About Don Strack’s web site
During the last half of the year 2000, I became a bit disillusioned with publishing as hard copy in printed books and magazine articles, realizing that it was not as satisfying as I had first imagined it could be. The financial rewards have also proven to be different that I had first imagined; not disappointing, just different. Also, due to the financial realities of dealing with such a small potential market, what I wanted to get into print was taking too long; I wanted to share my research at a much quicker pace. I have always been interested in railroad history, railroad locomotives, and business and industrial history. With many file boxes and three-ring binders full of research, and a seemingly endless number of potential publications to get out, along with limited photographic images, publishing to the internet soon became very attractive.
Many offered their counsel that I should not simply give away the results of my hard work, and I agreed. For information that would be copyrighted, in which I have invested almost countless hours of research over the past 20 years, I chose to use the PDF format, for Portable Document File.
Using Adobe’s Acrobat to generate PDF files from both Word and Excel, the files can be created in an encrypted format that does not allow the files to be either edited or printed, addressing the concerns of those who are concerned about the safety of copyrighted information. Although the files are encrypted, they are still readily available for viewing via an internet connection, or downloadable for off-line viewing. The software needed to view an encrypted PDF file is Adobe Acrobat Reader which is completely free. Anyone can download it from the Adobe web site by clicking on this link: Adobe Acrobat Reader
After a couple false starts learning new software that could be used to produce web pages, it all seemed to come together. I first tried learning to use Microsoft’s FrontPage 98, but the difficulty of dealing with local and remote servers, along with all the other HTML “help” from Microsoft and Netscape, proved to be more than I wanted to handle. I gave up for several months, and instead spent small amounts of time learning the basics of writing HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), the programming language of web pages. I wanted to produce web pages that will serve as reference resources, with no need for flashing graphics and busy glitz that so many of today’s web pages contain to impress and hold visitors.
Several programs have aided my journey along the HTML road. They include a couple WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editors such as the free 1st Page 2000 editor from Australia, the equally free HTML-Kit editor from Switzerland, and CuteHTML, a companion HTML editor to that company’s CuteFTP file uploading program. The Coffecup HTML editor has also been helpful. The newest version of Microsoft’s HTML editor, FrontPage 2000, with the troublesome personal web server feature removed, is now much simpler to use, so it has returned to my computer to be used on a regular basis.
I learned that without the need for busy graphics and overblown intrasite navigation, a simple text editor would do as a basic authoring tool. I discovered a program called NoteTab Pro, an international shareware text editor from Switzerland meant to replace the Windows NotePad text editor that comes with every Windows operating system. Many HTML authors have found that a simple text editor and a browser are the best tools to write uncomplicated HTML. To help with this, NoteTab has evolved into a powerful HTML tool because of its unique ability to create and use what are called “clips,” bits of text that are saved and reused when needed. NoteTab also has its own programming language that lets an author create his own wizards for authoring more complicated HTML code.
While progressing in my journey of basic mastering of HTML code and web site authoring, I have learned the value of Cascading Style Sheets (or CSS), used to keep a consistent look to a group of web pages. Topstyle Pro from Bradsoft is the best of several CSS editors.
So today, my web pages are created using a combination of software, each with its own advantages. Files that are best originated as word processor and spreadsheet documents are created using Microsoft’s Office 97 suite, and saved as HTML files. Each file is then brought into NoteTab and cleaned up to reduce the amount of extraneous code, with the goal being to assure a speedy download for visitors. FrontPage is used whenever a table is involved to ease the initial setup and formatting.
Here are some links to the web pages of the various companies and HTML reference sites so that you too can become a HTML code wizard.
And of course, there is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) with its basic standards and help pages for both HTML and CSS, at:
Surf and learn. You won’t regret it. Do a Google search on both HTML and on CSS. The resources available on the web are amazing.
Last updated on March 11, 2001