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Dean's Home Page
Hi there. My name is Dean Gardner and I'm a web developer. I work with HTML/XHTML, CSS, PHP/mySQL, and Apache; I write in Notepad and am a big fan of Standards Compliance. This site's purpose is to give me a place to experiment with web skills and to express myself creatively through writing and design. It contains things of general interest: a journal, quotes, webtricks, and possibly recipes (if I ever add them); and it contains things geared towards web development: code samples, tutorials, and resources — you might say it has a little something for everybody. Take a look around and let me know what you think.
Saturday, 26 July, 2003
In keeping with tradition it's the 26th of the month and time for another update. I have indeed begun work on that style-switcher I talked about earlier. It isn't complete yet but go ahead and take a look if you like and follow along as the new design evolves.
Thursday, 26 June, 2003
The site is starting to have content now, or at least it gives the illusion of having content. Just about every link in the menu goes to a page with something on it other than "coming soon." With that done I'll be going back to clean up the XHTML and CSS to make the behind-the-scenes part look good too, so if you're one of those people who likes to view the source code, don't give me a hard time, OK? OK. :-) Listen. Do you hear that? A rumbling, stampede-like sound? It's the sound of millions of people all over the world scrambling to add a Style-Switcher to their site. I must confess I'll be one of them — Eric Meyer released his new site design recently with about 8 stylesheets to choose from and the effect is pretty cool. CSSZenGarden also has a style-switcher. (Of course, W3C has had one (or something similar) in their 'Core Styles Suite' for several years now, but few seemed to notice. It took a celebrity like Eric to make it mainstream — that and browser support for CSS.) I'm excited about adding a style-switcher to this site because it offers a way to write multiple designs and then let the user (you) select which one he prefers to view the site with. It adds variety and interest for you, it allows me to experiment with site design in general without redoing the layout, and I just get a kick out of working with CSS (it's fun!). I'll see if I can put together something like that by the end of July.
Monday, 26 May, 2003
The long-awaited Links page is done (finally!). That makes a total of 6 sections which are complete: Home, WebLog, Links, Archives, About, and Contact. Next on the list is WebTricks. It will be a while before the entire site is officially complete (by their nature websites are never "complete" anyway — they're constantly being revised) because I'm spending more of my free time gardening, working around the house, and working in general. It's spring here in Atlanta, Georgia, and it's really nice to be outside after an unusually cold winter. This year for the first time I noticed we have a family of bluebirds that congregate between our house and the neighbor's: the parents fly down, catch a worm or some other appropiate bug, and then feed it to their babies. Their brilliant BLUE color makes them fun to watch and they also have a pleasant song to listen to. Here are a couple sites I found in case you're interested: The North American Bluebird Society, The Bluebird Box.
Saturday, 3 May, 2003
It validates! 
Pretty cool; it's sort of like getting a gold star or a seal of approval. And it was fun — I learned about the sometimes controversial distinctions between alt and title, that id is widely supported (which means I'll be using name in forms, and id everywhere else), and how to use JavaScript to make external links open in a new window (which really isn't necessary except to get the page to validate for XHTML 1.0 strict, because browsers already support <target>, and XHTML 2.0 Strict will support it; but hey, it's the principal of the thing :-) ). Along the way I discovered an excellent tutorial site (SitePoint.com) and 2 weblog sites (bdhamilton.com and SarahHepola.com).
Friday, 25 April, 2003
I've decided to start writing for XHTML 1.0 Strict. Up until now I've been writing for HTML 4.01 Transitional, and I was thinking maybe I should convert over to XHTML 1.0 Transitional; but then I thought, "Why take another half-step? Why not just go all out and take the plunge and code for the new standard?" So I will. I know CSS well enough that I can separate style from structure; and I'm pretty sure it should be relatively hassle-free to get it to validate. (I hope — we'll see.) So this version 6 will be written in XHTML 1.0 as well as using CSS and PHP.
February, 2003
What is, who is, why webmonkeydean? My name is Dean and I've taken the title of webmonkey — a webmonkey is a webmaster in training. I doubt anyone could ever truly become "master" of the web, but I'm learning what I can. So far I'm fairly comfortable with Design, HTML, basic Graphics, SSI, and CSS; next I'd like to learn more about JavaScript and PHP. This is a place for me to practice web development but I'll also try to make it a personal, homepage-type website by telling you about myself in the process.
If you are one of the 4 people who have visited this site before you might notice it looks a little different. That's because I've redesigned the layout using CSS (cascading style sheets). Up until now the traditional way to lay out web pages has been to use tables, which consist of rows and columns. It was confining and sometimes tedious. The way of the future is to use style sheets, and this new site design is an experiment in that method. CSS gives the web author practically unlimited control over how a web page looks aesthetically, makes site maintenance a thousand times easier, and the link effects make you say, "oh wow!" (unless they're overdone; then you say "yuck")
Besides the new look I've also made some changes with the content. It might even be interesting for you so check it out if you have a chance.
This site design is version 6: it uses PHP (Pre Hypertext Processor) for the layout templates, menu navigation, and whatever other server-side tricks I come up with.
Thanks for tuning in, and remember to eat lots of bananas,
Dean
