I am currently converting the entire site to HTML 4.01 Strict. This means I will no longer qualify for the X-Philes. It has been a fun and interesting but frustrating journey. (Read more at the link above)
Hold yesterday’s hasty post! I discovered partway through
the conversion from XHTML back to
HTML that I was now
getting horizontal scrollbars in Internet Explorer (curse Microsoft!).
Previously I had thought that one of my scripts was fixing the problem;
apparently I was wrong. Internet Explorer’s “standards-compliant
mode” is what was causing the scrollbars. The ?xml
prologue throws Explorer into quirks mode, and voila! no more
scrollbars.
Both the ?xml prologue and the ?xml-stylesheet
PIs are optional. If I
use the former but not the latter, and serve MIME
types according to the browser in use, everything should be okay.
This site is already back in full XHTML; the craft site will follow later on Monday.
Our younger kitten, now nearly three-and-a-half months old, has learned to climb over the boxes Joe put up to keep him out of his bedroom. Joe has removed the boxes, giving both kittens free admission to his room.
We took Sunny to the vet this morning at 8:30 local time. He was quite calm in the car on the way there, but he hissed the moment we got inside. Then he began growling! After a bit, he settled down. His temp was normal; his weight is up sharply, at 1.86 kg (4 lbs. 1.5 oz.). He received a distemper shot today; they also gave us some stuff to help with hairballs, and a little catnip for the road.
The weather has been unpleasant lately—cloudy, rainy and somewhat breezy at times since Halloween night. Tomorrow should be sunny but breezy and cooler.
The crafts site is up and running in XHTML 1.0 Strict; there is even styling for Netscape 4.
You may notice that the .html extensions no longer
appear in our URIs.
Some mod_rewrite magic allowed us to take care of that.
An article entitled Clean url’s by Thijs van der
Vossen tells how to do it (2022: the page is now gone).
Thanks to Anne van Kesteren, whose link led me to
the article.
06:00 UTC
While checking to see how certain websites rendered on some older browsers yesterday, I discovered a link which led to a blog post entitled Multiple Versions of Internet Explorer. You can now actually download stand-alone versions of some older Internet Explorer browsers for use in testing websites! (NOTE, November 7, 2007: this is now gone.)
Of course, I downloaded the zip files, unzipped and installed them, and then proceeded to test this site on them. IE 5.5 rendered this site exactly the same as IE 6.0, but the site was sadly broken in IE 5.01. This problem is now fixed, though it took me hours of troubleshooting with scripts and style sheets as well as a minor edit of every page source on the primary domain.
Ummamum’s Picture Place received another edit on Friday, November 7; now there is limited styling for Netscape 4.
NOTE, 2/3/2022: Some long, technical posts on site design from November 5 and 6 have been deleted, as they are obsolete. This post refers to something in one of those posts.
It didn’t take long for the world’s largest search engine to catch up with us. A Google search of "king's xhtml" (in quotes as shown) will take you directly to this site.
06:00 UTC
All quotations in Ummamum’s
Picture Place are now marked up with the q
element (there are no quotes on the crafts site). Abbreviations
and acronyms on all sites are now marked up properly as well.
Improved scripting and styling ensure proper visual presentation
for popular browsers, including Internet Explorer.
Today I downloaded IE 3 and 4 from the site mentioned in the November 10 entry, and tested this site on them. Floating images on many pages messed up the layout and surrounding text on IE 4. Much of my day was spent fixing bugs on the site; everything works fine now, including the quotation marks (which also required more fixing).
dfn element, used to indicate
the defining instance of a term. These now appear in bold
small-caps as in this example (Netscape 4 doesn’t support this).
Reworked scripting and style sheets for 4.0 browsers. Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape 4 now have separate custom style sheets. Internet Explorer 4 looks close to what newer browsers are getting.
22:40 UTC
I have been doing a lot of styling and scripting on the site the past few days. Everything works properly now on every browser I tested it on. This includes Internet Explorer 4.01, 5.01, 5.5 and 6.0 (Windows); Netscape 4.03, 4.77 and 7.1; Mozilla Firebird; Opera 6.01 and 7.22. Older browsers (Netscape 2.02 and 3.04; Internet Explorer 3.0) get unstyled content, which is okay.
The new subtitle on the Home page logo will stay until I discover that it’s too long for Google to list in full (which I suspect it is). If that happens, I’ll figure out a way to shorten it a little.
At any rate, this so-called “Web Design Nightmare From You Know Where” appears to be finally at an end.
