Site Description and Intent
The intent of this site is to provide unique, interactive and benificial web sites. There are several sections which cover a fairly broad spectrum of interests. However, they all have the same design goals and overall intent. The single common thread is that they are all in essence fully featured programs that simply use the web as an interface between the user and the program.
I have written small application programs most of my life and I have always struggled with the user interface. I have used numerous toolkits and even built my own complex interfaces. However, the same issues keep arising, most notably cross compatibility and feature changes. However, the more I experiment with the tools available for web programming, the more I am convinced that many of these applications are perfectly suited to be placed behind a web interface.
Recently, the recipe junction was added and is a fully functional recipe indexing and categorizing site. If you have any interest in recipes and cooking, click on the link to find out more about this site.
Several of the links are just containers for future items. Several of the upcoming (hopefully) features that I envision include the following:
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Web Publisher
I have written several howtos and even some shorter stories that I have always wanted to publish in some extent or the other. Assumedly, there are others that have information or writings that they would like to share. This will provide an elegant and simple interface where these items could be uploaded, indexed and managed by the individual author.
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Web Budget
A personnel budget tool that can be accessed from anywhere with web access. The main feature is the ability to be able to compare actual financial position against a budget in real time.
Site Design Goals
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Meaningful use of Javascript
I originally had an adversion to javascript and wanted to avoid it all together. However, as I have used it more, I have found javascript to be quite easy to implement. I do believe that javascript is a great way to add some style to a web page. The goal is to use it meaningfully and hopefully in an overall un-obtrusive manner.
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Clean Interface
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Valid and Readable HTML/CSS
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Minimal Advertisments
Making these sites take a lot of time. In addition, even though these are run on my own server, there is storage space, maintenance and connection fees. So, I run adsense on the site with directed and hopefully useful links. That being said most of the sites I visit now days are impossible to navigate because of the ads. I refuse to use sites that have pop-up hover windows over keywords, annoying audio advertisements or intensive video advertisements. If I had to do that to keep my site up, I would simply shut it down. So ads on this site will be present, but unobtrusive.