Colophon

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Colophon

Locations

• Internet Explorer for Windows

• Internet Explorer for Macintosh

• Netscape Navigator 7.x

Server OS

• ASP.NET Framework

• Windows 2000/2003 with Internet Information Server

Home Page Photo

The image at the top of the front page is a composite image of the mountains around the Mt. Cook region of New Zealand's South Island. It was taken during September 2001 while I was on a heli-boarding trip and we had been dropped off on our second or third peak for the day.

Unfortunately the image is not quite wide enough to cover all page sizes (without being too tall) and so I duped the image, flipped it horizontally and merged it so that when needed, the window can get wider and the image won't look like it's just tiled.

Almost all of the images on the site are from my camera, or from friends' cameras. There are occasionally shots from elsewhere on the net, but I note that and only use low-res copies. Don't want to cross copyrights, even if this is a personal, non-commercial site.

Fonts

I keep changing my mind about the fonts I use for the pages. Of course, it's all made complicated by the fact that Windows and Macintosh, let along other systems, don't usually have the same set installed. So, I try to use the fonts installed by Internet Explorer on each platform.

The main font used for the pages is Tahoma 8 point. I used to use Trebuchet on my prior site, but I decided I should change it for the heck of it. But I might return to Trebuchet. So, stay tuned as I tune for readability.

In you are running Windows XP, then you should absolutely turn on ClearType, which smooths the edges of characters and makes text on the screen so much more readable. For some reason, it's turned off by default. Right click on the desktop and choose properties, choose the Appearance tab, and then press the "Effects" button. Select ClearType from the second drop down menu.

Server and Coding

You'll notice that most of the pages on the site have the extension ".aspx" The servers running the site make use of Microsoft .NET, a complete set of objects that allows a programmer to do pretty much whatever he or she wants on a page. This is not your parent's Windows API. Object oriented, streamlined, simple, comprehensive. Why it was called ",NET" and associated with "web services" is beyond me and a travesty of marketing. Microsoft .NET is simply a rewrite of the entire Windows API, plus more - something that has been long overdue. I'm not wild about the event model in ASP.NET, but one can't have everything I guess

The servers running the site run Windows 2000 Server. Yeah yeah, there is a new version out. But geez, one can only afford a new set of server software every so often. The servers run pretty much 24/7 and as for rebooting....I can't remember an instance over 3 years where I needed to reboot due to an OS issue.

Supported Clients

Ok, let's not beat around the bush. Internet Explorer 6.x (and later) owns the browser market. It's not even close with 90%+ of the market, all but a couple of percentage points of that is on the Windows OS (the rest is Macintosh.) So this site is optomized and tested for IE 6.x+ on Windows.

Firefox is a great browser and I use it along with IE. However, in spite of the boasts of the open source community, Firefox 1.0 has lots of layout bugs in it, especially when complex tables are on the page. I'm still having problems with one page on the site in Firefox (it renders perfectly in Netscape, ironically) but I am beginning to test regularly (Firefox for Windows only.)

When I have the time, I test Netscape 7.1 for Windows as well. I have turned on "strict" compliance mode in IE so that I can code for IE and generally Netscape will display the page in the same manner. However, there -are- differences and if I can't figure a quick way around them, well, Netscape takes it on the chin. Since Netscape is down to less and 2% of the market, I only spend so much time worrying about it.

I don't test for any browsers on Macintosh for a simple reason, I don't have access to a Macintosh. There used to be a few around town that were paid access (in an Internet cafe) but they were running Mac OS 9.x and they're not longer there...they've been converted to Windows machines. Macintosh users make up only 2-3% of the Internet browsing audience, so....

I also don't test for Opera or any other browser. Hey, this is a personal site and I only have so much time to work on it.

Lastly, if you are still using Internet Explorer 5.x, Netscape 4.x or earlier....um, why? Do yourself a favor and download an updated browser.