About These Pages

As with most people who come to the web gradually, my home page for the six lady sheep started off as a simple set of links (complementing Mosaic's hotlist) to places I liked on the web (at the time, the web wasn't so large, so many sites got in just by existing). Then I added some of my own documents (both at RAL and CERN).

Now (April 1997), I'm finally splitting the two. My home page now contains only links to stuff I have written or am closely associated with. I maintain my hotlist with VMS/Netscape (which insists on calling them bookmarks). Since I don't believe in throwing anything away, you'll still see a link to Honolulu Community College, which was one of the first non-HEP sites (outside NCSA) I found (don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's an excellent site, but not really relevant to any of my interests).

To prove that I don't throw anything away, you can still access my old home page.

Demonstrators

I also use my home page as a demonstrator of interesting web technology I've encountered. Although this makes it no longer strict HTML 3.2 (or even quite 4.0/Transitional), I've taken great pains to ensure that even if your browser doesn't support these features, it should still look OK and be usable (nothing important should be lost). I would entreat all web authors to do something similar. With a little knowledge, it's quite easy to use new technologies in such a way that they don't exclude those with older software (perhaps because their hardware doesn't support the latest browser, or they can't afford to upgrade), limited hardware (eg. small screen or text-only), disability (eg. using a speech synthesizer), or preferences different from your own (many people like to chose which images they are going to wait for).

The following demonstrators are included on my home page.

The page uses a simple inline style sheet. This will be visible on a compliant browser such as Arena or Netscape Navigator 4 (part of Netscape Communicator): text is indented relative to the headings, which should be in small-caps (but this latter doesn't seem to be supported yet, at least when I tried it last with Netscape 4.03).
The "What are we?" button activates a JavaScript 1.0 scrolling message in the status bar. Unlike many (too many) of these apps, this one can be turned off. Also you don't get it unless you ask for it.
Moving the pointer over the DELPHI event picture will show another view on a JavaScript 1.1 browser (currently only Netscape 3.0 or later, I believe). On earlier browsers, nothing will happen. Unfortunately I can't find any way of stopping this when image loading is disabled. Unlike other similar apps, this one will at least not load any images until the rest of the page text is done. It is also quite general, though I only present a simple example here.

Feel free to copy any of these. I ask only that you at least maintain all copyright notices in the source code. I have tried to make the JavaScript code as general as possible, with parameters in separate variables or passed from the initial event call. More JavaScript can by found on my WWW information page.

If you find that any of these features causes you trouble, please accept my apologies and do let me know.

First created: 22 Apr 1997

Tim Adye, <T.J.Adye@rl.ac.uk>