HTML Origination and Browsing
(Under
construction:
HTML Origination
To write these pages, I originally used CompuServe's Home Page Wizard. Whilst it clearly made life easy for beginners, as an HTML-creation program, it compared favourably only with the word processing programs of the early 1980s. I experimented with HTMLEdit (a German program), Webpen, and Aardvark. In 1998 I was using the HTML editor in MS Office 97, limited though it is, because it provides an easy interface with Word documents. I now use MS Word.
Browsing
As my web browser, I used Spry Mosaic for some time, partly because it came bundled with the Compuserve front-end, and partly because the text-editable bookmarks were easy to use. Since then, after briefly flirting with Netscape, I have stuck to MS Internet Explorer in each of its incarnations. I currently use the most recent version of British Telecom & Yahoo! MS Internet Explorer.
Website Navigation
Initially I designed my website to work without frames. As the website grew I imposed a frames menu system, as this offered the easiest way to navigate around the site. I split the window into three frames: two on the left for topic and sub-division navigation; the larger right frame for displaying the selected page. However, search engines offer the opportunity to parachute into a website, bypassing the carefully constructed navigation framework. I felt constrained to retain in place the old tabular system. Also, ‘homepage.htm’ pointed to the division into frames. It was necessary to be careful not to load ‘homepage.htm’ into a frame page, otherwise one ended up with ever shrinking frames, the only way out of which was to use the ‘back’ button or else exit the website completely. Further, as the website grew, frame navigation became cumbersome. So I removed the frames and moved onto a nested sitemap system, which is infinitely expandable.
