Update Archives – 11/3/01-12/19/01
Presenting a complete list of all site updates for the dates of 11/03/01 to 12/19/01. Please click here to return to news and update archives home page. There weren’t many site updates from the months of January 2002 to September 2002 because I was focusing my attention on the Kongming’s Archives project. Rot3K Graphics and Web was revitalized in early September 2002.
11/3/01: I stumbled across an interesting article at alistapart.com today. It was instructions how how to use JavaScript to swap Cascading Style Sheets for the page. I never really thought of that much, but it seemed interesting enough. I have adopted that wonderful tutorial for my own site and you can use it on the menu to the left to swap the default font to one you like most. The font Technical is back because of this as a third option (download .zip/.sit) [layout and fonts both offline]. This article is worth reading.
HTML and CSS fixes made all throughout the site as I added the required HTML to each page to enable the feature detailed above.
Cleaned up site CSS file.
General CSS and HTML improvements to make pages more readable and more compatible with the new feature listed above.
Added various effects and colors to this site’s buttons with CSS.
11/4/01: Now that there are actually some tutorials in the tutorials section I have decided to go in and revamp the whole thing. I have created a new design for the whole section that should be much more intuitive and perhaps even a little stylish.
Made heavy modifications to <meta /> and
<head>…</head> tags throughout the whole site.
This should improve the searching options and should also help search engines
display truly meaningful information in relation to this site.
Some HTML, CSS, and JavaScript fixes. More specifically the .js file used to swap style sheets, which was updated.
11/5/01: I have been reworking the links section. The old format, although I loved the way in which it presented its information, was way too stubborn when the viewer used a large font size or a low resolution. I wouldn’t want to take their ability to control things like the font size from them so I made a new version. I have yet to decide if I like it as much and I am sure I will be editing it a lot in the future until I am happy with it. On a good note is should now render nicely for users viewing the page on a medium other than a computer screen.
11/6/01: Today I continued cleaning up sections and the site. For now, my work is dedicated to finishing the layout and readability of the sections so the involved code does not propagate itself. This work involves sections that could be more readable along with pages that do not look good at low resolutions.
Moved the main sections on the right hand menu to the top instead of the middle.
Completed the form for new job hires [email me please].
Tweaked the CSS to better suite colorblind folks.
Moved September and October updates to a new archive.
11/8/01: New Tutorial: ‘Dreamweaver 4 Tutorial: Making Additions to and Altering the Characters Menu’
Fixed an error that caused the menus to break when sized to 200% or more in IE5Mac, Netscape, or Mozilla.
Tweaked the CSS
file to allow the a:hover to replace the a:visited
when someone hovers over a link that has already been visited.
11/10/01: Tutorial Update: ‘HTML 4 Tutorial: Characters, Entities, and Symbols’. Added Hex values and added some URL redirections to help prevent crashes in Mozilla or Netscape 6.x on Macintosh browsers caused by a failure to display certain characters.
CSS readability updates through out the site.
11/11/01: I am still pushing forward with the interface cleanup. I have completely redesigned the ‘Sans’ font option to use Verdana and Arial at fixed widths. This means that folks using browsers with no percentage zoom capability—a capability of Gecko engine browsers, Opera, and IE5Mac—will not be able to change the default size. If you are among them you will need to use the ‘Large Serif’ option—with is still, and will remain, based off your browser’s default font size.
Cleaned up the interface, tables, HTML,
and CSS through out the whole site
and prepared a workaround for Netscape 4.x users under Windows 98 or NT that
was causing them to crash when visiting any pages that had any CSS
padding or margins defined for the left side of the page. I did this by getting
the CSS file with the <style
type="text/css">@import "pages.css";</style>
tag which all 4.x browsers but IE4.5 Mac cannot see instead of the traditional
<link rel="stylesheet" href="page.css" />
tag. This was one of the most frustrating fixes yet, but I nailed it, heheh.
Added notes that only appear in old browsers to let their owners know why certain visible features—like the font buttons—do not work.
11/15/01: The first half of the sitewide update is out of the way, the second half comes tomorrow. These updates are not something most people will notice, but rather a complete change in the way many things are done. This includes some CSS additions and a complete rework of the JavaScript for this site. The goal is to allow more things to be updated in one file to make changes to the whole site. For example, by moving the preload image paths to the .js file I can now make one change there rather than one change in every page when I need to add an image.
Reworked, shrunk, and implemented new mouseover, preload, and status bar setting scripts.
Fixed some small CSS problems and improved support for IE6.
Updated the search engine to make use of all new changes.
Cleaned up some old site errors that could conveniently be handled in this update.
11/16/01: Uploaded new—almost completed—splash page, made some slight changes to the CSS file to make the site a little easier to read in ‘Small Sans’, and worked out the last bugs associated with the new JavaScript.
11/17/01: Layout update complete, started CSS update. Update’s objective is to improve the appearance of the Large Serif option, make the pages much easier to read, and make the site appearance a little more consistent. First half of update completed today, second half coming on next update.
Updated the Rot3k JS [redirect] page to reflect the new JavaScript changes made in the last week.
11/20/01: The CSS update continues. There have been additional changes to the way text is displayed along with the page margins. I am working on several workarounds for some ancient problems I have been encountering for more than a year. I finally came up with one that prevents Gecko browsers from displaying backgrounds down past the bottom of the menu tables. This prevented me from using a URL in my DTD thus causing my pages to load into debugger mode. I can now include this URL and my fix resolves problems in all Gecko browsers other than K-Meleon, it seems. This also required significant changes to the tables on the page. All said and done, this update probably includes nothing you will notice.
