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
Although I have used MS FrontPage for YEARS to do my own site, I had only experimented a few
minor times with MS Visual Web Developer 2008 Express (free) Edition (MSVWD), and saw
this as an opportunity to give it a good 'check out' ;=))
Since I have this powerful (free) web tool, I did all this in WIN32 (Vista), so take care of
the line endings in files ;=(). And as well as using the built in 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 could see no 'server' processing 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 }. And these parameters
are stored in a <script ... part of each file header, so can be easily changed...
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
- but MANY small single files could also be done... target0.html - target66.html.
*TBD*
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 - done
Version Log - version.html done
Hardware Req. - hardwarereq.htmldone
Support - 17
Manual (html) - Docs/getstart/getstart.html -
done - but many pages to be done - see below
Wiki - link to Main_Page of Wiki - link only
FAQ - Docs/FAQ.html - changed to 'html' in place of 'shtml' - not fully
checked - done
Links to Docs - docs.html - done
but see list below some *TBD*
Wiki - link to Main_Page of Wiki - link only, but many LINKS to check
Links - 23
Websites - links.html - done, but many LINKS to
check
Projects - Projects/index.html - done - and
'some' sub parts done, but more to do... *TBD* - have done one
Projects/SynthVision/Links/las-vegas-airpsace.html just to try at this depth
'../../../', and found no problems.
Users - 26
Multiplayer - link to http://mpmap02.flightgear.org - link only
Places to Fly - places.html - done
Developers - 29
CVS Resource - cvs.html - done - but this led
to 4? other files below
Source Code - Downloads/source.html - is a repeat of 13 above - need to
choose to higlight this or the above in the menu - presently coded to 13 -
done
Contributors - thanks.html - from 'shtm' to 'html'. Wow, lots of conversion
of '<' and '>' to < & > entities. Thankful for good replace functions
in editors also one & change to & - Also points out the need for an inpage 'top'
link when at the bottom. It also pointed out a 'bug' in my Tidy. It removes blank lines in
<pre> </pre> blocks - a no no ;=)) Used blank2.html since <pre> has an
unconstrained, non-wrapped, unpredictable width! - done
Design Proposals - design.html - combine the linked document into the page
- done
Files NOT directly from TOC 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
cvs.html leads to some other files
cvs/anoncvs.html - As seen frequently <P> and <BR> seem to be used
as SPACERS, but in W3C XHTML a blank <p> will be dicarded, and <br> has to be
<br />. Also in here <UL>...</UL> was used to 'indent' a
<pre>...</pre>, which I have converted to a <pre class="leftmarg">,
pre.leftmarg { margin-left: 2em; }, which gives the same look, and conforms to XHTML. -
done
cvs/getstart-cvs.html - same pre class as above -
done
cvs/WinCVS.html - done
Docs/getstart/getstart.html has many children -
getstartli1.html - done - getstartli2.html -
done - getstartli3.html - appears to just be a word list -
done - getstartch1.html - done -
getstartch2.html - done - getstartch3.html -
done - getstartch4.html - done -
getstartch5.html - done - getstartch6.html -
done -getstartch7.html - done -
getstartch8.html - done - getstartch9.html -
done - getstartch10.html - done
-getstartpa1.html - done - getstartpa2.html -
done - getstartpa3.html - done -
getstartpa4.html - done - getstartap1.html -
done - getstartap2.html - done -
getstartap3.html *TBD* Have put a temporary appendix C, but original file
seems MISSING!!!
Also at least the first two files done have some 'missing' class definitions, even after
including the local getstart.css file, and thus impossible to 'guess' what was
intended by these classes... like 'sectionToc'... the file indicate they were generated by
'TeX4ht'...
And have a 'test' like when no javascript is enabled blank-test.html
Files marked *TBD* - _AND_ their children
*TBD*, if any...
Considerable number of 'other' site files to converts - hundreds in fact, like in
Gallery...
Grrr - the JSZenMenu still fails sometimes???
*TBD*
Maybe some 'space' tuning here and there...
