README.site

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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'...

See below 'Things To Be Done' for known cavetes ;=))

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 could see no 'server' processing 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 }. And these parameters are stored in a <script ... part of each file header, so can be easily changed...

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

1. Home - index.html - This is the main page, took some things from Pete's site, and added slide show - done
2. Introduction - introduction.html - done
3. Features - features.html - done
4. Gallery v2.0 - Gallery-v2.0/index.html - first in a sub-directory. Developed getFooter($pardir) to deal with image locations - done - but MANY small files could also be done... *TBD*
5. Announcements - announce.html - done
6. Calendar - calendar.html - used 2 column, since it was difficult to constrain the Google calendar to the center - done
7. Events - events.html - done

8. Get FlightGear - 8

9. Download Central - Downloads/index.html - done
10. Binary Programs - Downloads/binary.html - done
11. 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
12. World Scenery - Downloads/scenery.html - done
13. Source Code - Downloads/source.shtml - changed to html - done
14. DVD set - dvd/index.html  - Mostly done - but still some outstanding issues *TBD*
15. Version Log - version.html  done
16. Hardware Req. - hardwarereq.html done

17. Support - 17

18. Manual (html) - Docs/getstart/getstart.html - done - but many pages to be done - see below
19. Wiki - link to Main_Page of Wiki - link only
20. FAQ - Docs/FAQ.html - changed to 'html' in place of 'shtml' - not fully checked - done
21. Links to Docs - docs.html - basic page done, but *TBD* many pages!!! *
22. Wiki - link to Main_Page of Wiki - link only, but many LINKS to check

23. Links - 23

24. Websites - links.html - done, but many LINKS to check
25. Projects - 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 '../../../', and found no problems.

26. Users - 26

27. Multiplayer - link to http://mpmap02.flightgear.org - link only
28. Places to Fly - places.html - done

29. Developers - 29

30. CVS Resource - cvs.html - done - but this led to 4? other files below
31. 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
32. Goals/Wish list - goals.html - 3 column, easy, quicky - done
33. Contributors - thanks.html - from 'shtm' to 'html'. Wow, lots of conversion of '<' and '>' to &lt; & &gt; entities. Thankful for good replace functions in editors also one & change to &amp; - 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
34. Design Proposals - design.html - combine the linked document into the page -  done

Files NOT directly from TOC 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*

Docs/getstart/getstart.html has many children -
getstartli1.html - done - getstartli2.html - done - getstartli3.html - appears to just be a word list - done - getstartch1.html - done - getstartch2.html - done - getstartch3.html - done - getstartch4.html - done - getstartch5.html - done - getstartch6.html getstartch7.html getstartch8.html getstartch9.html getstartch10.html getstartpa1.html getstartpa2.html getstartpa3.html getstartpa4.html getstartap1.html getstartap2.html *TBD*
Also at least the first two files done have some 'missing' class definitions, even after including the local getstart.css file, and thus impossible to 'guess' what was intended by these classes... like 'sectionToc'... the file indicate they were generated by 'TeX4ht'...

And there are quite a number of other 'children' to be done

Things To Be Done

• Files marked *TBD* - _AND_ their children *TBD*, if any...
• Considerable number of 'other' site files to converts - hundreds in fact, like in Gallery...
• Grrr - the JSZenMenu still fails sometimes??? *TBD*
• Maybe some 'space' tuning here and there...
• Check all internal file links, if any... And there are quite a number of other 'children', in other subdirectories, to be done *TBD*
• consistent page 'titles'
• Add more meta for search engines to find...
• Provide <noscript>..</noscript> left and bottom TOC, if javascript is OFF, AND provide good 'text' for search engines. So far ONLY doen to this file done - as a test - but can be likewise added to EACH 'html' file *TBD*
• 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 tested/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 allow right column content to vary...
• Perhaps consider some server technology, like php, and avoid javascript - 50:50 on this ;=))
• Add a link at the bottom of the page to get back to the top where the naviation menus exit. This is important for some very LONG pages...
• 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 top 'button' to 'Hide the TOC', then everything shifts left - sort of the best of both worlds ;=))
• Perhaps the horizontal 'old' dropdown menu should extend to the full page width, and not just be in the 'content' column.
• Similarly with the top 'google' ad bar - maybe it could go 'full width'

And probably a zillion other things... enhancement can be a NEVER ending project ;=)).

Things to Avoid (IMHO)

This is just my 'personal' preferences, and in way reflects the policy of FG, or its maintainers ;=))

• 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 learning curve, sometimes quite steep, to get with the way it does things. Time that could be spent on directly enhancing 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! This is NOT to say that the Google media is not later portable to other sites, or that it does not offer a cooperative development environment! But the number of powerful web tools (especially editors) continues to grow... so why go elsewhere?
• 'flash' based sites - While there is no doubt these can be VERY FLASHY, very catchy, etc, they rely solely on running SWF 'flash' objects. The HTML is usually just about empty thus they offer no content clues to search engines, although I know some of this reading SWF files for content has been passed to major search engine. And the 'action' script is another steep learning curve.

Downloads

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 main zip, plus incremental changes to be overlayed on the first. And if a subsequent incremental 'overlay' zip contains the file 'dellist.txt', then these are files to be deleted before then next overlay, if you get my drift...

Date	Link	Size	MD5
2010-03-21	fgfs-05.zip	19,333,216	d9d9560f3668e9bd9dac81b20f029eca
Incremental additions
2010-03-22	fgfs-05a.zip	112,484	e850c318e522e9d46aa25ecd0e6bd4b5
2010-03-23	fgfs-05b.zip	5,013,906	99a7e5d4895c91d6eb137ef6c1abd0a2

PS: Obviously this particular page will _NOT_ be the same in the zip, or else I get into a never ending size/md5 loop ;=)) In fact, sometimes will have added quite a lot AFTER the zip was created, so only the online version of this file is the latest...

Conclusion

I found MSVWD a very iffy tool. It has the feel that it is a little 'unfinished', and there were a number of glitches, but all in all I would still rate it as GOOD ;=)) One annoying 'glitch' was that the 'editor' could sometimes makes a 'mistake', with quite bad results, especially when continually switching between 'Design' and 'Source', and updating - particularly cut and paste. This can be DISASTEROUS ;=(( So make sure you have recent update BEFORE using this 'internal' editor. I now use another editor EditPlus for many things ;=()

And while it is sometimes possible to run a page, including javascript tracing through the built in VWD debugger, this also frequently crashes, or stalls - but persistance sometime got what I wanted...

As with the MSVC counterparts, the most helpful thing is it 'IntelliSensing'. That is, in 'Source' view, as you type a '<', a dropdown list of elements pops up, so you can just 'choose' the element rather than typing it. And then when you add a space after an element, another dropdown list appears of the possible attributes... and even after selecting an attribute, and putting '="' again a dropdown or popup tooltip gives you an idea of what 'values' the attributes can have.

And all this 'IntelliSensing' also works in javascript, CSS, etc - great stuff ;=))

With this VERY CRITICAL EDITOR BUG it is NOT worth the (free) download ;=(( And is it worth the about USD$500 for the 'professional' edition? Well, maybe yes, since I am sure you could then get a 'fix' for the editor bug mentioned. I will press on testing MSVWD for this FG project at least, but in most cases I will stick to my 'trusty' MS FrontPage... and EditPlus, which I 'trust'...

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