# README.site

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 cold see no 'server' prcessing 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.

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
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 *TBD* many pages!!! *
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 LOTS of 'links' to others not done - *TBD*
22. Lists, Forums, IRC - mail.html, but many LINKS to check

23. #### Links - 23

24. Websites - links.html - done, but many LINKS to check
25. PProjects - 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 '../../../', nad 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 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*

## Things To Be Done

- Files marked *TBD* - _AND_ their children, if any...
- Considerable number of 'other' site files to converts - hundreds in fact, like in Gallery...
- Maybe some 'space' tuning here and there...
- Check all internal file links, if any...
- Check all local, within web links, and all files 'connected'
- Check all external links are valid.
- Check for consistent page 'titles'
- Add more meta for search engines to find...
- 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 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 aloow right column content to vary
- Perhaps consider some server technology, like php, and avoid javascript
- Add a link at the bottom of the page to get back to the top where the naviation menus exit.
- 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 'button' to 'Hide the TOC', then everything shifts left - sort of the best of both worlds.

And probably a zillion other things... enahancement can be a NEVER ending project...

#### Things to Avoid

This is just my 'personal' preferences...

- 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 learnign curve to get with the way it does things. Time that could be spent on directly enahncing 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!

## Download

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 zip

Date | Link | Size | MD5
--- | --- | --- | ---
2010-03-21 | fgfs-05.zip | 19,333,193 | `7bb29ca2862248a781e4a163f4672b61`

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