A Webmaster's Rambles

Back in August 1998, Middlesbrough Mencap decided to go 'on the Web', having signed up with ISP PIPEX a few months earlier for email. We had free webspace and decided to use it.

That first page was hand coded HTML, edited in Notepad, carefully copying the tags from a book.

As more information was added, I kept to a single page. I believed, in those days of pay-per-second access, that downloading everything at once, then going off-line to read it, was prefereable to lots of little pages, needing to keep clicking links to read a bit more.

I tried to be browser neutral, avoiding fancy effects that some browsers can not handle. I tried to make the page look good, or at least be readable, in any screen resolution.

When the Happy Talk Penpals Club was launched, they got their own web-page. I added another to show off some of the pictures we were taking with our digital camera. Then we decided to put our newsletters on the web as well, each in 1 or more pages. The pages were increasing rapidly, and the main page getting too long to navigate easily..

In May 2001, I got an evaluation version of Dreamweaver on a cover disk, and some 'free' time over the late spring break, and decided to rearrange the site. This was the result.

Over the years, little bits of Javascript, and HTML 4 crept in, to make the visit better for those with browsers capable of using them, the vast majority of our visitors.

In August 2003, we finally decided to get our own domain - middlesbroughmencap.org.uk. I set about moving the site to our new host. Now was the obvious time to update the look of the site, and to update to the latest standards - XHTML and CSS. XHTML is much the same as HTML4.0, but more strict. CSS separates the style of a document from its structure, and puts it into a separate file. This makes changing the look of a site much easier, and more consistant across the whole site. Unfortunately, as I mention elsewhere different browsers interpret the CSS in subtly different ways, or sometimes make a complete mess of it. There followed a period of head-banging and hair-tearing. I did most of the re-writing in a freeware programmer's editor called PSPad.

CSS also allows multiple styles for the same page, and this will be introduced real soon now.

If your browser has problems with this site, or if you have any suggestions, or comments about the site, please feel free to contact us. There is a response form here.

Thank you for visiting

John Chilvers