06:30 UTC
Our old subtitle, “Digital Home of Charlie Petitt & Family,” had to go. “Digital home” is nowadays used to refer to digital media in the home (as in “digital home entertainment”). It does not at all describe the content of this site. So I tried “A Family Site in the King’s XHTML by Charlie Petitt” which proved to be too long. Google cuts off the last word of the title, which just happens to be our last name!
On Monday evening, I ran several possible titles by Wendi and Joe to see what they liked. Joe was in favor of keeping the words “& Family” in the title. What we finally decided upon (unanimously) was not far from our old title and surprisingly close to the one used on Ummamum’s Hideout Gold Version 2 (July 18, 2000; see our history page). The new title describes the site well and should last us a very long time.
The image on the Home page bearing the words “May God Bless Our Digital Home” has also been retired after nearly three years of running on our site. I believe God has blessed our site, but it is not a “digital home.” In place of the image is a “No-Evil Family-Site Award” linked to the site from which it came. This award emphasizes the wholesome, child-safe, Grandma-safe content which has been a tradition on The Oo Kingdom.
04:25 UTC
Joe has been home from school sick since midday Friday. His regular doctor diagnosed him with bronchitis then and prescribed Amoxicillin for him. Four days later, he was no better—actually worse. Now he was weak and dizzy and coughing up yucky stuff.
We made another trip to the clinic and saw another doctor. This time they even did chest X-rays. We went back to the exam room and waited. Finally the doctor returned with the X-rays.
“You have a nice pneumonia,” the doctor announced, almost cheerfully. He showed us the X-rays, and we knew that he was not kidding. Joe’s lungs were filled with white specks and all sorts of cloudy stuff. No wonder he felt ill!
The doctor prescribed a new medication called Zithromax which hopefully will clear it up. Joe is excused from school on Wednesday, and there are no classes on Thursday or Friday this week due to parent-teacher conferences.
04:25 UTC
Sunny is growing like crazy. On Monday, he jumped up onto the kitchen counter for the first time.
Both kittens are doing very well. Now if only we could say that about the humans…
01:27 UTC
We have switched our Web hosting company from Jatol.com to DoorHost.net. This will make no difference in how the site appears to visitors.
21:20 UTC
Another edit of all pages on the primary domain took most of the day on Friday. This edit made the navigation bar improvements possible and simplified alternate styling for selected browsers.
Today at 05:04 UTC I gave the best browsers (Mozilla, Netscape 7, Opera 7) a fixed-position navigation bar. What this means is that the page content can scroll while the navigation bar stays put. Longer navigation bars will have separate scrollbars of their own.
Less capable browsers (Internet Explorer, Opera 6) will get the navigation bar absolute-positioned on the page, as before (Netscape 4 users will find it at the bottom of the page).
My sincere apology goes out to anyone who tried in vain to visit the pictures or crafts sites the past three days. I transferred the files to the new server but forgot to create the subdomains. The problem is now corrected, and all is well in the Oo Kingdom.
23:20 UTC
At long last I added the new page about our latest design, entitled Final Edit. Also reorganized the menus for the entire Web Design section.
19:25 UTC
Joe stayed home from school Monday and Tuesday with a lingering cough. At today’s follow-up visit to the doctor, X-rays showed the pneumonia was gone. He should be recovered well enough to return to school next Monday, after the Thanksgiving break.
The five of us (Charlie, Wendi, Joe, Shadow and Sunny) wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving holiday—even if you aren’t from the United States.
Happy Thanksgiving!
07:50 UTC
Most visitors can now choose between four presentation themes for this site. The options appear at the bottom of the navigation bar, only on the Home page so far. JavaScript and cookies are required; the cookie is only used to store your choice of theme.
If you are using Internet Explorer or Netscape version 4, you will not be able to change the theme yet. I am still working on it.
02:55 UTC
Presentation themes are now working properly on all modern browsers plus Internet Explorer 4. Netscape 4 browsers crash on the styles and scripting, so I have blocked this feature from those browsers (they will receive only the default Pastels theme).
Removed margins from text boxes and block quotes; this fixed a bug in Netscape 4 and improved rendering for everyone else. Also improved the Kittens background image (by the way, the kittens are Shadow and Sunny, if you haven’t already guessed).
This evening, I added the Presentation Themes menu to the bottom of all navigation bars (it won’t appear on Netscape 4 or older browsers). This meant editing every page again in Windows WordPad. Somehow I accomplished this in 74 minutes flat, even with 270 pages!
By the way, our Thanksgiving was great. We spent much of the day with some friends here in Janesville; we brought homemade sweet potato and apple pies, and deviled eggs; they supplied the rest. Boy, was there a feast!