Mark's Help
How this resource works
Here's a verbose page on how I've put this together ...
When you set out on your first web project, you may well become preoccupied with individual web pages and HTML problems. If this happens to you, put them to one side and then think about 'sets' of web pages from the start as the best way to present your information. Thinking strategically allows you to make decisions like how to use a style sheet, avoiding duplication of information, group changing information in one place - hence building a resource that can be maintained.
The pages in this resource contain elements common to all - each has an A to Z index and a set of links, in the same place, at the head of the page. This is simple to achieve - HTML common to all pages can be kept in a template file and reused on all pages. It's not necessary to involve HTML frames to achieve this and very sound reasons to avoid them. This approach allows people to find their way around more easily, and link to your pages.
Even if you move to a web page tool that uses a 'What you see is what you get' approach, you'll still find it very useful to look at the actual HTML as well ... Do find software which allows you to search and replace text across multiple files - this is very useful.
I've used style sheets to control the presentation of text and headings on the pages. An hour or so playing with these to see how they work will save much time later on - once you've set up a style sheet to look after the presentation, you can concentrate on the content. You can use your style sheet to give the entire resource an individual appearance, controlling this from the one file.
Using these two techniques means that pages are small, so they load quickly for you.
I've tried to avoid duplication of information, and I've tried to group similar information (eg external links) on a single page. Both of these help when it comes to maintaining the resource.
Mark Annand • Site updated April 12th 2013 • Site Counter:
All before you, in this world, is smoke and shadows.All before you, in this world, is smoke and shadows.
Words found on a door lintel in the garden of a house in the Cretan village of Argiroupolis.
The lintel is a fragment from the city state Lappa, which occupied the same site.
Fifteen hundred years later, when you use the web, from time to time you might well feel that the author was on to something. And if you work with particle physics, you'll know he was ...