homepage Forums SimHQ Community Community Hall Needing website publishing advice (several pics)

I promise to make this as short as possible.

A quick back story...

With the PC, other than going online I live in the year 2000. I prefer the simplicity, small size, speed and lack of online activation of software from this era (I remember at the time I thought Microsoft and Autodesk could do no wrong)...



Full screen...
http://198.65.10.229/DID/Temp/Win2K_a.png




Full screen...
http://198.65.10.229/DID/Temp/Win2K_b.png


Even my Win7x64 laptop I use for online is setup as no-nonsense as possible...



Full screen...
http://198.65.10.229/DID/Temp/Win7_a.png


In the '90s to early '00s, I made a sizable investment in software, and I'm still comfortable using these programs (no Ribbon GUI / overuse of icons). Part of that investment was purchasing FrontPage 2000, although I have an unused FP2002 bundled with Office.

Here's the website I made with FP2000 for my business over a decade ago (sans the e-commerce pages)...



Full website...
http://198.65.10.229/DID/lt-solutions/index.htm


Obviously amateurish even back then (terrible looking today) but it worked well enough, even my store (not a project I'd tackle today). I've long since forfeited my domain names: lt-solutions.com, marcobatch.com, macrodraft.com, the above link was a simple FTP transfer to my current hosting service, not a formal �publish� by FP2000. But as far as I can tell it works (i.e. page and download links), other than a small easy to fix glitch on the bottom border (text touching line).

Soon I plan to create a new website for showing the progress of my F-19/F-117 remake. Since this isn't a commercial venture I'm not interested in a professional site, I'd really like to do it myself in FP2000, creating it on my Win2000 desktop and doing another FTP transfer. And I don't see why this shouldn't work like what I'm seeing with my old business site.

But I'm viewing the site in IE 11, I'm not sure how it appears in other browsers. Could those of you with a different browser (i.e. Firefox, tablet, iPad, etc.) just take a quick look at the site to make sure it appears similar to the pic above the link?

Again it's...
http://198.65.10.229/DID/lt-solutions/index.htm


I'd be happy if I don't have to purchase and learn to use another website development software. With AutoCAD, VB6 and my DX7-based game development tools, I'm stuck with MS Windows/IE so I'm not familiar with other OSs or web browsers. I just need to know if using FP2000 is still a feasible solution before I get started using it again.

I appreciate it.

I'm using SeaMonkey (a Mozilla Firefox based browser suite) and the website looks like the picture and functions fine so far as I can tell.

BTW... My Win7 desktop looks just like your screenshot, too.

Thanks, Firefox was the one I was most interested in as you can use this in Windows, right?

Vista/Win7...yeah, don't need the Bling Bling. I want my OS to be as utilitarian as possible, transparent, manage my files and run my programs (i.e. DOS/XTree Gold). All the other crap I want to be optional, to be able to install a minimal yet functional stream-lined OS while adding and removing extras as I need them! I need a new Win2000!

AutoCAD...that one now is just utterly hopeless. But the hi-res Ribbon is so darn pretty, it's worth taking up so much of the screen (drawing area)! Plus all the similar-looking icons filling up the status bar, plain text might be easier to distinguish but it's so...passe. Plus you get Facebook and Twitter icons on the drawing startup screen, WOW!

Autodesk (working so hard to make AutoCAD like Office) and Microsoft won't be getting any more of my money.

++++++++++

EDIT: Sorry for the OT rant, but this is funny (top review is new and positive [and highly suspicious upon close inspection], others not so much)...
AutoCAD 2014 User Reviews

"AutoCAD sucks so good, every day in the office is like being in a porn movie."

Using Google Chrome on a Samsung Galaxy s4 (android) the site runs great. All links work and it's alot quicker than ALOT of the 'pro' sites out there

.

What staggers me is that the file manager included with Windows 7 is one of the most pathetic pieces of software I have ever used. It even falls short on basic GUI concepts that have been around for ages (context sensitive scrolling? tabs?).

Tigerwulf, thanks. This pretty much confirms it, I can keep using FP2000 if I want.

jamiroq, thanks for the tips, probably more than I want to deal with right now but I'll save those suggestions for the future. And I really will, I'm still checking out tunes from my '80s music thread and that was months ago.

++++++++++

My site looks old because it IS old. 1/28/03 was the last time I updated it.

Quick story of what happened...

The start of 2003 my future couldn't have looked brighter including international sales, paid business trips to Atlanta, and HP interested in shipping MacroBatch with their DesignJet plotters. I thought I was about to hit the big time!

While my newest program was doing really well in Beta (never made it to retail)...
http://198.65.10.229/DID/Temp/mdmep.PNG

Then in 2003 Autodesk started going after those whom they felt were making AutoCAD LT too functional...
Autodesk seek legal compliance from LT-Extender (10-17-2003)

At the time drcAuto of Australia were known as the king of LT add-ons...
http://www.cad.com.au/drcauto/

....and they too were stopped, not directly nor immediately but by Autodesk locking down LT even tighter, making it harder to customize beyond their simple documentation. The owner Gary died of a stroke dealing with it.

