Problems using this web site

If you are experiencing trouble using these web pages, it is most likely due to one of several things:

• You are using an old web browser. These pages have been tested with Netscape 4.75, 4.76, 6.0 and 6.01 and also on Internet Explorer 5.0 and 5.5. On Mac OS X, it has also been tested on Netscape 7.x, OmniWeb, Opera and iCab browsers. While older web browsers should work, the layout is likely to not appear as intended. BioinfoTools web pages use the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) layout technology. This technology has been available for a number of years, but its implementation in older browsers is suspect at best. Users with web browsers earlier than Netscape 4.5 or Internet Explorer 5.0 are strongly recommended to update their web browsers.
• Your web browser has style sheets disabled. In Netscape this can be switched on with in the "Advanced" set of Preferences options (Edit:Preferences:Advanced). In Internet Explorer, style sheets are enabled and disabled under the Web Content set of options of the Web Browser options of the Preferences (Edit:Preferences:Web Browser:Web Content). Most browser vendors have style sheets enabled by default as they have no security risk and are pretty standard now.
• Your browser is set to use your own fonts or colors, overriding those defined within these web pages. These can be controlled within the Preference settings of your browser (Edit:Preferences:Appearance:Fonts) and (Edit:Preferences:Appearance:Colors) for Netscape and (Edit:Preferences:Web Browser:Web Content) and (Edit:Preferences:Web Browser:Language/Fonts) for Internet Explorer. In general it is rare for users to (need to) alter these settings unless they suffer from poor vision, colour-blindness or the like.
• You have disabled downloading of graphics. To re-enable this, use (Edit:Preferences:Advanced) in Netscape or (Edit:Preferences:Web Browser:Web Content) in Internet Explorer to fix this. Given the high graphical content of modern web pages, most users will not disable graphics. (It is useful occasionally when you know the site you are downloading well, eg. your favourite search engine, and you wish to get fast downloads. You can sometimes avoid annoying averts this way.)
• You have set your web browser to use your own style sheets, rather than the style sheet supplied from our site. Again, this can be set from with the Preferences options. Other than web designers, there should be little need for users to use this option (or put it this way: those who tinker at this level, ought to know how to fix it themselves!)

Users with very small screens (eg. 13") may have dificulty. Little can be done about this. This site has been designed for screens 15" or larger.

There may be some inconsistency of layout from one type of web browser and one type of operating system to another. This is to be expected. A great deal of effort has been put in to address this: these pages are as consistent as they can be made to be within a realistic time frame. However, if you do observe any serious flaws, please free to report them.

If your errors or problems are not resolved with the above advice email can be sent to the webmaster at BioinfoTools webmaster@bioinfotools.com. Please do read the advice above first.

Developer's tips

This section contains a few tips to developers of web pages. These are not all-encompassing, nor are the tips given in any particular order. They are offerred only in the hope that might help someone:

• CSS is a mixed blessing. When it works, it helps considerably, but its implementation across the different (older) browsers is very mixed. This mixed implementation can cause you to spend an inordinate amount of time persuading generally consistent appearance across the different browsers. In particular Netscape 4.7x stumbles on many CSS elements. You will find it necessary to specify some things both the old (non-CSS) and new ways (eg. the width of a table cell specified in CSS is ignored by Netscape 4.7x). Products like DreamWeaver may address this. (These pages were developed "by hand" in order to study how CSS, etc., is implemented.)
• Do offer the actual email adresses on web pages, not just <A HREF="mailto:x@y">...</A> links. Many people choose not to use the browser's email programs and instead cut'n'paste the address to their chosen emailer. Examples can be found in the footer of this page.
• If you wish to include just links (<A>'s) in table cells on their own with no other text and want their positioning within the table cell to be consistent across browsers, enclose the <A>'s in <P>'s. If there is is style sheet information for the <A>'s, simply make a <P> with the same style settings, eg:  P.cell, A.cell { style: setting; }  and apply the same style class to both. (Navigator appears more tolerant of this problem that Internet Explorer.)
• If you are working "by hand", lay your table elements out with indenting or some other scheme so that the different levels and elements can easily be identified. This will avoid creating most of the errors associated with tables in the first place. "A stitch in time..." BBEdit usefully does this for you.
• Limit use of Netscape Communicator to designing only the most basic of pages: it does not appear to understand CSS, it will discard odd portions of your code, rework the layout of the code and insert a few bits of its own! You are better to work with one of the more advanced WWW design tools which leave text "as is" (such as DreamWeaver apparently does) or use a good HTML editor such as BBEdit.
• If you are entering text by hand, try use an editor which uses colour to highlight different elements, eg. HTML keywords, quoted text, etc. Failing to "close" quotes within a tag, or failing to close a tag in HTML can lead to rather "interesting" outcomes. It can be surprisingly difficult to locate the source of these errors. Highlighting in an editor will help you see these as you are entering the HTML. (BBEdit, used to develop this site, supports this.) If you cannot get a hold of an editor with this feature, use (View:Source) in IE or (View:Page Source) in Netscape to show the HTML source with syntax highlighting.
• If you are editing by hand, develop some "standard" layout to help you navigate your HTML code. In general I find it easiest to place all opening tags on the left margin (with the exception of <A> and <BR> tags and a few other "within text" tags), so that a quick vertical scan of left of the page locates them. Indenting can help locate the end tag matching a particular start tag (hence my recommendation to nest tables elsewhere in this list). A good HTML editor can also help by locating the matching tag.
• Provide meta tags for the title (so that if a user bookmarks your site a sensible title is given) and search keywords (so search engines can include desired keywords to match to your page). It is surprising how often these are ommitted.
• While justified text looks very nice (it hasn't always been available in HTML), be aware that there is a bug in Netscape's justification algorithm (at least in the 4.7x browsers), where certain size windows and text result in left-aligned text. I have yet to see a decent work-around for this. If you know of a work-around please let me know! Several paragraphs in the FAQ page of this site suffer in the hands of this bug.
• Don't place a hypen of a hypenated word (here meaning a word that is intended to have a hypen in the final rendered word) at the end of a line. When rendered, a space will be added after the hypen... Characters used to open bracketed sections of text ( (, [, {, <) suffer the same fate. Browsers are required to place a space between text lines that are concatenated when displayed. This addition of a space takes place regardless of what the last character of the preceding line is.
• While you can place style information into BR tags, avoid the temptation (in Netscape these styles will have some effect). Instead use plain BRs and acheive control over spacings, etc, by using the margin-top and margin-bottom controls of paragraphs (P tags) and font sizes. To get a thin vertical space effect, use a construct like <FONT CLASS="thin">&nbsp;</FONT><BR>, where style "thin" has the appropriate font-size (eg. font-size: 4pt;).
• In the interest of future compatibility, do close all tags, even those that in earlier versions of HTML didn't needed to be (e.g. <LI>). You'll need to use an appropriate DOCTYPE to let browsers know what your intentions are. (4.01 Transitional is used in this site.)

Borrowing the code from this web site

As stated in the Legal page, you are welcome to use the code for the layout and structure of these web pages. Credit, including a link back to the home page of this site is appreciated. You may not use the content of this web site without prior permission (although generally this will be granted to those who ask who have reasonable uses).