UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

16 posts · Jan 16 2003 to Jan 21 2003

From: Mark A. Siefert <cthulhu@c...>

Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 01:37:25 -0600

Subject: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

Hey all:

What's New: January 16, 2003:

I finished that Events page…at last! If any has any events to add, don’t
hesitate to e-mail me. Also, I posted my Power Projection Lite Review.
It will become part of an FT related opinion section that will contain reviews
and reflections on game. I’ll have that up as soon as I have a button put
together. I also did a little cosmetic house keeping.

The URL is, as always:

From: Indy Kochte <kochte@s...>

Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 12:07:35 -0500

Subject: Re: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

> "Mark A. Siefer" wrote:
 It
> will become part of an FT related opinion section that will contain
http://www.homegame.org/siefert/uftwwwp/index.htm

Mark,

What kind of implementation of this page are you doing? Whenever I try to
bring it up, nothing but the background appears. I know something is supposed
to be there because I can see stuff when I do a "view source", but in the
browser itself (Netscape 4.*), nada but the background image.

Wondering, Mk

From: Roger Burton West <roger@f...>

Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 17:13:54 +0000

Subject: Re: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

> On Fri, Jan 17, 2003 at 12:07:35PM -0500, Indy wrote:

> What kind of implementation of this page are you doing? Whenever

That's probably NS4's dodgy stylesheet handling - turn off stylesheets
and see if it works. The page looks fine to me in Mozilla, links, w3m
and lynx; the only flaw is the absence of alt-text for the navigation
buttons, which makes it harder to use in a text-mode browser.

R

From: Mark A. Siefert <cthulhu@c...>

Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 11:31:46 -0600

Subject: RE: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

Indy,

All I'm using is Front Page Express for my HTML work.

Later, Mark A. Siefert

[quoted original message omitted]

From: Steve Pugh <steve@p...>

Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 17:32:50 -0000

Subject: Re: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

> Indy wrote:
http://www.homegame.org/siefert/uftwwwp/index.htm
> What kind of implementation of this page are you doing? Whenever

The most common reason for a page showing blank in Netscape 4 is a
missing </td> or </table> tag.

Looking at the source of this page I see that it was generated with
Microsoft Word and so is full of their dreadful pseudo-XML that
serves no purpose what so ever as far as the web is concerned and just makes
the file several times larger than it needs to be.

From: Allan Goodall <agoodall@a...>

Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 12:54:25 -0600

Subject: Re: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

On Fri, 17 Jan 2003 11:31:46 -0600, "Mark A. Siefer"
<siefertma@wi.rr.com> wrote:

> All I'm using is Front Page Express for my HTML work.

I used that for my first web page. I heartily suggest finding an editor where
you have to add the HTML yourself and do it by hand (though "by hand" might
mean the software lets you click a button to type in a tag). It helps you fix
problems, lets you write smaller HTML files, and it really shows you all the
garbage Microsoft puts into HTML files.

I read your game review. It was pretty interesting, thank you! You may want to
go back and fix up a few of the typos, but I found it very useful. What I
would like to see in a review is more of an idea of what the game book is. I'm
still unclear as to whether _Power Projection_ is an FT game using
Traveller ships, or a Traveller campaign game that has FT to resolve battles.
Does it have a ship construction system? And how will this upgrade system
work? Can you buy the Escort game and then just download files to update it,
or are there going to be several books in the series? Oh, and what's the
format of the book? Is it a paperback, or do you just get a file you have to
print off yourself, or do they ship the game as an unbounded stack of pages?

From: Laserlight <laserlight@q...>

Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 16:55:56 -0500

Subject: Re: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

Mark:
> All I'm using is Front Page Express for my HTML work.

AGoodall:
> I used that for my first web page. I heartily suggest finding an editor

Strongly concur. Buy "HTML for Dummies" or something similar and learn to
write it by hand, otherwise you won't know how to fix any mistakes. Once you
do that, you might want to download an editor (CoffeeCup had a free
Lite version last time I looked--which was last year--and I'm sure there
are others).  I've tried 4-5 editors but now (except for tables) I
usually just write the code by hand.

From: Alan and Carmel Brain <aebrain@w...>

Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 10:56:01 +1100

Subject: Re: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

From: "Mark A. Siefer" <siefertma@wi.rr.com>

> All I'm using is Front Page Express for my HTML work.

Speaking as a professional software designer of 20+ years experience...

Front Page Express does not produce HTML - or at least, not valid HTML.
It produces an approximation that will work with many, but not all, variants
of Microsoft browsers, and not with browsers that understand valid HTML.

OTOH it's very good inasmuch as it's probably the easiest tool to use. If only
it produced good HTML as the result, it would deserve to have the greatest
market share. As it is, it is an Abomination.

