Not my portrait!
Not my portrait! |
The Programs category hosts all of the programs that the author has written since 1996 or so. The first and foremost of these programs is his Periodic Table database, written in Java (JPeriod99), and a simple web server, also written in Java. However, his most bizarre work to date is the Babelizer program, written in Java, (notice a trend here?) that reads words and generates random garbage sentences...if you can call them sentences...
The Classes category serves as a repository for anything and everything that relates to my classes. Currently, it is empty. The Friends section is a big contact list. You can access my friends' email and websites from here.
Anything that is school related winds up in the Menlo section. Needless to say, since school hasn't started, this section is very dry, containing only the bare essentials--the library, intranet and student servers, and also the daily announcements. Eventually, I might put stuff about my classes in here...but we'll see how that goes.
The Links section is a bunch of places that I tend to frequent. Being the school's resident Java evangelist, I have lots and lots of HTML, Java and some JavaScript stuff banging around this web site. You might even find some CSS stuff, if you dig hard enough.
The Site section is everything that you can find in this web site that hasn't already been dropped into a section. You can look at my dwindling list of site mirrors, read my Douglass Hall Updates, look at my old web sites, and get status information about thibs.menloschool.org. (Note, however, that the status information screens are rather slow in loading.)
Enough about me. First, if you have IE4 and up, you may notice that my site lacks
window borders! That's because I turned them off. You can do this by inserting
style="border:none;marginwidth=0;" into HTML pages. It's very cool
and very distinct, according to what my audience tells me. Eventually, I'll put
up an entire area for developers, where I divulge all of my evil HTML and Java
secrets.
You wonder, how am I able to put the same header and footer on every single page? I originally thought of doing it the hard way, but embedding HTML code in every single page (like the first DDD) became extremely unwieldly and I made too many mistakes. Now I've made all of those things into a JavaScript file that contains every single routine that I need for generating the banners, menus and footers that you see on all the pages. Because I also use CSS for formatting, I can maintain the look and feel of my site very easily. I do not use any sort of site building program such as NetObjects Fusion or Micro$oft FrontPage; I write all the pages by hand using the editor in Borland C++ Builder. (I would use the regular Borland C++ program, but the editor has a few bugs in the saving routines--not good!) Alas, a few old browsers won't process my page properly. Generally, Netscape 3 falls back gracefully, and Netscape 4 and IE 4 and 5 render properly. See the table at the bottom for details. Unfortunately, there is one serious problem: everything turns up TINY on a Macintosh! Therefore, I had to use a PHP script to deliver a special "large-print" stylesheet to Macintosh browsers (and X browsers...) This is a problem at a school that is predominantly Macintosh.
I know, some people complain about having to download all of these annoying Java packages (at the least, Java 1.1 and JFC/Swing; at the most, Java2 and Java3D), but I find that most of the heavyweight controls in the AWT to be rather difficult to utilize. Secondly, the "least common denominator" feature set is too limiting to get any useful work done. Thirdly, I like Swing much better, because it is far less prone to platform dependencies and other weird measuring problems. I need advanced controls, not just dumb text fields and the like. I could never have gotten as far as I have with JPeriod if I had stuck with AWT controls. Plus, JavaSoft seems very determined to make Swing a part of Java.
Some people ask why I don't just use WFC. I know an incredible amount about Win32; the WFC classes should be second nature. BUT--that's the reason why I don't do Windows stuff in any great quantity--it is a pain in the neck to program in Java. Furthermore, WFCs don't work on anything that isn't Windows. I have a Windows 98 (gasp!) and a Linux (yay!) box at home; I have Macs at school. I need to be able to run my stuff on any of those platforms.
I have tested this site with Netscape 1.22 through 4.7 (and Mozilla 5.0 M10) and IE 2.0 through IE 5.00.2614.3500. Assume that you can use any of the content on this site, with the following notes:
| Compatibility | Description | Browsers |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest | No title bars, no menus, no footers, no Java, no jSearch. | Netscape 1.x and 2.x; Lynx; Internet Explorer 1.x, 2.x, 3.x; Opera 3.x |
| Low-Medium | Title bars, footers, rudimentary menus, no jSearch (it crashes!), no Java. | Netscape 5 M10 |
| Medium | Title bars, menus, footers, jSearch, but no Java. | Netscape 3.x |
| High | Everything works...most of the time. | Netscape 4.0x |
| Highest | Everything works. | Netscape 4.5x, 4.6x, and 4.7x; Internet Explorer 4.x, 5.x; Opera 3.5x, 3.6x |
*For all Windows browsers: I highly recommend getting the Java2 Plugin from JavaSoft. You can upgrade (and even change) the underlying VM technology. Plus, new JDK's and JRE's come out faster on Windows. (Warning! 9MB download! (Tell JavaSoft to compress rt.jar))
I want my HTML 4.0 browser!
Ok, This is too much long-winded babble. Good night; I need to sleep.
While I sleep, you can look at my hit counter, look for mirrors and other junk from previous incarnations, or figure out who's logged into thibs at the moment.
Ooh! Try searching this site!