Check all internal file links, if any... And there are quite a number of other
'children', in other subdirectories, to be done *TBD*
consistent page 'titles'
Add more meta for search engines to find...
Provide <noscript>..</noscript> left and bottom TOC, if javascript is OFF,
AND provide good 'text' for search engines. So far ONLY doen to this file
done - as a test - but can be likewise added to EACH 'html' file
*TBD*
Ensure _ALL_ files have been 'Tidied'...
Test in a battery of other browsers, and OSes...
And probably many more items that I have not yet thought of, or tested/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 allow right column content to
vary...
Perhaps consider some server technology, like php, and avoid javascript - 50:50 on this
;=))
Add a link at the bottom of the page to get back to the top where the naviation menus
exit. This is important for some very LONG pages...
Maybe have a close TOC button to suppress the left navigation menu, and give more
real-estate to the content. As can be seen on my site's main index page, there is a top
'button' to 'Hide the TOC', then everything shifts left - sort of the best of both worlds
;=))
Perhaps the horizontal 'old' dropdown menu should extend to the full page width, and not
just be in the 'content' column.
Similarly with the top 'google' ad bar - maybe it could go 'full width'
And probably a zillion other things... enhancement can be a NEVER ending project ;=)).
Things to Avoid (IMHO)
This is just my 'personal' preferences, and in way reflects the policy of FG, or its
maintainers ;=))
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
learning curve, sometimes quite steep, to get with the way it does things. Time that
could be spent on directly enhancing 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! This is NOT to say that the Google
media is not later portable to other sites, or that it does not offer a cooperative
development environment! But the number of powerful web tools (especially editors)
continues to grow... so why go elsewhere?
'flash' based sites - While there is no doubt these can be VERY
FLASHY, very catchy, etc, they rely solely on running SWF 'flash' objects. The HTML is
usually just about empty thus they offer no content clues to search engines, although I
know some of this reading SWF files for content has been passed to major search engine.
And the 'action' script is another steep learning curve.
Downloads
To make it 'easy' for anyone to try my current pages, locally, on on another site, I have
zipped the entire things into a single main zip, plus incremental changes to be overlayed on
the first. And if a subsequent incremental 'overlay' zip contains the file 'dellist.txt',
then these are files to be deleted before then next overlay, if you get my drift...
PS: Obviously this particular page will _NOT_ be the same in the zip, or else I get
into a never ending size/md5 loop ;=)) In fact, sometimes will have added quite a lot AFTER
the zip was created, so only the online version of this file is the latest...
I found MSVWD a very iffy tool! It has the feel that it is a little 'unfinished', and
there were a number of glitches, but all in all I would still rate it as GOOD ;=)) One
annoying 'glitch' was that the 'editor' could sometimes makes a 'mistake', with quite bad
results, especially when continually switching between 'Design' and 'Source', and updating -
particularly cut and paste. This can be DISASTEROUS ;=(( So make sure you have recent
update BEFORE using this 'internal' editor. I now use another editor EditPlus for many things
;=()
And while it is sometimes possible to run a page, including javascript tracing through the
built in VWD debugger, this also frequently crashes, or stalls - but persistance sometime got
what I wanted...
As with the MSVC counterparts, the most helpful thing is it 'IntelliSensing'. That is, in
'Source' view, as you type a '<', a dropdown list of elements pops up, so you can just
'choose' the element rather than typing it. And then when you add a space after an element,
another dropdown list appears of the possible attributes... and even after selecting an
attribute, and putting '="' again a dropdown or popup tooltip gives you an idea of what
'values' the attributes can have.
And all this 'IntelliSensing' also works in javascript, CSS, etc - great stuff ;=))
With this VERY CRITICAL EDITOR BUG it is NOT worth the (free)
download ;=(( And is it worth the about USD$500 for the 'professional' edition? Well,
maybe yes, since I am sure you could then get a 'fix' for the editor bug mentioned. I will
press on testing MSVWD for this FG project at least, but in most cases I will stick to my
'trusty' MS FrontPage... and EditPlus, which I 'trust'...