I was assured by an Autodesk lawyer that my methods of customizing LT were compliant (creative even), but the lock-down took me out too, and that was that. By the end of 2003 I was finished...and lost, coming here to mess with something different like flight sims (per my registration date).

I'm still bitter as hell about it, also about the death of VB "Classic". Both could have been handled differently, IMO. So now I'm using AutoCAD and VB6 to create my in-house development tools which I think is therapeutic, as if several years of my life (1995 � 2003) weren't completely wasted. But once I get my game out (at least in Alpha) I think I'll get over it and move on.

++++++++++

And THAT is why my website looks so dated! My next site will be for a game so it should be a lot more fun.

I use SeaMonkey as well, and one of the things I like about it,
is that as a complete HTML suite, it includes a web page composer
as well. So, you can pick up a free web page creator package,
from Mozilla, and have a fully contemporary compatible web
page creation software, which may not be super fancy, but is
quite easy to use, and you can bang out a page with little
time or effort. I wrote this one with it (not the site and banner
menu, though, just the page content):
http://bob2wov.com/documentation-tutorials/battle-of-britain-terrain-editing-v-2-10/





(I like to write text in html in Seamonkey, rather than
using any word processor with proprietary format, as I think it
is rather rude to send people texts in proprietary formats that
require them to acquire a specific piece of software to read them,
or else require me to find a piece of software that generates pseudo
public standard format text like pdf (you won't ever find a free
pdf writer, as that's where Adobe makes their money, either directly
or via licence). )

Yes, the Composer is a subtle, yet decently powerful and simple tool. I've used my SeaMonkey Composer for two projects, was a snap.

And a favorite addon for SeaMonkey: PrefBar

Lets me pick and choose my desired options and I can put controls for them right on the browser UI.

I used Windows 7 to covert the BMPs to PNGs on this thread, which reminded me how much I dislike the Windows Explorer in 7 vs. 2000 and XP. I don't mind Windows 7 for what I use it for but I'd never want to have to "work" in 7.

Seems to me these new OSs are catering to managing large inventories of content (software, games, music) while pointing to the cloud. It's probably beneficial for those who use to let their Win95+ Start > Program menus get out of control, I've seen complete messes made of these menus.

And Restore Points, another feature to help protect you from yourself. I'd rather take full responsibility for my PCs and utilize my own organization/restore.

"You can free more disk space by removing all but the most recent restore point".

That's BS! I want the option, not just to turn it off but...

"You can free more disk space by removing ALL restore points and then uninstall this feature completely�.

And where's the option to have a file NOT automatically sort in a large listing when renamed? Seems were getting less options as we go. I'm sure there's a 3rd-party solution I can purchase for these problems, just as I had to purchase a Defragmenter for Windows NT. But Windows 2000 fixed all this 13 years ago, I shouldn't have to go looking for add-ons today. The days of needing a "Norton Utilities" should be long behind us.

These days, there are 3rd party solutions that
don't cost anything, but I won't claim to be
expert in the selection. I have recently been
using a free 3rd party file manager called
"Midnight Commander", which alas, is rather
modelled after Norton Commander; I'd rather have
an XTree clone, but I'm too damn cheap to pay
for ZTree. Anyway, I only use it for its ability
to order files from a whole branch of subfolders
alphabetically, or by date, in one column, and
then move blocks of them to other folders. Good
for manually syncing pairs of folder trees.

What we're seeing today is change for the sake of change, even to the detriment of productivity.

Microsoft completley failed in the GUI of Visual Studio, and users who complained were treated as if they were just reluctant to change and needed to adapt...
Overcoming the New Visual Studio UI

Apparently the GUI was just that bad...
GUI is unusable
Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 - is ugly as hell

So bad some people were literally in tears...
Visual Studio 11 is ugly and makes me cry

And fortunately for them MS gave in and retracted their GUI abomination...
Color Returns to Visual Studio 11 User Interface

++++++++++

Apple also blundered badly with the 3rd generation of iPod Shuffle...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Shuffle

The four generations from left to right...
Shuffle Generations

I own a couple of 2nd and 4th gen Shuffles because I like how they fit on my headphones. I use an older version of iTunes but I've never purchased any media from iStore (already have all that I listen to on CD). The 3rd gen was a mistake and Apple fixed it by reverting to the 2nd gen. design. Well, the 3rd gen is not exactly like 2nd gen but it's really close, the 2nd gen is still the better one IMO as it has separate buttons for On/Off and Shuffle/Ordered Play. The newer one tries to be a little more hip while sacrificing ergonomics (form over function is popular today).

++++++++++

These are just two recent examples where change for the sake of change had a negative impact, and I think we're going to see a lot more of this in the future.

I think if MS had its way we'd all be looking at file listings in Icon view vs. Detailed view. Oooh, the icons are trendy and you don't need detailed info about what's on your PC anyway, just let Windows handle it all for you. We're MS and we know best.

Seriously, read my first link on this post, the attitude of 'accept change because we know what's best for you' is freggin' scary. I might be a dinosaur (Win2000) but I know nothing of mine will be "improved" on the whims of MS.

It's called "change for the sake of stockholders."



The Jedi Master