INT21CN: Computer Networks ABOUT BOX

The ABOUT BOX

One of the endearing traditions of the Apple Macintosh is that pretty much every application has, as the first menu item in the "Apple Menu", an option to tell you all about the application, its developers, the company they work for, and lots more stuff than you probably wanted to know. Now, I use a Macintosh to get most of my work done, so I thought I'd use the same name for this page. Here's what it's about:

The "Computer Networks" Pages

How I make them

Pretty much all of these Web pages consist of "by hand" HTML. I use a variety of tools to edit the HTML text files, but principally vi and nedit on our Unix systems, and Edit II on my Macintosh. I've been known to occasionally use Claris HomePage, and even Netscape's Composer, but I hate the way they alter my HTML to the style they prefer.

HTML markups used

The result of hand-editing HTML is that the pages are usually pretty simple: I tend to use a smallish subset of (approximately) HTML 3.2, which I personally believe leads to better page readability -- it certainly makes the pages more readable when you print them. And the resulting HTML "source code" is also, in general, more readable as well. Those pages which are fully compliant HTML 3.2 (which is most of them) usually have an icon down at the bottom which you can click on to run the WWW Consortium HTML Validator over them. Try it!
NB: one of my pet hates is Web pages generated by auto-converting (for example) a word processor document into HTML, or by using the "Save As HTML" option. The pages usually look awful in the browser, and the source is unreadable! The one exception to this rule (IMHO, of course) is the excellent LaTeX2HTML software. But then, your original document has to be in LaTeX... The Microsoft Word generation just hates LaTeX. This is called "dumbing down", folks.

Copyright Information

All Web pages associated with INT21CN Computer Networks are Copyright © 2003, Philip Scott, La Trobe University, Bendigo. This means that the author (me) and the University retain strong and enforceable legal rights over how these pages may be used. For more information, contact me.

What's that row of icons across the bottom of the Home Page

Let's look at them one at a time...

	This one's pretty obvious: La Trobe University, Bendigo is where these pages are created, and where our server is located.
	People who use Macintoshes are nowadays a small of minority of computer users. The Mac is such a superior platform for nearly every purpose that we tend to be a bit evangelistic. This icon tells the world that I use a Mac to get my work done. If you're smart, you will too...
	I'm sure Netscape's motives were pure when they introduced the frames abomination into their browsers all those years ago, but I sure hope they regret it now. If you click the image it will take to Jacob Nielsen's commentary on frames, which explains very concisely what's wrong with them. If you'd prefer a more entertaining analysis, you could check out Danny and Julie Hill's "I Hate Frames" page. I think they got some of their text from the original "I Hate Frames Club", which has long since disappeared. By the way, if you still think frames are cool you should perhaps ask why the big e-commerce players (such as amazon.com and cdnow.com) don't use them.
	I think Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who single-handedly invented the Web, said it better than I ever could: Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.
	I know that HTML 3.2 is no longer the recommended standard for the Web but it's the version that pretty much everyone (and all versions of all browsers that I know of) agrees on. So I've stuck with it. If you click on the image, it will run the W3C Validator over the page and tell you if it contains errors.

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