Updates:

March 17, 2008 - Added a favicon. Fixed the logo image rollover on the home page that didn't seem to be working for some reason.

March 14, 2008 - I removed the old JavaScript function that hid the update reports because it left a huge blank area on the page. I found another JavaScript at www.dynamicdrive.com that actually removes the text from the page entirely when it's hidden. I think it works much better, but let me know what you think.

Earlier, I went through the site and validated all of my CSS. Today I did the same thing with the XHTML validator and found a number of small issues that I fixed. All pages are now XHTML compliant.

With these additions to the site I am nearing completion. Please let me know if you have any other ideas for functionality or design improvements!

March 12, 2008 - Modified the logo area on every page by adding a style with left & right padding to the logo instead of using the deprecated align="center". I wanted to make sure it was placed exactly in the center of the background image. I'm also noticing that the View Update Report functionality using IE7 on a PC does some awful things to this text. I'm going to remove the button after this project is over.

March 10, 2008 - Added the Made on the Mac logo at the bottom of each page. I also validated each page with the W3C CSS check page and put the CSS validation seal on each page. If you haven't used this service yet, I highly recommend it. I've found a number of typos in my style sheets this way. I also added some content to the home page, added another writing sample to the writing page and added a second page of photos.

Still to be done - I want to find a way to fix the home page so the content isn't just hidden from view. I want it to "disappear" so that the bottom of the page drops down when you click the View Update Report button.

March 7, 2008 - I took the information from our online reading and modified the javascript form validation to make sure people enter a name, email address and some text in the details field on the contact page.

Using the YouTube.com tutorial suggested by Carolyn, I added the "View Update Report" button to the home page. It hides the updates until you click the button and then it fades them in. I'd like to figure out how to make the text box disappear instead of just being hidden because the size of the text determines the bottom of the page. Currently there's a ton of blank white space at the bottom. I'll continue to research this and see if I can figure it out.

March 6, 2008 - I added an animated .gif logo. Hopefully, it's subtle enough that it doesn't become annoying. If you haven't noticed it, the bird blinks every five seconds. There's also a "hidden" page that you can get to by clicking on the logo. I still haven't written the content yet though.

March 3, 2008 - I got my resumé page up and working today. One of the things I learned how to do was to float images and have text wrap around it. I had to put the words on the right in a div tag and put a few pixels of top padding on it to make it look centered. Let me know if it doesn't look good in your browser. I also played around with the contact form and put a little background image inside the text area. I wasn't sure it would work, but it did.

I was also able to post some content on the web design page. I don't have much content, but I plan to add to it as I finish new sites.

If you've been looking at my code, you may have noticed that I started putting multiple style sheets in. There is a main style sheet, but then I have unique style sheets for certain pages like the photos and the resume page. There were so many styles just for those pages that I figured I could save on download sizes by only including the special styles when they were needed.

March 2, 2008 - The contact form is now complete. Please give it a try and let me know if you experience any problems.

March 1, 2008 - I got the bones of the contact form in and functioning. I'm not happy with the textarea box not being the same size as the other boxes so I'm going to try out a technique from Robbins' book. It's on pages 269-70 and looks a little confusing but the output looks good. I also want to put some input checks in place, but I have to learn how to do that first.

Once the contact form is finished, I'm going to start working on the resumé page. I also have to start thinking about what I'll put on the Web Design page because I don't really have any other examples that are finished yet. I have two sites in progress, but that doesn't really help me, does it?

February 29, 2008 - Today I finished laying out the Writing page. I added a few internal styles to that page and I also added a style on the external sheet to prevent borders from showing on linked images. I also had the "pleasure" of finding out that my style sheet was plagiarized last week, which has taken up valuable time I could have used working on this site. I am more than happy to show others how I have created certain effects with styles, but please contact me before stealing my efforts.

February 27, 2008 - I modified the javascript on the photos page so that you can click on the first image in a set and then click through the set continuously to the end. Before you had to open one then close it before viewing the next one. I also modified all of the styles so that I could place text below the photos. I still have 3 other photo sets to post, but I'm going to wait until everything else is completed.

The other page I worked on was the writing page. I placed some content about my book on the page and began to work with the styles to get it looking ok. I still have work to do on that and then I need to add an introductory paragraph and some other writing samples.

February 26, 2008 - All pages are now mocked up and the javascript rollovers have been created. I've begun work on the photos page. Originally, I was going to use the Javascript lightbox script to make the photos display above the page, but I found another way to do it with styles. If you want to look at the tutorial, you can see it here. I have it working for my six test images and my challenge now is to modify the scripts so that users can click from one image to the next without hoving to close each one individually. Then I have to add the remaining photos to the page.