About Paul's Site

I know it would look silly without a title, so most pages have titles.

Technical Details

Much of this site uses frames and JavaScript to for navigation. If your browser does not support both of these technologies, you will have difficulty browsing my site. Please use the Site Map to navigate the site. All hypertext references on the Site Map go directly to the page.

I use frames to simplify navigation. It is easier to maintain a single menu page than update every page in a section when I add pages.

I use client-side JavaScript to control how the pages are displayed. (GeoCities does not allow server-side JavaScript, although I use many CGI scripts in my commercial sites.) Many of the frames are generated dynamically by the browsers. This allows much flexibility when creating references to pages. The page you are reading can be referenced as:

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Peaks/8234/site/about.html (the URL of the page.)
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Peaks/8234/site/index.html?about (the frameset specifying the content page.)
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Peaks/8234/site/index.html (because it is the default page for the frameset.)

Additionally, the page itself uses JavaScript to force itself into the frameset, so the page is displayed consistently. This allows me to use a single page as the menu along the top.

Bandwidth Usage

I have designed this site to be fast loading, so the graphics are kept to a minimum, and are small. Currently, the entire site is under 300KB and can be downloaded at 14.4 in less than 3 minutes. The largest single screen is 40KB, but 20KB of that is the image for the menu which would have been loaded into a frame when the section is opened.

I will post warnings at the entrance to any area that might be slower if I add music and more graphics. I am trained to worry about bandwith and how to make the site exciting without having the users wait, so I probably will not add much multimedia soon.

The main use of bandwidth on all pages is the Geoguide. I put the GeoGuide at the bottom of most pages to prevent the PopUp advertising, which is how Geocities encourages the use of the GeoGuide. Because the PopUp advertising appears if ANY page does not contain the GeoGuide, the GeoGuide is included even in the frameset and menu pages, although it is usually in the NOFRAMES area or outside the visible area.

Best Viewing

I use Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 SP1 at home. IE displays blank lines after all headers, so I remove the line feeds for my own viewing pleasure. If you are using a different browser, my entire site may display as a run-on sentence. I use IE 3, 4, and 5; and Netscape 3, 4, and 4.5 at work, so I have checked how my site as rendered by them.

I set all monitors to 1024x768, although I keep it usable at 800x600 and 640x480. I know WebTV uses an even poorer resolution. Most of the information on this site is for computer professionals or computer game players, and we all have good monitor and video board combinations. (Don't you? Or are you at work with a state-of-the-art Pentium 100 with a state-of-the-art 14" monitor that cannot display text legible at 800x600 even if the state-of-the-art video card could support. State-of-the-art computers always seems to use 2 years old technology, probably because anything newer is unstable.)

Updating

I work on this site about once a month. Some months I review what is here; some months I add a new section. To see what I've been working on lately, see the History page.

The new maze section requires Netscape 4. IE4 does not have the ability to dynamically determine the size of a frame, so I am writing it for Netscape. I have not checked if IE5 supports this functionality yet. Check the History page for a progress report.