11/21/01: Added links to W3Schools and Wired News. Removed link to the Icon Vault.
Updated the ‘Browser Downloads’ page to include Netscape 4.7.9 and Mozilla 0.9.6. I also added download links for IE4, 3, and 2.
Added Justin’s Shareware to the ‘Web Pages’ section. I also updated the ‘Web Pages’ section to work in Netscape 4.x and reworked the appearance of that whole section.
Discovered a workaround that allows me to use style sheets
to specify the <td> backgrounds in Netscape 4.7.x for the
page menus. Thanks to this I can now claim compliance with the W3C
web standards. Now all I need to do is find a fix for another problem that messes
up my menu tables in Gecko browsers when I declare an XHTML
DTD w/ link. I will
post a new example of this problem soon.
Replaced background="" attributes
with CSS wherever they occurred
within the site.
Added actions to all forms that did not have one, removed
the closing tags from <meta /> and <br />
tags, and replaced id="" with style=""
attributes on form items to be compliant with the w3c’s
transitional
HTML 4.0.1 DTD.
Fixed some other small mistakes—like the occurrence of the character
‘&’ in the source code when it should have been ——to
bridge the final gaps to compliance. As of today every page—except for some in the Résumé
section [offline] which have yet to be updated—should validate without error. I will
add some validate links so this can be checked from the actual page in an upcoming update.
If you choose to validate a page in this site and it does not validate please contact me with
the URL so I can fix it.
11/24/01: Added a link to the Web Design Group.
The CSS update is not complete. Today’s work was actually for the benefit of 4.x browser users. This page should now appear quite nicely in Netscape 4.x, for example. This involved taking away the browser’s access to CSS that it handles incorrectly and at the same time helping it use the CSS it does support better. There were some minor CSS and paragraph layout fixes that may be noticed by users with new browsers, but all said and done the page will probably be pretty much the same for them. Expect some more tutorials and the completion of the Graphics section before another update of this sort takes place again.
11/25/01: I thought I was finished with the CSS update, but it turns out I was incorrect. There were a number of things that still needed touching up in Netscape and a number of new problems that appeared in other browsers.
Resolved Netscape 4.x problem that prevented backgrounds from displaying properly in any pages more than two levels deep.
Started removing the drop down menus because the invalidated
all <p>…</p> styles that followed in Netscape
4.x. This is easier to read and faster to load in some browsers anyway.
Resolved many font display and spacing errors that were caused by the Netscape 4.x compatibility update.
Improved CSS compatibility with user style sheets.
Searched the site for grammar errors found at this useful page.
11/26/01: Moved font-related sites to a new links section names ‘Grammar, Writing, and Fonts’ and added a new web site named ‘Guide to Grammar and Writing’.
Added myfonts.com to the links section.
Complete revision of the ‘frames for beginners’ tutorial, now at version 2.0.
Fixed a Netscape 4.x CSS alignment issue that occurred in the copyright.
New introduction for the home and splash pages.
CSS updates and cleanup to finish the previous CSS revision.
11/27/01: Fixed Netscape 4.x CSS error: backgrounds defined with ‘none’ or ‘transparent’ were defaulted to black. Moved backgrounds to the version 5 browser CSS file.
Fixed Netscape 4.x text display issue at the bottom of some pages.
Fixed Netscape 4.x CSS error: the ICRA graphic at the bottom of the page would move to random locations of the page breaking tables and one time even crashing Netscape. Netscape did not correctly handle the top-margin CSS style.
Fixed Netscape 4.x CSS
error. Added up to an inch between each text line that followed a <form>…</form>
tag and ignored CSS styles from
this point on. Fixed spacing error by adding text before the <span
class="copyright">…</span> tag. The second issue
cannot be fixed without removing the form.
Restored broken ‘Rot3k Graphics & Web Design’ image at the top of the page [offline].
11/28/01: Added Acronym Finder, Qwest Dex, Travelocity to and removed WhoWhere from the ‘Links’ page.
Updated page copyrights, yet another Netscape 4.x fix. Also
added a universal ‘Last Updated’ section above it. I was inconsistent
in doing this and this update finally makes it standard through out the site,
it also resolves the Netscape <form>…</form>
tag issue discussed in the last update. Pages will default to the time ‘???’
until they are next updated.
12/8/01: Improved the ‘Large Serif’ style sheet and rewrote the update message for older browsers.
CSS changes made to improve readability.
12/9/01: More improvements on the ‘Large Serif’ style sheet, larger page margins, and a more neutral background. (All changes to make reading easier).
Eliminated the central <td>…</td> tag and
updated the Privacy Policy.
Fixed some dead links and removed some unimportant material.
If the site looks bad, clear your browser’s cache.
12/15/01: Résumé section deleted. For current version please contact me directly.
12/19/01: Today was site cleanup. I took care of several issues that had been delayed or had deteriorated as a result of change. This included cleanup of and an update to the ‘Downloads’ section (also added Netscape 6.2.1, iCab 2.6, and Mac: Internet Explorer 5.1 to the browser updates page).
Improved navigation in the ‘Home’ section. Moved all site updates and news archives to one file and all site resources (CSS and JavaScript links) to another.
Search engine updated to reflect many new site and CSS changes.
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