Sarah and I have put a lot of effort into this new design. I was really getting upset about the original design we were using. I didn't like the length of the first page, it was too long. The new design has a much shorter first page, letting you see nearly everything important on one screen's worth.
Also, the old design was based on older versions of HTML and as a result were actually quite hard to maintain. Now I'm using a style sheet, a feature of HTML 4.0, which let's me keep all my formatting requirements in one centrally located place. Since this style sheet abstracts-away specific formatting commands, the actual web pages are easier to design and linking them together and maintaining the site is easier.
I also started using better software. Originally I designed the entire thing using the CodeWright text editor, which is fantastic. I have now supplemented that tool with CoffeeCup Software's HTML Editor and StyleSheet Maker++. I still prefer using CodeWright to do major editing jobs since CoffeeCup's editor features are not too numerous. However, CoffeeCup's software does have lots of features that are HTML specific that are very useful. So I usually fine tune every page in CoffeeCup using its features.
You can get an overall idea of the new design by looking at the site map, but I'll describe it quickly here. The home page is a brief summary of what is actually included in three main areas of the website: updates, destinations and reviews. The home page links into the two most recent (usually) entries in each of the three main areas. Of course, each area has its own menu where you can see a list of every entry it has.
Updates contain any information we want to write about and post to the internet. Destinations includes pictures, stories and advice for places we've travelled to. Reviews has summaries and opinions on any cultural events we attend like plays, movies and attractions.
We hope you enjoy our new site, it really does require a lot of effort to keep fresh. So please do come back every now and again and try and sign our guestbook too!
Note: The site currently does not look too good with Netscape, I'm looking into the problems. The problems are three fold. Firstly, the font is much tinier in Netscape than in IE. Secondly, the first line of text in a paragraph flows underneath my floating pictures so they can't be read. Thirdly, the background image is only stored in the root directory and Netscape can't find it for documents that are not stored in my root directory.
Morrie
27 March 2000