OK, so what would I suggest as a replacement?
Try http://www.coffeecup.com

Quote: CoffeeCup HTML Editor
Winner - 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002
Peoples Choice - Best HTML Editor
The Most Popular HTML Editor on the Planet!

It's *not* as easy to use as Front Page Express. But stuff produced by it is
understandable by just about any browser on the planet, e.g. Netscape
4.x,
, Netscape 6.x, Mosaic, Opera, Konquerer, IE3, IE4, IE5, IE6....

From: Laserlight <laserlight@q...>

Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 20:52:53 -0500

Subject: Re: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

> Try http://www.coffeecup.com

It's not difficult to use but some of the javascripts don't necessarily do
exactly what you'd think they would. Not a major problem since you probably
shouldn't have any scripts on your page anyway.

From: Brian Burger <yh728@v...>

Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 18:49:59 -0800 (PST)

Subject: Re: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

For HTML editing, download a copy of Arachnophilia (freeware!). v4.0 is
Windows; v5.0 was done in Java, so it's platform-independant (but a bit
harder to use...)

http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/index_old.html (for v4.0)
http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/index.html (for v5.1)

I use Arachnophilia 4, and it's brilliant - basically a spellchecker for
your HTML code, which you mostly enter by hand. There are a bunch of wizards,
utilities and shortcuts available too, including a bunch where YOU plug your
own code in and have it available on a button bar (for fragments you use
frequently).

However, unlike Internet Disaster (sorry... Explorer)'s editor, you aren't
FORCED to use their wizards and nonsense!

Both versions are small downloads, so give either a shot.

From: Mark A. Siefert <cthulhu@c...>

Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 00:15:14 -0600

Subject: RE: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

You know guys... When the UFTWWWP first came on the scene, I knew how to
handle HTML by hand. However, as the code got more and more complex, I became
more and more dependent on the editors. I don't even know what version HTML is
up to right now.

Later, Mark A. Siefert
[quoted original message omitted]

From: Indy Kochte <kochte@s...>

Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 06:47:18 -0500 (EST)

Subject: RE: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

> On Sat, 18 Jan 2003, Mark A. Siefer wrote:

> You know guys... When the UFTWWWP first came on the scene, I knew how

Hmmmm. I don't know how complex it is, as I still do all my coding by hand,
and have as of yet never used an editor*. I haven't paid any attention to
versions. Then again, I haven't tried doing anything super fancy and flashy,
preferring in my pages to keep it simple and be available to all the masses
(even at work, in my own department,
different people use different browsers, so multi-browser compatability
is a high priority consideration when I do the webpages there).

Mk

* - doesn't mean it won't happen someday

From: Mark A. Siefert <cthulhu@c...>

Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 06:40:57 -0600

Subject: RE: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

I don't touch JAVA with a 100 1/2 foot pole.  My degree is in
Journalism, not Computer Science.

Later,

From: Steve Pugh <steve@p...>

Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 13:01:14 -0000

Subject: RE: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

> On 18 Jan 2003 at 0:15, Mark A. Siefer wrote:

> You know guys... When the UFTWWWP first came on the scene, I knew how

The latest, and last, version of HTML is 4.01, which is only a minor change
from 4.0 which was released back in 1997. Beyond that there's XHTML 1.0 which
is just HTML 4.01 written in an XML syntax. Then there's XHTML 1.1 which is
unusable as, if done properly, it can not be parsed by any existing version
Internet Explorer!. And XHTML 2.0 is currently being written but unless
Microsoft get their act together that too will be unusable in public web
sites.

The main difference between now and a few years ago is that today almost all
sites use extensive CSS stylesheets for all the presentation and layout.

From: Doug Evans <devans@n...>

Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 08:58:22 -0600

Subject: RE: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

Hey, Mark, as long as you realize everyone is just trying to give a hand.

Natch, those who can, do; those who can't, such as moi, cheerlead. ;->=

Just wanted you to hear a vote of appreciation, which is merely assumed in all
the other notes. I know how it can sound like everyone's criticizing; I've
found them all positive, and intend to investigate the suggested editors.

The_Beast

From: Allan Goodall <agoodall@a...>

Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2003 09:01:37 -0600

Subject: Re: UFTWWWP Update: 1-16-03

On Fri, 17 Jan 2003 18:49:59 -0800 (PST), Brian Burger
<yh728@victoria.tc.ca> wrote:

> I use Arachnophilia 4, and it's brilliant - basically a spellchecker

I really like Arachnophilia 4, too. I tried 5, the Java-based version
and had it on my computer for less than an hour before I deleted it. 4 does
everything I need in an HTML editor.

I tried a free version of CoffeeCup, too, but while it looked good I didn't
see a way for it to read in pages I had created already. It looked like a good
tool for starting off, but since I already have a fair bit of HTML it didn't
look that useful to me.