Site News

Via private discussions, it occurs to me that there is a constituency of those who knew Rachel who may wish to comment in the Guestbook yet have not done so and cannot easily do so: those with no computer access. (Thanks right here and now to those of you who have already helped our non-computer family and friends post.)

There are any number of ways this situation can be addressed; i will now describe some methods that should work decently.

The obvious one is one some of you have very likely helped with: sitting the person down in front of a computer, with the Guestbook page showing, all set up to type in their name and their Guestbook comment. One issue is that the WordPress software we are using requires an email address, and of course non-computer people will not have one. Just put in something bogus in the proper format (my favorite is nil@nowhere.mil) to keep the software happy, and all should be well. (I have not tried this; if it fails, please someone let me know.)

Another option is to send Louise or myself a standard email, with the person’s name and their Guestbook comment (please, only for non-computer-enabled people). I can put it in under their name.

Similarly, it is OK to send a traditional paper letter to us, with the Guestbook comment and the author’s name to:

Remembering Rachel
2200 E. Orange Grove Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91104

I’ll scan it (if typed) or manually type it in (if handwritten and between Louise and myself we can read it), under the name of the original author.

(No new site content to announce at this time, nor any ETA.)

No new content to announce at the moment… Louise is working on it. (For those of you who are experienced website designers, the rest of this post is about the Joys of CSS.)

It may seem like not much has been going on here besides your wonderful and thoughtful comments in the Guestbook, yet this is not the case. Besides the primary purpose of being a living memorial for Rachel, this site also is allowing me to experiment and grow as a motivated amateur website designer, as i have been since 1996.

Weeks ago, one of you made a couple of suggestions regarding the look of the website. While Louise and i decided that we did not want to make those changes to the site for everyone, i realized one morning that no one has to be locked into looking at (or listening to) a website in one particular way. While it is a little-known fact and a hardly-used technique, the originators and maintainers of the WWW standards have empowered each and every WWW user with the ability to be in control of how they view the Web… You Have The Power.

Now, not all websites will allow you your full power (this one does!), nor all web browsers. Yet most modern browsers offer a powerful gateway for you to take control. It is likely hidden in the preferences of the browser, possibly very deep, yet usually there: The ability to add a user style sheet (may go by other names, maybe “custom style sheet”). This ability allows You The Visitor nearly total control over what many websites look like: colors, backgrounds (or none), fonts, and more!

A couple of catches, though… one small and one big. The small one: You The User have to either make your one personal style sheet work for all sites you visit (this can be done), or you have to change or disable your custom personal style sheet except on the site for which you designed it. The big one: You The User have to understand and be able to create Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) documents. Not rocket science, yet can look an awful lot like computer code to non-geeks. If it does not work as you expect or produces unacceptable results, You The User have to fix it… after all, it is only on your computer and no one else is seeing what you are seeing.

Given my educated guess that the person who made the suggestions is likely not a website designer (yet?) nor are most visitors to this site, i sought and found an alternate solution that would offer choices where there usually are none, yet not require anyone besides me to have the joy of playing with CSS, HTML, and other technologies in love with their own abbreviations. It is not the same because We The Site Creators are still in control of how everything looks, yet now there is an option, currently for the Guestbook and Site News pages only.

While the original suggestions were just that—suggestions, i took them as a challenge for personal growth as a web designer. I quickly discovered that, due to limitations of even today’s best web browsers, i would need to learn technologies i had never used (ECMA script, more or less the same as Javascript, and cookies). That is where i have been and what i have been doing to improve this site over the last few weeks.

The upshot of all this is that at the bottom left of this Site News page and the Guestbook page, one will now find a pop-up list with two options:

• default RGM style
• Priscilla’s style

Default RGM style is the style sheet we have been using so far, with Rachel’s Garden Nymph photo as the background. It is how these pages will continue to look if you take no action, or if you have disabled scripting in your browser. If you have scripting enabled (and if you don’t know, you do have it enabled), you will be able to switch to a second choice, which we named Priscilla’s style, by selecting it in the pop-up list.

