Softwrights' Web Site... Philosophy Behind It
The main purpose of this site is to provide enough information
for you to see if our products meet your needs and to provide help for
existing users of Softwrights' products ... Useful information
is the focus ... Not time/screen wasting fluff like large animations and
large graphics.
Here are the major goals (in approximate order of importance) that drove
the design of this site:
- Useful Information ... Practical, comprehensive information.
- Easy to navigate ... No more than 2 levels of menu nesting.
- Fast loading ... Don't waste your time with unnecessary waits.
- Readable by most browsers old and new ... Avoid unnecessary new HTML
tags.
- Attractive ... Easy to read layouts ... Small, fast-loading,
eye-catching graphics on home page.
Note: The above was our philosophy from day
one... Back in early 1996 (Web ancient history). Back then (as even now)
many design guides were pushing the latest features, resulting in
attractive, but slow-to-download Web sites that couldn't be displayed by
millions of people with older browsers, or people who didn't have the
latest plug-ins.
Web sites are a mixed blessing. They are great ways to
distribute information widely and inexpensively. But they have several
layout limitations compared to paper and different
browsers support or don't support different features ... Generally, the
latest HTML "tags" and extensions were avoided ... Except where
necessary and where other browsers (those that don't support a feature)
would still present readable information.
- Modest use of Graphics... Graphics and animations
look good, but they take a long time
to download ... Softwrights decided to keep graphics and animations to a
minimum to avoid frustrating delays.
- Graphics Size (Compression versus Quality)... To
minimize download time, graphics were compressed as much as possible
while maintaining a decent look.
- To speed up display time, the Height and Width
Netscape attributes for images were used ... Many browsers
ignore these. Since we did not scale these attributes, the
graphics look exactly the same in all browsers.
- The Font Color Explorer extension was
used on some pages to attract attention.
- The <EM> and <STRONG>logical
style tags were used instead of <B> and <I> physical
styles tags ... This is in the spirit of the SGML philosophy of
leaving display details to the browser.
- To separate bullet points by a blank line (like
here), separate <UL> tags were used for each bullet point ...
Instead of dividing each point with just <LI> tags (no blank lines
between points). Or using <BR> trailing tags that some browsers
ignore in lists.
- Tables are great. But millions of browsers don't
support them (information gets jumbled out of sequence in those) ...
Especially if there are several columns. Besides, more than a couple of
columns cannot be read on most screens without scrolling around.
With two exceptions, Softwrights decided
not to use tables. The home page (main menu) uses a
table with two columns. One column displays graphics
... The other column displays explanatory text ... No border (Border = "0")
is displayed. Tables were also used to display, in indented form, the
This Page and Other Pages navigational links that
appear at the top and bottom of every page (except the home page).
- The Table Spacing Explorer extension was
used to make the home page table more attractive ... Many browsers
ignore this so the table will be slightly less attractive in those.
- Hot Metal (TM)
Pro 4.0 (3.0 previously) for Windows by SoftQuad Ltd.
... For near, what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) HTML web editing.
- HotDog (TM) Pro
2.0 for Windows by Sausage Software/Anawave Software, Inc. ...
For those occasions when low-level HTML editing is more productive.
- Corel Xara (TM) by
Corel Corporation and Xara Ltd. Used primarily for its antialiasing
(makes jagged lines appear smoother on-screen) capabilities, conversion
to interlaced GIF format, and other graphics tools ... Antialiasing
dramatically improved the on-screen appearance of Softwrights' logo, the
old typewriter, and other graphics.
- Paint Shop Pro by Jasc Software & PhotoImpact by
Ulead... For creating/tweaking graphics.
- DeBabelizer Pro by Equilibrium... For graphics file format
conversions and to slash the size of graphics files... This program is
not cheap, but it's superb!
- MetalWorks by SoftQuad Ltd. ... To convert screen
shots in PCX format to Interlaced (progressive display) GIF format. And
for color reduction, adding borders, and adding text.
- GIF Construction Set by Alchemy Mindworks, Inc. ...
To put together animated multiple-image GIF files.
- Several Web browsers were used to double-check the
appearance of pages and support for tags ... Microsoft®
Internet Explorer 4.0 andNetscape Navigator 2.01 to check
what site looks like on an old browser (previously used America Online®
version 3.0's browser, and the Compuserve®
WinCIM® version 2.0.1's SPRY
Mosaic version 04 browser ... good for checking for downward
compatibility since it doesn't support newer HTML tags like font colors
and tables).
- Corel Capture by Corel Corporation ... To grab
screen shots from Softwrights Windows programs likeSoftwrights Stop
Button and Softwrights Stop Reminder.
- pcxGrab by Genus Microprogramming
(TM), Inc. ... To grab screen shots under
DOS from You'll Soon Be Typing in PCX format.
- Microsoft Visual C++ (TM)
by Microsoft® Corporation ... To program (in C for efficiency, not
C++) the full-retail and free-trial download versions of You'll
Soon Be Typing, Softwrights Reminder, and their Setup
programs. ... Version 1.52 was used for 16-bit (DOS and Windows 3.1)
programs and version 6.0 (previously 5.0) was used for 32-bit (Windows
95/NT) programs
- Wise Installation System by Wise Solutions, Inc. (previously
used WinZip® Self-Extractor
and WinZip® by Nico
Mak Computing, Inc) ... To produce the self-extracting download files
for our products.
- Norton AntiVirus 5 (previously used Norton AntiVirus 4.0 &
3.0 and PC-cillin 95® by
TouchStone Software Corporation and Trend Micro Devices Incorporated)
... To ensure that viruses are not on our retail or free-trial programs
(or anything else on Softwrights' computers).
- Teach Yourself Web Publishing With HTML 3.0 In A Week
by Laura Lemay ... Comprehensive reference book on HTML and Web page
design.
- Teach Yourself Perl 5 In 21 Days by David Till ...
Comprehensive reference book on the Perl programming language (used for
CGI scripting).
Copyright © 1996 - 1999 by
Softwrights, Inc. All Rights Reserved
