Technical Details for this Site

Server Side Includes

I always meant to use these as they make writing the pages that much easier. As frames are evil the sensible way to do this is via Server Side Includes. SSI does quite a few things but as the name suggests, it allows the writer to specify a file by name that contains HTML and this is simply included at the server end before it is sent. That allows common instructions like navigation to be updated once and reach all the separate files that need it.

The only disadvantages - as far as I can tell, is that on a Windows server, there is great reluctance to enable this for files with general HTML extensions (.htm, .html etc.), requiring instead a special extension for file in which SSI might be found (e.g. .shtm, .shtml).

Now that doesn't sound so bad except… With, especially, index.htm becoming index.shtm two things might happen. First anyone who had the original page bookmarked will now be broken, second and specific to index pages, when simply quoting the folder name, as there is no default anymore - .shtm extensions not being recognised - a 'forbidden directory listing' message occurs. Well I've pressed ahead by incorporating redirect pages from index.htm files. I figure the rest are internal navigations and as the season progresses, I'll gradually remove these but will always retain the topmost one so a link to http://www.lbhcba.org will always work.

Browsers

Unequivocally this site looks better with Firefox, but then again, the whole web browsing experience is vastly improved by it. I fully expect the majority of you to be using Microsoft's Internet Explorer. It looks OK in that but one thing I have noticed is that the left hand navigation bar is less wide than it should be, with the effect that the links often occupy two lines. Still that doesn't seem so bad.

If you have a really old browser, then you may have problems with the layout; I've made more extensive use of Cascading Style Sheets and have been careful to make sure that the ones I use accord to the relevant standards (hence the proud icons on the left). That doesn't mean it will look right though - many browsers are simply not up to the job - if in doubt get Firefox as above. Why might you not have had problems with the old look? Well, I've done what you're supposed to do and abandoned <table> tags for layout. So now the site is 'proper' - you may just not be able to see it..

JavaScript

I've also used JavaScript to display the scorecards that appear when you click on the numerical scores in the cross-tables. Again, most modern browsers support JavaScript but you may have to turn it on - some browsers are very security conscious. The same applies to the scorer page; that recovers the details to populate the dropdowns using the same language.