Yanmar Pleasure Boat Marine Engine Help

COMPUTER TALK

Dave:   Having recently taken over this site I will keep changes to a minimum as I'm a "learn as you go" webmaster. Unlike Dick I am using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 which I find quite easy to use. Like Dick I have various browsers installed IE6, Mozilla 1.5, Netscape 7.1 & Opera 7.23. I will try & test out any changes or new pages in the various browsers. I use a screen res of 1024x748.  If you come across any broken links or pages, please let me know so I can fix them. If you have any ideas that will help make the site more useful, please tell me.

Dick:    I suppose if one must learn about making and trying to present a website that looks professional enough to keep you coming back one needs to have a little page for geeks. I look upon myself as a geek with a spanner and a screwdriver, although this leads to some confusion in this office sometimes. The links on this site are all to free software that I have used and liked. To fit the 'OK' criteria the software must have a very low to zero learning curve, be minimalist and useful. Software that requires long and steep learning curves becomes difficult to get rid of when it looses its zing. The thought of learning something new becomes daunting! I've always expounded the 'KISS' principle (Keep It Simple Stupid!), although it is often easy to go for the all singing, all dancing software than plump for something simple, especially in the beginning when one doesnt know what one needs. ( The same applies to boats dont they? ) Two examples here are MS Office, a word processing program I once spent a day on a course to find that I already knew all I needed to know. To write a monthly report to the boss and daily letters to customers doesnt need a 129MB wordprocessing and spreadsheet program. It remains in use as I havent found another WP that fits my 'fzmu' criteria. The other is MS FrontPage, the program I used from the start to write this website. It is a juggernaut. The previous ' home ' page took 602 lines of code, with less content. It has now been reduced to 123 lines of code making for comparatively faster page loading times. I say 'comparative' because I've added more graphics so it may not be apparent. By not using FP I can remove the FrontPage Extensions from the server, allowing more options to be employed. FP requires 'Server Extensions' to make it work, is not standards compliant and works in ways that lock you in to continuing to use it unless you do a major re-vamp like this one. Its good point is its ease of use and I must compliment Microsoft on creating some great products over the years, computing would be a poorer place without them. I dont support Microsoft, and wont, since their introduction of XP and their new licensing concepts. When you buy a book it doesnt continue to belong to the publishing company after you've paid at the store! Another aspect is that if you want to peruse my filing cabinet you would normally ask, and if you get a refusal you need a court order to have a look. This is a process MS cunningly attempt to circumvent so they can peer into your electronic filing cabinet at their will. Avarice will eventually be their downfall, but I just dont expect this to happen soon. I dont see other operating systems taking over in the near future.
A major re-vamp has now taken place to this website, a couple of months work! Using HTMLkit I built a 'style' sheet and then rebuilt the individual pages on this site. I can now change the appearance of the site quite simply and adding content is easier.
Each page is tested with Microsoft IE6, IE5.5 Japanese version, Opera 7.11, Opera 6.05 and Mozilla, a general cross section of free web browsers.
A browser that took my fancy was OPERA. This browser is a lot smaller than IE6 ( download size about ¹/₅th with my configuration ) and has features I really like. 'Mouse gestures' are great and when using another browser I get annoyed when 'mouse gestures' dont work. Also by pressing F11 on the keyboard you can get a 'Power Point' type presentation of the web page you are looking at, a great way to get rid of the peripheral junk on the screen! It has an integrated email progam and, from Opera 7, uses M2, a database based email program. It took me a few days to get used to it but now I could never go back to an 'Outlook Express' type system. Another positive aspect of Opera is that it is not affected by 'Outlook' email virus'. It doesnt have the add-ons like 'Outlook', e.g. calendar, to-do list etc., but then I never used them. I also like the look of Mozilla, nice and crisp, but it doesnt have Opera's features yet.
I learned that all browsers dont display the same, making it difficult to build a page that looks as I intended across the different browsers, these pages will appear to display differently in each browser despite my efforts. The detective work required to make it all work has kept my brain busy for a while. The pages were rewritten to suit a multi-display size after it became apparent the majority of visitors use 1024x748 display resolutions or larger.
I started using Javascript, even though it is against my 'KISS' principle, when I learned that the ship load of spam I was getting was from spam 'spiders' sucking my email addresses from this website. SO, please enable Javascript while browsing at YANMARHELP.COM . I also found that pop-ups were the best way to display some photo's and still read what is on the page underneath, I apologise to those of you who have pop-ups disabled.