The Hiatus Ends

As many of you know, I had a very rough few months to close out 2004. However, I have also had a very rough start to 2005. I am hoping all of my bad times are behind me and I can make a fresh start and begin to add new content here on a more regular basis. After having a root canal and beating an upper respiratory viral infection and missing the first three days of work this year, I am hoping the remainder of 2005 can be a happy one. So, with all that, I wish you a belated Happy New Year!

I received an e-mail from Dri-Anna about a month ago and I knew when I received it I had to make an article out of it. Thanks Dri-Anna! She is writing to me about all kinds of Web technologies. She writes about HTMl, DHTML, CSS and Java.

She says she went through frames (remember those?). She has gone through tables and has since ventured into that land known as CSS. However, she raises a good point. Many people cut tables down these days in favor of CSS, but CSS also uses tables in a form. Therefore, can tables be bad? The obvious answer is no! I agree with her. Tables are useful things that help Web sites look orderly and fashionable to a degree.

Dri-Anna is a FrontPage user and I applaud her. Many people cut FrontPage in particular and Microsoft in general, but I love Microsoft and FrontPage is a nice tool and getting better with every release. Many beginning users are able to use FrontPage out of the box and that makes the Web more user friendly and populated. Dreamweaver is a great product and I love learning and using it, but it is not perfect, either. Therefore, we should be grateful for the competition.

Dri-Anna is buying a new computer and upgrading from FrontPage 2000 to 2003. She agrees that FrontPage 2000 does not handle CSS well, but 2003 does a much better job. Anyone who has dabbled in CSS knows it has its own set of troubles.

Dri-Anna wants to know, since she has gone through all these technologies, what is next? She is looking towards animation. She is wondering if she should learn and use Java or Flash or both. She does not want a heavily-laden page of animation. Just a nice toolbar/menuing system. Her fear with Java is that not all machines have it. Therefore, is Flash a better route to take? She also wants to explore playing music on her site. I know it is highly frowned upon, but she wants to give people the choice to listen or not. She has a very specialized page so her visitors may well enjoy the music.

Where does all this lead? I am asking for your help. If you have any suggestions or help for Dri-Anna, I will happily pass on your answers to her. What technologies are you using? What is the next big thing? How should Dri-Anna go about to improve her page using the technologies discussed here? Your help is appreciated.

One thing more of a side note. I have a blog. Unfortunately, I have let it fall into disuse. I have posted a long article on it about some other recent trouble I have had. If you wish to read it, you can locate it here. As always, take care of yourself and thanks for reading. If you have any thoughts for Dri-Anna, I know she will be happy to receive them.