Technical notes

Under the hood

(This page will look better if you use a browser that supports web standards, although it can be accessed by most browsers. Upgrading to a standards-compliant browser will enhance your reading experience.)

This is the second incarnation of the technical notes. Lists version differences.

Templates, stylesheets, and script modules hand-coded using Notepad and EditPad Lite. Tested on Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 and 5.5; portions tested on Netscape Communicator 4.0, 4.75, Netscape 4.8 and Netscape 6 beta and 6.1. Version 7 and above maintained using Movable Type 2.0. Layouts before version 6 run through custom content management system MERGe, © Jan Michael Ibañez. MERGe is distributed under the GNU GPL.

All current files are standards-compliant.

Platform used:
Windows 98 box running on AMD-K6 with 32MB RAM, shared VRAM (1 MB) via SiS 5597/98, 1 GB HDD; Windows Me box running on Pentium III with 64MB RAM.

This site is XHTML 1.0 as well as CSS level 2 compliant. Splash page is HTML 4.01. Old entries might not be compliant.

Current interface version: 8

Layout archive


Major changes

July 16, 2002

Finished stylesheet switcher JavaScript and CSS. Idea taken from here, here, and here. Layouts used for CSS are versions 3, 4, 6, and 7. New layout created: "Caffeine" (internal: v8). Version 5 layout was initially offered, but there were major problems with it, and has been since taken down. Layouts before version 7 were retrofitted to work with the v7 document/div structure.

April 9, 2002

Installed Movable Type 2.0. Created v7 layout. Image is from iStockPhoto, heavily modified using personal image collection. I've abandoned the MERGE system for a better one. Site is now a sub-site under CyberLizard productions, in my DR site. F2S shut down their free service last February.

Note: All pages validate as XHTML 1.0/Transitional under the W3C Validator.

October 9, 2001

Fixed IE5.0/PC and NN6.x/PC rendering problems. Added #sectionwrap to fix #section from showing slightly above #data, as well as adding a <br clear="all" /> to force NN6.x/PC to render #data within the #contentwrap wrapper.

October 5, 2001

Created v5 layout. Image is from Ken, modified for use here. Removed decimal; I'll maintain decimal however to track splash pages.

Content is now separated from layout code via proprietary content management. Although CSS-based layouts have most of the layout and styling separated from the content, I can now integrate different CSS div frameworks with the content. (Did that make sense?)

Will now relaunch October 10, 2001. Site has now permanently moved to f2s site, will keep DR site as a archive storage for message board posts, or what have you. Heck, I might use the DR space for the message board itself.

August 16, 2001

Asylum uploaded to f2s mirror. Problems with entry index page.

Old splash page code is not well-formed XML; code downgraded to the HTML 4.01/Transitional DTD, instead of XHTML 1.0/Strict DTD. Validates under Tidy (30 Apr 2000); I'm not sure if it'll validate under the W3C Validator.

August 9, 2001

Technical notes returned online.

Lizard's Asylum has moved (since July 20) to DigitalRice. To-date, DigitalRice member sites are still offline. Posted on the GeoCities site is an offline notice (dated July 28?) that will be up until my account goes online. A new splash page has been created for the upload. I'm still contemplating whether I'll create a new layout or not. Version is now 4.1.

Stylesheet version numbers will be changed to "v4.x" instead of the current "v4.0" to reflect the fact that changes to the stylesheet affect all files that link it.

"Easter egg" no longer exists.

Older notes

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