Site History

The Early Days

This site was first implemented in 1996, using a beta of Microsoft Frontpage. As is the wont of a programmer, I fairly quickly got frustrated by its attempts to hold my hand and graduated on to notepad. The first implementation used frames, this horror stuck around for about six years. This included an upgrade to being XHTML compliant, by this time I was developing on Linux, using vi.

The March of Progress

Finally in December 2002, after discovering how it was possible to lay sites out, while being compliant with xhtml-strict I resolved to migrate the site. I'd also recently discovered the m4 Macro Processor I decided to use this to rid myself of the frames. I now have a small Makefile, that uses m4 to build up the standard layout of each page. If you are really interested in replicating this, drop me a note.

Outstanding Problems

I've made some more updates to tidy up the html, mainly improving its semantic value. I've managed to find a better way to do the layout on the Eric Raymond page. I've still to test it in anything other than Mozilla. Now, the migration is complete. The one thing I can't figure out to do in Mozilla, is center a table with fixed width. I thought a CSS style of display: inline-table; would do the trick, but this seems to be ignored. Sadly putting (xhtml-transitional) <center> tags around it works. I ended up mimicking the table using divs and using some awkward relative layout tricks to fix the size. Internet Explorer and Mozilla differ about how relative positioning should work. Internet Explorer apparently won't let you specify position: relative; left: 50%; to center a block. However, it will let you specify a width on a block that is layed out in the normal flow. You can see for yourself on the Eric Raymond page.

Browser Wars

This site looks best in later versions of Mozilla(1.4, as of the moment). I've tried in in Internet Explorer 6.0; things mostly work, the main exceptions being the borders lining up on the menus, and the transparencies around my pictures, being broken. The CIBER logo looks particularly awful. Konquerer manages better, with no obvious problems. The site should be visible, albeit extremely ugly in Netscape 4. It is also perfectly usable in text only browsers, if somewhat spartan. If anyone views the site in a Mac browser, I'd love to know how it looks.

Lack of Content

This site is certified to be nearly free of interesting content. If you find anything too exciting tell me, and I might remove it. Chances are I'll just hold up the mail to ridicule, or sulk.