Hypercompendia

So far, Safari has been able to point out various HTML errors that Firefox automatically appears to override and fix.  I’ve used Firefox and like it, but when working on a hypertext piece that’s going to go online, it’s become obvious that you need to pick one of the pickier browsers to work with.

What worked beautifully in Firefox didn’t work with all browsers. I have FF and Safari on the Mac–which is naturally where I’m working since I use Tinderbox to start the piece out. On my PC, which I rarely use but have for backup and to hold all the years’ worth of stuff pre-Mac, I use Internet Explorer as the default browser and have since downloaded Chrome and Opera. That gives me two operating systems and five browsers to check the work. Also, I might add, different screen resolutions because of the various monitor sizes. This led to the last problem I need to deal with, the background images which looked great on my Mac, but fell a couple hundred pixels short on the PCs.

Safari’s refusal to accept font color tags unless they were posted before each paragraph of hidden or stretch text (in a group of three paragraphs, the middle one would return to the main text color) was similar to one of the other browsers that would only take the first paragraph and then return. I’m sure there’s a more professional way of doing this–which is why I wish I’d learned coding from the basics instead of jumping into the middle–but I did manage to fix by tagging each paragraph.

The problem of an uncentered image on the first page, where I inserted a 400px wide image instead of the 550px, I had used the proper code within the head:

<style type=”text/css”>

.stretchTarget {
margin: none;
margin-left: 100px;
}

</style>

It wasn’t until I studied another page where I’d done the same thing in stretchtext that I discovered I had changed a headline size from h1 to h2 but hadn’t changed the closing tag. (The image came from the linked headline) and so even though the headline was okay, it messed up what followed–the image.

So while I’ll likely still work in Firefox, I’ll know enough to doublecheck immediately each page in Safari as I work. Of course the best way would be to run the pages through the W3C Validation Service, but that shows me that my pages really have no right to be working at all and just makes me feel bad.

Have finally spent some time yesterday on finishing up A Bottle of Beer. I’ve included images I’ve taken myself and Photoshopped into more artistically (some, not all are done well–I’ve gotten some confidence since several of my graphics have now been accepted for publication!) suitable visuals and managed to get them to “hide” and “unhide” via stretchtext.

It’s likely the “flashiest” piece I’ve done, and likely that is because it was first written into Hyptertextopia and that was their basic color choice–black background and brightly colored links. But it suits this piece, and while I’m tempted to explain that the colored text that is revealed via links are the themes and separate from the main (white text) narrative, I suppose I’ll have to “Barthesize” and let the reader figure that out. And love it or hate it.

I’m still working on the problem of the hidden text not remaining consistent in color in Safari and Internet Explorer. I’ve solved it by adding the font tags to each paragraph. I’ve still to check if the stretchtext works in IE and Chrome. It works properly in Firefox (which is what I use) and in Safari so far. (UPDATE: Chrome showed up two open font tags but everything else was okay–odd that Safari and Firefox automatically closed them. Also, in working on the other PC with a larger screen, didn’t realize my background images set at 1280 x 800 weren’t sufficient. Have to work on that so that not too much relevant stuff is cut out on the right hand side. Maybe need to float or code to fit screen?) (UPDATE #2: Downloaded and tried Opera and everything works.)

Learned a lot, and am happy that this piece–aside from the tweaks and maybe some image changes–is finally displayed at its best.

Had to export the new Bottle of Beer online to work with it since the new Tinderbox version doesn’t show the stretchtext and the html templates don’t show the hypertext flow. It’s easier to see where images might be effective in the linear flow of the work, and in the hard drive file of html pages, the files are alphabetical.

I do have a problem. While the stretchtext seemed to easily accommodate the images while I was working with the local files, once it was exported onsite, the images weren’t being called in. I’ve tried a couple different browsers (I use Firefox normally) such as Safari and IE, but so far, it doesn’t work. I’ve also changed the coding to reflect “url” though I’ve yet to type in the whole url, and I’ve changed the file location from a separate images file to standing within the whole “abob” file.

Switched the font to Rockwell which is a bit more readable in the colored text on black than Georgia was, and a bit more classy than the Lucida Grande I was using.

Found the no-repeat coding for the images on the background, though I still can’t seem to tweak the right lines to make the image go all the way across the screen nor have some top margin. But an alternate way of working with the background images is to produce a black screen in Photoshop and drag in the image and place it where I want it, such as this: