Page by Page
A Woman's Journal

Minor Changes 
By Maggie Turner  

Wednesday, March 29, 2000

Minor Changes

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This site is evolving slowly. For the last few weeks I have been working on the concept of "clean code". Writing "clean code" is not as easy as one might think. The use of a WYSIWYG HTML editor creates code that is acceptable for presentation on the web, but this is seldom "clean code". The code created by the editor is idiosyncratic, and as if that is not bad enough any changes made compound the redundancies and errors. The first thing I learned was that I do not know very much at all. I fear I will never be a "whiz" but I do hope to reach a certain level of competence.

The initial impetus for change was a desire for "clean code" and the shock as I viewed a journal entry using the freshly installed Internet Explorer 5 for the Macintosh. I have been merrily viewing my completed work on the latest versions of the Netscape and iCab browsers. The big difference with the new IE5 is that it offers the option to display the page, as it would appear on a Window's monitor. GASP! I felt like Alice after she had nibbled the cake and shrunk. Everything suddenly looked big, clunky, oversized and totally foreign. "'The first thing I've got to do,' said Alice to herself, as she wandered about in the wood, 'is to grow to my right size again'" (from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland). Like Alice, I am in search of my right size again.

Editing the code to eliminate redundancies and to nest tags will not have any visible effect on my web pages. However, I have not been spending all my time staring at HTML code. In an effort to reduce the larger than life effect of the Window's monitor, minor changes have been made to the design of the web pages. The most noticeable change is the addition of the small picture beside "Page by Page, A Woman's Journal" at the top of this page. The picture of the Yellow Crocus was taken on one of my walks last week and will be displayed on each page for the month of March. It is a snippet from a large photograph that serves as my desktop picture or wallpaper for this month. I plan on replacing this monthly with a photograph from my collection, appropriate to the time of year.