Midterm

I spent way too long working on the midterm, trying to get things lined up properly. Most of the time I spent messing around with various layouts and trying to get them to fit properly in the space I wanted.

I wanted to make web pages that could be edited easily. I also didn't want to use JavaScript. Finally I wanted to use the Strict Doctype. I wanted to have some sort of frame that contained my links back to my home page and blog so that I could change it if necessary. It was more than necessary for this assignment, because I don't plan on ever going back and changing it, but I wanted to know how to do it for the group assignments.

In the strict doctype you can't use frames, and you can't use the iframe object. The way to embed another web page is to use an object of type 'object'. The next issue became that clicking links in the embedded page would open in the embedded area, rather than the full page. The work-around was to make the embedded XHTML a transitional doctype and have it use the target attribute of a hyperlink. It kept the strict doctype for the main page, while providing the necessary functionality.

I should probably cite some of my sources now:
I got the Japanese Archipelago & sun image from http://www.vsjf.net/images/nihon.gif
The tiled background from http://www.fiu.edu/~morriss/backgrounds/tilegrbrgrey.gif
and the blank postcard from http://www.b9robotresource.com/goprimitive/images/cafepress/quilt-postcard-back.jpg

With the picture of Japan, I did some pixel editing in paint to remove the white anti-aliasing and then added the text JAPAN on the image. I then gave the image to my roommate Ian, who quickly created background transparency for me.

All other pictures used were taken by me, or someone using my camera.

Anyway, I rather enjoyed playing around with different styles and things. I did not enjoy positioning things with CSS. The way I positioned things to have an overlapping effect was touchy, and goes crazy if you look at it using Internet Exploder. I have yet to figure out why.

I haven't commented any of my code yet either. I'll get to that in a few days.