About Grobius Shortling...
About This Web Site...
Note: Early in the year 2000, AOL deleted my web page directory for violating Parental Controls (idiots!), and many pages were not recoverable, hence several
'broken links'. But since this menu is outdated anyway, it is being put up as is for
archival reasons.
Grobius Shortling in Brooklyn is an Internet Site (currently stored on
America Online) for miscellaneous subjects. The major web pages are listed in the
pop-down menus, although there are many more than that -- they can be reached
via links from other pages, or you can click on the Quick Index, which has them
all (I think, but can't be sure) in a nice incomprehensible table. If my web pages
cannot be faulted for frivolity or mild obscenity (they have both), then carp at the
overuse of different colors -- some purists go nuts if you don't stick to the plain
'silver' stuff like this page (well, the top part of it anyway).
Both Navigator and Explorer support the following color mnemonics if you don't
want to get involved with the more subtle RGB hexadecimal color schemes:
AQUA, GRAY, NAVY, SILVER, BLACK, GREEN, OLIVE, TEAL, BLUE, LIME, PURPLE,
WHITE, FUCHSIA, MAROON, RED, YELLOW -- plus about 50 other things like
BLANCHEDALMOND, LAVENDERBLUSH, PAPAYAWHIP, and God knows what all.
(I am notoriously bad at naming colors and having a visual image of them at the same time,
even when I know what I want, but know enough to say they can't be demonstrated here
well because of the background -- e.g., Aqua will barely show up at all, since that's as light
a color as the screen almost, and Yellow will also look like shit on this background.)
You need to have an advanced Web Browser installed, such as Netscape Navigator
3.0 or Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0, to use this Home Page to its full extent. Even
then, the results vary depending on the browser. Very irritating for a web page composer.
"http://members.aol.com/grobius/oldindex.htm" is my original Home Page,
and you should use this if you don't want all the fancy crap, or if you would rather view
my web pages on a full screen. (You can also click on Main Menu at the top at any
time that you get fed up with the Frame arrangement.) There have been other versions
of my web pages that may still be around -- experiment, experiment, that's the thing,
eh, Grobius? ("Scribble, scribble, eh, Mr Gibbon?" --George III). You could try
GFRAME, possibly. But space problems on the Server site have
often led to something being deleted -- what's this one? Don't know. Goodbye! I have
strenuously resisted the use of a web manager like Microsoft Front Page (who knows why,
just don't like it), so there are plenty of missing and broken links around, especially when it
comes to what were large graphics I couldn't recall what pages they were linked to
or what for -- I've actually gotten quite fond of that little icon with the X in it. Much better
than the button that doesn't do anything when you click on it, a common problem with
JavaScript and things like that.
Grobius Shortling is actually an eccentric programmer named Wyatt James, who
really does live in Brooklyn near Prospect Park (I much preferred Greenwich Village,
but those were the good old days). I've been programming for mainframes for over
20 years, but my wife made the mistake of getting me a PC for Xmas a couple of years
ago, and now I waste hours and hours doing stupid stuff like this...
My Computer
A perceptive critic thought the following information was just
clutter when it was on the main page; after all if you don't know how a pop-down
menu works you don't belong on a computer anyway. However, I never throw
anything away, so here it is.
| This
page utilizes Frames, Java Script, ActiveX controls, Microsoft
VBScript (Visual Basic), Animated GIFs and other advanced features now supported in
HTML. If you don't want any of this crap but still want to explore my site, click on
Grobius in the Dark Ages. Or the Quick Menu.
Netscape Navigator and Internet
Explorer do not provide mutual support of some features, so the results will be different
depending on which one you are using (and they both need to be Version 3 or above);
some things just won't work at all, which is frustrating but unavoidable as these two
fight it out for predominance. If this experimental page does not work satisfactorily with
your Browser, or you want better download performance -- not as much junk being loaded
into your hard drive temporary cache memory -- please open up the 'Dark Ages' page.
Technical notes:
- The top frame actually contains three areas, the tiny one on the right being the link to this "About Grobius..." blurb.
The rest of this menu bar is an Image file
with clickable 'hot spots' (a navigation bar, if you will), as opposed to actual HREF tags
imbedded in the HTML text.
- The lower part of the menu frame, with the pop-down lists, is strictly JavaScript. You
should be able to click on an entry and have the Web Page loaded into the general viewing
area where you are currently reading this. Select the very last bottom right entry to restore
the home page.
- The bottom frame is the main viewing area; most other items you open will be directed
into this space, and it will have a vertical scroll bar, since most of them won't entirely
fit into it. Note that there are some sub-sites that you can go to that will open a full window
(and get rid of the top frame); this is intentional -- you don't always want to have things
cutting off your viewing area. Also, one can get lost wandering around Frames and end up
with something like that child's game where you fold some paper into quarters and have a
different person draw each portion of the ultimate figure -- top the head, two the torso,
three the hips, and four the legs and feet -- bizarre results (ha ha).
[I haven't been to any classes for this type of progamming, so it is being done by the
'experimental method' -- that is, find some feature you like on someone else's web page,
examine the code (with Explorer's View tool), and try to make up something similar. A rich
mine field (and the ambiguity is intended) for this sort of thing is Microsoft's own web pages
at
"http://www.microsoft.com/"
-- they don't give a damn what you copy or download, because
they are out to conquer the world and you are just a mere peasant. It really is fairly easy
to write web pages, but it's a very finicky process to get them to work just the way you want
them. There are all sorts of "Wizard" software products out there to do all the behind-the-scenes
programming for you, but I won't go near them: just learning how to use the various tool bars
is harder than plugging away at the native code using a Notepad-type editor with some simple
HTML aids -- I recommend HTML-Pro Freeware version (the price is right) or Cranial Software's
HTML Notepad, which is even better, because you can insert Navigator or Explorer features
from the menu bar. From a program-oriented person's point of view, a product like Microsoft's
Front Page is an absolute nightmare of the Outer Limits genre.]
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