Note: Priscilla made suggestions, which i independently interpreted and implemented. The existence of this alternate style sheet is as much news to her as anyone else besides myself and Louise. Priscilla may or may not approve of my interpretation of her suggestions.

People with scripting Off will still see the pop-up and be able to make the selection, yet nothing will happen. Most people will see the following changes with this alternate stylesheet:

• The Garden Nymph photo will disappear, and the background will only be the solid color usually seen around the edges.
• Clip art illustrations of flowers, a butterfly, and a hummingbird will appear at the top of the page.
• On the Guestbook page only, each of your comment entries will be in italics.

If you allow your browser to accept cookies (remember when they were called Magic Cookies?), then your stylesheet choice will be remembered when you go between pages and reload pages. If you allow your browser to keep cookies between sessions, your choice will be remembered until you change it, or you toss your browser’s cookies (while hopefully not tossing your cookies), or one year passes.

Remember: all this only applies to this Site News page and the Guestbook page. The rest of the site continues to look the same and offer no choices… yet You Have The Power to make your own stylesheet and change whatever you want!

By request, i have bumped up the font sizes here on the Site News page and on the Guestbook in an effort to make it more readable. Better? Worse? Don’t care? Please email or comment here. Thanks.

Thanks to John (scanning) and Simone (forwarding) and Louise (layout), Rachel’s 2007 list of letters sent has been added to the Hobbies, Geneology, Contentment page.

Louise has been otherwise occupied, so no new content since the last update. I have been doing wee bits of fine-tuning on WordPress, the system that runs this page and the Guestbook. We know that we still need to introduce ourselves to those outside the immediate family, as well as discuss ways for you wonderful folks who are so motivated to contribute (besides those of you who already have! Thanks!) beyond writing in the Guestbook. And… we appreciate those of you who contribute your thoughts on Rachel to the Guestbook, as well as those of you who merely want to visit and remember Rachel.

Actually, the new pictures on the Hobbies, Geneology, Contentment page went up on Rachel’s birthday (8 January), but i am only writing about it now. Sweaters, hats, gloves, and other knitting work are now well represented (or at least beginning to be.

Hopefully none of you noticed that on some pages, most of the navigation links at the bottom failed to work. They have now been fixed. Please comment here or email me if you find other problems like this. Thanks!

If you are reading this post, then chances are good that the Guestbook is up and running (a day late and a dollar short), as it and this revised Site News page are directly related to each other. It has been a slow, bumpy ride, and there still may be a few bumps along the road. If you are experiencing problems with the Guestbook or leaving comments here on the Site News page, for now contact us via whatever means of communication you prefer, which includes emailing me (Nick, known to many, yet not all).

We’re definitely remembering Rachel, and i am not at all forgetting about her memorial website! Both of us have been hard at work. I am really hoping that before the end of the day, the Guestbook system will be in place. You’ll know when this happens because there will be a Guestbook link at the bottom of every page on the site, it will be proudly proclaimed here, and this page itself will look a bit different (and you will be able to comment here, too).

Yes, it has been a long time. Specifically, it has been a frustrating 3 weeks battling an unhelpful, unresponsive, and irresponsible web hosting company (Netfirms). For those who do not know how this WWW stuff works, “just plain folks” like us pay an ISP to “host” this website: all the files that make it work live on this company’s server computers, running and connected to the internet 24/7 (theoretically). As Netfirms was not taking any responsibility for the misoperation of the Guestbook software they provide, and was refusing to discuss the issue, i had to waste the last week or so shopping for a decent website hosting ISP, which is not at all easy as that industry is full of liars and hidden “gotchas”. I may have a lot more to say about this on this site, eventually, but not on this page, as it is not directly relevant to remembering Rachel.
Onward….