome page so I wouldn’t have to edit the home page every month. I have taken the opportunity of Inauguration Day and the threat of winter mix to catch up with my movie reportage and make some more changes here and there.