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 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 - Mostly done -
but still some outstanding issues *TBD*
Version Log - version.html done
Hardware Req. - hardwarereq.htmldone
Support - 17
Manual (html) - Docs/getstart/getstart.html*TBD* many
pages!!! *
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 - basic page done,
but LOTS of 'links' to others not done - *TBD*
Lists, Forums, IRC - mail.html, but many LINKS to check
Links - 23
Websites - links.html - done, but many LINKS to
check
PProjects - 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
'../../../', nad 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 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 - *TBD*
Things To Be Done
Files marked *TBD* - _AND_ their children, if any...
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.
Check for consistent page 'titles'
Add more meta for search engines to find...
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 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
Add a link at the bottom of the page to get back to the top where the naviation menus
exit.
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 'button'
to 'Hide the TOC', then everything shifts left - sort of the best of both worlds.
And probably a zillion other things... enahancement can be a NEVER ending project...
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!
Download
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 zip