About this Website. |
This website has been a work in progress since I initially set it up in 1999 to sell
Vela Llena, my previous boat. That website was on the free members web-hosting at
www.erols.com using HTML and MS Word.
Then I converted to FrontPage through several versions of that product up to
FrontPage 2003. This site was hosted at
Infinology on a
Windows server using ExpressionWeb from 2005 to 2013. In 2013
traffic began to exceed the limit of Infinology hosting plan and I
moved the site to GoDaddy.com with unlimited traffic.
Rehosted to new account at GoDaddy.com on Aug 3, 2018 |
In March, 2008 I converted the site from FrontPage 2003 to ExpressionWeb. At the same time I've eliminated frames from the
structure of the site. I previously used frames to provide the
navigation menus. While that was a quick way to get the navigation up
and running it got to be cumbersome and time consuming to maintain. |
About the Menus: I wanted to implement some form of drop-down menus to keep the navigation
options from filling the entire page. A robust drop-down menu requires
the development or purchase of software, an investment in time and money I'm not willing to
make at this time. So I've used Jump Menus in the navigation.
Jump Menus are very limited and require more maintenance than I'd like to
have in the site, but they will get the job done for now. |
About the Pages: For the most part this site is optimized for a screen resolution of 1024x768.
Smaller screen resolutions will have to deal with a lot of horizontal scrolling
for which I apologize, but I had to pick a screen size and this appears to
be the most commonly used. Obviously this site not set for viewing on smartphones, which did not exist when I started it. The pages are also optimized for the larger
browser font sizes. Specifically I recommend a font size for MS Internet
Explorer (IE) users of "Medium". If you use the "Largest" font the text in
the Jump Menus will not fit in the space provided on the page. If you use
the "Smallest" browser font in IE you may need a magnifier to read the menus.
To set the font size in IE 7 click on the "Page/Text Size" menu.
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For Firefox users I recommend using the Normal text size. You can
increase the text size by as much as 2 steps and the menu should still look
OK. If you increase the text size a 3rd time the menu text will not
fit within the space provided on the page You can change the text size
in FireFox 2.x by clicking on the "View/Text Size" menu.
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I do not have a copy of Opera, so I haven't been
able to determine what fonts are best for that browser. |
I have attempted to keep the site structure and underlying code as simple as
possible so I can spend most of my time sailing rather than being a webmaster.
Therefore there are no sophisticated design features in the site. |
The navigation structure is built around the five sections to the site
identified and linked from the top of each page. Navigation within each
section is done via the menu on the left side of the page. Many of the
items in the navigation menu are Jump Menus. From a site development and
maintenance point of view Jump Menus are very limited and cumbersome.
However they are the quickest way to implement drop-down menus and reduce the
size of the navigation section in each page. Without drop-down menus the
navigation section on many pages would be longer than many screen resolutions
are tall. Some day I'll implement drop-down menus with software rather
than as an HTML Behavior, but for now it's Jump Menus. |
I also would like to implement the navigation section of each page as a
Fixed element. That would keep the menus on the screen while the
viewer scrolls down the content on the right side of the page.
Unfortunately it appears fixed elements don't work properly in earlier
versions of MS Internet Explorer (5.x and 6.x). Maybe in a year or two
when most viewers have migrated to a more current web browser I'll try a
fixed menu again. In the meantime you will just have to scroll back up
to the top of the page to access the navigation menu. |
About the Pictures: There are a large number of pictures on this site. Most of them were
taken at a resolution of 1280x960. On the web pages I normally reduce
those pictures to a thumbnail 300 - 400 pixels wide. Each picture
thumbnail is linked to the full resolution image, which if you double click on
the thumbnail will come up in a separate window. Many of the charts are
even higher resolution. The exception are some pictures on the site that
are vidcaps from 8mm or HI-8 video. The full resolution image for the
vidcaps is 720 pixels wide. I
try to keep the thumbnails as large as possible so the pictures can be viewed
without having to call up the full resolution image, but small enough to fit on
a 1024x768 screen and take less than a lifetime to down load. |
Except for the photos on the SV Whoosh pages or were noted otherwise all of the pictures on this web were taken by
myself. The SV Whoosh photos were taken by Jack & Patricia Tyler.
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My older pictures were taken on a Pentax 35mm SLR, mostly on
slides. The more recent photos (2002 - 2008) were taken on a Fujifilm digital camera.
I have purchased a Sony Cybershot T200 digital camera, and most of the pictures
after March 1, 2008 will be taken on that camera. Although I have published these pictures on this web at full resolution I still
reserve ownership of the pictures. You may use the thumbnail versions of
the pictures for any non-commercial purpose without permission. If you
would like to use the full resolution pictures please request permission at the
email address provided on the bottom of this page. I am pre-disposed to
grant permission for any non-commercial use of the pictures, but I would like to
to know the purpose for which the pictures will be used. I will consider
any reasonable request. |
Please do not use the pictures that were not taken by myself for any purpose,
and please do not request permission for their use from me. I have no
intention of becoming a broker for the pictures kindly provided to me by others.
If those are the pictures you really want please find another source. |