This site will look much better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.
There are three standards for compressing image files
and displaying them on the Web. Only two of these, GIF and JPEG, need to be considered.
» Read more
For several years I used my website to pass on information to computing students. This section was intially written as part of a project I carried out for the Open University region South, based in Oxford. The idea was to help Maths and Computing tutors with constructing a website. Displaying mathematics raises a lot of problems not faced by most subject areas. So with that in mind I set out to find, within certain limitations, how best to do it.
I have tried to keep this material up to date. I have also made substantial changes, not only to the structure and appearance of this site, but also to the means used for delivering its content. These pages are now, with a few exceptions, scripted using the PHP programming language. By doing so, I hope to reap the benefits of producing dynamically generated web pages, rather than deliver static HTML documents. As this site has grown, site maintenance has been a problem, particularly when modifying navigation menus. That should now prove to be a thing of the past.
My first website, written in 1998, was a contender for Web Pages That Suck. I have subsequently tried to learn from my mistakes. No doubt there are still flaws, but I like to think they are less obvious. Consequently, what follows is based on my own experiences of building and maintaining a website.
Next page » Form and Content