This is just some site programming notes... The simple idea was to take the current site, and
convert it to :-
a. have a left side navigaion menu,
b. to use CSS positioning, in pace of tables, and
c. use DOCTYPE XHTML 1.0
d. pass W3C validation
Since I have the powerful (free) web tool - MS Visual Web Developer 2008 Express
Edition (MSVWD) - I did all this in WIN32 (Vista), so take care of the line endings in
files. And as well as using the very powerful MSVWD debugger, which runs IE under a debug
mode, and allows you to, for example, trace through javascript, I also installed MS Internet
Information Services (IIS7) for Windows, and pointed it to the developing site, so I could do
immediate checking using IE, and other browsers, on 'localhost'...
The first effort was to build two CSS based templates -
1. blank3.html - This is a 3 column format
Left - Naviagtion menu
Content - The information
Right - Snippets
2. blank2.html - This is similar to the above, but without the right side info
snippets
To keep the HTML script looking 'neat' I used Tidy (http://sourceforge.net/projects/tidy/), well actually my own slightly
modified version of Tidy ;=)) Since the maintainers of Tidy have close ties to the World
Wide Web Consortium (W3C), this ensures, about 99.9% of the time, that the page will pass
their 'validators', so I have not 'checked' every page yet, using it...
In the main I have MAINTAINED all Google advertising, usually in 3 places
1. Top hozontal sort of 'Google' ad bar
2. Right column, when present, as a vertical bar, and
3. Near the bottom, although in some cases this is at the top.
Concerning urchinTracker(), I initially got some errors from this javascript, so left it out
for the present, but it could easily be put back at the bottom of each html file ;=()
I had NOT enabled the 'shtml' extension in my IIS7, so a small number of files were changed
from 'shtml' to 'html', since as far as I cold see no 'server' prcessing was required in any
of these files.
Navigation Menu
This had to handle pages in subdirectories, and hightlight the current page, so this led to a
NEW service in js/template2.js called MainMenu2, with two parameters - 1 - the parent
directory, and 2 - the module number per the javascript array.
Then I set about 'converting' all the current pages to this new format, mostly keeping
exactly the same content, and google advertisments, although some 'moves' were done.
Page by Page
Home - index.html - This is the main page, took some things from Pete's site, and added
slide show - done
Introduction - introduction.html - done
Features - features.html - done
Gallery v2.0 - Gallery-v2.0/index.html - first in a sub-directory. Developed
getFooter($pardir) to deal with image locations - done
Announcements - announce.html - done
Calendar - calendar.html - used 2 column, since it was difficult to constrain the Google
calendar to the center - done
Events - events.html - done
Get FlightGear - 8
Download Central - Downloads/index.html - done
Binary Programs - Downloads/binary.html - done
More Aircraft - Downloads/aircraft-2.0.0/index.html - changed from shtml to html. A BIG
conversion ;=)) And also had to give a name attribute of 'ac_' in 11 cases - ["ac_14bis"
"ac_21" "ac_707" "ac_727-230" "ac_737-100" "ac_737-300" "ac_747-200" "ac_747" "ac_747-400"
"ac_767-300" "ac_777-200" "ac_787"] so the 'name' attribute could be copied to the 'id='
attribute by Tidy. - done
World Scenery - Downloads/scenery.html - done
Source Code - Downloads/source.shtml - changed to html - done
DVD set - dvd/index.html *TBD*
Version Log - version.html *TBD*
Hardware Req. - hardwarereq.html *TBD*
Support - 17
Manual (html) - Docs/getstart/getstart.html *TBD*
Wiki - link to Main_Page of Wiki - link only
FAQ - Docs/FAQ.shtml *TBD*
Links to Docs - docs.html *TBD*
Lists, Forums, IRC - mail.html *TBD*
Links - 23
Websites - links.html *TBD*
Projects - Projects/index.html *TBD*
Users - 26
Multiplayer - link to http://mpmap02.flightgear.org - link only
Places to Fly - places.html *TBD*
Developers - 29
CVS Resource - cvs.html *TBD*
Source Code - Downloads/source.shtml *TBD*
Goals/Wish list - goals.html *TBD*
Contributors - thanks.shtml *TBD*
Design Proposals - design.html *TBD*
Files NOT directly from MENU
Downloads/scenery-1.0.1.html - the graphical interface - done
mirrors.html - list of mirrors - done
Just some test pages - testpage.htm - testpage2.htm - testpage3.htm - done
Things To Be Done
Still a number of base files to be converted - marked *TBD*
Although the 'old' dropdown menu has been retained, it does NOT work due to it generates
link beginning with '/'. This could problably be 'fixed' through an appropriate .htaccess
redirect entry, or the javescript generation c
Considerable number of 'other' site files to converts - hundreds in fact, like in
Gallery...
Maybe some 'space' tuning here and there...
Check all internal file links, if any...
Check all local, within web links, and all files 'connected'
Check all external links are valid.
Ensure _ALL_ files have been 'Tidied'...
And probably many more items that I have not yet thought of, or found ;=))
Further Enhancements
Just some thoughts...
The right column should also be a javascript generated block, since it is also dependent
on the parent directory for any images... and this would also aloow right column content to
vary
Perhaps consider some server technology, like php, and avoid javascript
Things to Avoid
This is just my 'personal' preferences...
Using a CMS - wordpress, joomla, duval, et al - While these are helpful for some, you are
locked into a php system that generates php/html files. If you understand something of web
technology, why not do this yourself. Each CMS has it own learnign curve to get with the way
it does things. Time that could be spent on directly enahncing the site.
Using 'locked-in' systems, like that offered by Google and others... While I have nothing
against such systems, and they do have their advanatages, again if you own your own web
space, why use theirs!
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