Gimme an "F"! Gimme an "A"! Gimme a "Q"!

What does that spell? Why, "FAQ", of course. Well, I'm playing Answer Man, so fire away.

  1. Is this really the tenth version of JEBHP? Yes, it really is. In January 1995, I made my first home page. Version 2 was the first to adopt color. It has grown and multiplied from there. Some versions were more ambitious in changes than others.
  2. Why do you keep changing? My web space keeps moving, for one. I also get better at the coding, and I learn more about it. The capabilities of the browsers keep increasing, too; when I designed JEBHP 1, the most advanced browser I had at my disposal was Netscape 1.12, and if I used a Mac I could use NCSA Mosaic. Now I can run Opera 6.04, Internet Explorer 6, and other advanced browsers.
  3. What don't you like about the way things have changed? Odd question. I've never liked frames. Netscape 2 changed everything when it was launched as the first frames-capable browser. People immediately started coding frames all over the place, and I would get notices on pages I would visit, pages my friends designed, that said, "If you're not using Netscape 2, you're not viewing this page properly, so get your head out of the toilet and upgrade." I couldn't do that; I didn't have control over the software on the machines I was using. So I've always hated frames because of that. That's a subset of the move towards browser-specificity and inaccessibility, which I have fought against.
  4. Doesn't that mean you've sold out, with all the CSS and JavaScript you use now? I don't see it that way. The standards evolve. I think I do a better job of conforming to standards and guaranteeing accessibility in various browsers than most sites out there today. Most web designers, at least most amateur web designers, don't think about the fact that people use browsers other than the one the designer happens to use, on platforms and displays other than the designer's. By trying hard to conform to the HTML 4.01 spec, by using CSS, by making sure my attributes are always enclosed in quotations and my tags are closed, by restricting myself to the 216 "web-safe" colors, and by looking at my pages in a spectrum of browsers (albeit not platforms), I think I honor the principles of accessibility while still allowing myself to use the latest capabilities of the modern browsers. Just because every page can be browsed with Lynx doesn't mean that people using IE should see a Lynx-esque page.
  5. What's with the color schemes? What inspired those? I think the ability of the user to choose the color the pages are rendered in gives my site a bit more appeal. The chief inspiration is that my favorite color is one most of my close friends don't like. I started designing schemes with people in mind, really.
  6. Are there any older versions of JEBHP still around? I don't think any code still survives from JEBHP 1, or even 2 or 3. (Maybe 3.) The oldest intact version I have is 5, but there are probably surviving bits of 4 (and maybe older) in there. I should go back and look to see if all the files I have listed in 5 are really accessible. None of Version 6 survives, either; as a result, there really isn't much to Version 7. But four older versions of my home page are actually up and running:
  7. What happened to "Hide Me Hide Me"? You liked that? Hmm. I mean, it still would work; I just haven't written it up for my current e-mail address. But I have a couple problems with the system. Somehow people have expected me to respond to their comments filed with that form. I can't, as a rule. I really really REALLY do not know who sends the messages.
  8. What's with all the weird stuff in the headers? All the "weird stuff", as you put it, is code that demonstrates a bit of what I can do with JavaScript on my pages. If you can't see the header or the footer, you do not have a JavaScript-enabled browser. It's not really a big deal. All you're missing in the header is a declaration of which browser you're using, the colorset selector, and today's date in the three languages I took in high school: English, French, and Latin, along with the number of days since my date of birth and since New Hampshire ratified the Constitution. The footer has the URL of the current page, the modification date of same, and the author's name and e-mail address. (It is a generic author and e-mail address -- it defaults to "Webmaster" and "webmaster@_domain_", where _domain_ is the domain of the site. I have to manually override on every page I author, changing them to "Jason Elliot Benda" and "benda@attbi.com".) So if you're not using a JavaScript-enabled browser, that's all you're missing in those places.
  9. Why do you use so many counters (or so few)? I don't have a counter set up in my default template as I write this, because my ISP needs counters to be uniquely named. I could write JavaScript code and render a unique counter in my footer, but then it will only count visits from JavaScript-enabled browsers. So the number of counters I use is a balance between the nicety of having counters on my site and the labor of putting them in.
  10. Are you going to keep up the old JEBHP Departments: Peopletrace Files, Useful Stuff, Useless Stuff, File Of The Day/What's On My Mind, Audio Philes, Nebraska Football Results, Streaks Page, Image Closet, Feedback, etc.? Gee, that's ... some of that stuff I don't even remember. Do you think I should try for an all-new set of Peopletrace Files? The list of people I still know is small; the list of people I know, period, is smaller than the Peopletrace list. But maybe I could. I'd love to do a Thought Of The Day again. Maybe that will happen. I've got some work to do to get the Cornhuskers page up to date if I want to; I haven't decided whether I care about that or not. Audio Philes, probably, and Useful Stuff, but Useful Stuff will have a different, more useful appearance in JEBHP 10. Other stuff, well, ....
  11. Will there be a JEBHP 11? Probably. But I'm too busy trying to get 10 up to worry about 11.