Um...Okay, time to update my website.

25th Jan, 2024

This is my blog now.

Here it is. The one on the right. Or look arround in the window.

Pretty normal R/N, except I decided to do the stupid thing and use SHTML files. Yeah, what are those?

Well, it's a good idea in concept. Lisaa introduced them to me in her HTML help blog (not personally, obv.) Basically, it's a HTML file, but the extra "S" informs the server to look for a special comment, then insert some other data there before sending it out, in my case another SHTML file. I say in concept because in practice, not olny have I misused this feature to oblivion, but most free webhosts don't support them, being an obscure thing and all.

This includes Neocities, sadly.

The way I see it, that's 'cos it's kinda like a cross between having frames on your site (which is no longer reccomended BTW) and having an active website. Except it's kinda worse than having an active website, because what to include is hard-baked into the file. And seemingly everyone just used the two extremes (you: brilliant observation Jojo.)

So I guess you can see how terrible that desicion was. And get this, I've not even put my site online yet R/N. This is all running off a virtual server. Like, on my PC. Web design sure is hard.

There are a few alternatives to SHTML, which include:

• Ikewise Online's "Client-side includes" (Warning: very finicky)

Well, SHTML's main feature is actually called "server-side includes", as it takes place within the server. Ikewise managed to achive a similar effect by abusing the JavaScript "document.write()" function.

I don't really recommend this anymore because, well, it's kinda clunky. document.write() olny works one line at a time, as far as I'm concerned, leading to....this....



Note the first comment.

And, also, if the next method really works the way I expect, I don't see any reason to use the former.



• Abusing the HTML "object" tag.

Well, it turns out that this doesn't do what I want. It does seem useful, however. I may have to look into this more....later. I've wasted lots of machine time on Oddity Archive, and I don't think I can recover.



Where I am R/N. Navigation on the left seems to be a common pattern for framesites IMO.

(That Kodak intro, however. It goes hard. Ba ba ba ba baum-bum, braaa ba ba baam-baam-BRAAAAAAA!)

Yeah, but why should I care about this?

Well you don't have to, but I do. Switching away from SHTML would improve host support, meaning I might just yet actually get this website... erm...on the web. And, also, I'm seeking to simplify my page layout to something similar to vintage frame sites. I think I overdone myself with the template. While it does look noice, I think that I've limited myself somewhat. Unlike those other frame sites that can just load whatever they want willy- nilly into their frames. While I'm not gonna do frames, at least webpage maintainability will go up.

So there, too. And, also, sorry if this entry kinda ended adruptly. I'm still new to this. Ciao........ Thanks.

Gotta get back to that Oddity Archive video and see where that Kodak jingle came from.