S.KRAUSE

About

This page serves to answer questions regarding the genesis, construction and purpose of skrause.org. I welcome your feedback, and if you have further questions, please contact me.

1. What is skrause.org?
2. Why the domain skrause.org?
3. What happened to catalyst and Helicon?
4. How is skrause.org organized?
5. How was skrause.org made?
6. A note on HTML

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1. What is skrause.org?
   1. skrause.org is several things, but in answer to this question, it is a personal web site; it is not a commercial, educational, non-profit, government, military, etc. site, so expect to find many of the things you would expect to find on other personal home-pages, such as the requisite resume, personal information, list of links, etc. It serves as the “personal site” for Steve Krause, Sean Krause, and John S. Krause.
   2. skrause.org is an ongoing, growing, and changing project; digital texts are not set down on paper, let alone in stone, and hence can undergo numerous revisions with ease. The same is true of a whole site, compared to a single issue/edition of a magazine or book; skrause.org is not meant to be a static site.
   3. This site is an outlet for the author(s) to express ideas and attempt to communicate with others. Such ideas may be expressed either to inform, inspire debate, or merely to intrigue, or even just to entertain. Since the site is not static, the author is interested in receiving feedback at all times.
2. Why the domain skrause.org?
   1. krause.org, krause.com, krause.net, krause.nu, krause.info, krause.de, and krause.us were all taken. I also considered stevekrause.org, stevenpkrause.org, and a few other domains.
   2. skrause.org provides a space for all the “S” members of the Krause family: Steve, Sean, and John S.
3. What happened to catalyst and Helicon?
   1. catalyst, the previous version of this site, lasted for several years. When I moved to a more permanent domain (rather than a university-hosted directory), I chose to go with something related to my family, and something I could continue to use years from now. It is primarily for that reason I chose to retire catalyst and move on.
   2. Helicon, a previous version of this site, lasted over a year. Helicon was based on HTML 3.2 and over-used <font> tags. My left-aligned menu entries didn't always perform perfectly in Lynx. I wanted to remedy that.
   3. Certain sections of catalyst (and Helicon before) were getting too large; I wanted to “redistribute” the load on my site a bit (e.g. more “top level” topics).
   4. When I went from Helicon to catalyst, I liked the overall layout, both of site and the pages, but I wanted to go even more “minimalist” in the page design, which meant getting rid of the “Helicon” logo.
   5. The name “Helicon”, which had some meaning for me, really said very little about my site and its purpose. The word itself was obscure.
   6. My site was at one time hosted primarily at GeoCities; since this changed, and the name (Helicon) was picked so as to fit in with the “Athens” neighborhood, it made sense to me to rename my site, and (while I was at it) perform a minor face-lift regarding the page and site layout.
   7. A catalyst is “an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action”, and such was one of the goals of my site. The site was also a personal catalyst, a way for the author to set ideas and plans into action.
   8. skrause.org is less about “me” (Steve) than was catalyst.
4. How is skrause.org organized?
   1. My goal is not to present the most “artistic” page layout or to display my ability as a graphc designer. This site is meant as a flexible structure for conveying content My favorite personal pages—the ones that draw me back and make me think—are those that are easy to navigate and are full of content. For skrause.org I have decided to worry less about presentation, and concern myself more with what I am presenting.
   2. I do not believe this site needs a long description of “how” to get around the site; that should be clear from the main page, and if it is not, then I have already failed. However, for those who are interested, I have decided to post a brief description of how I put skrause.org together.
   3. There are several global pages, such as the home page, contact information, and the site-wide disclaimer.
   4. Links to these global pages are available on each page by way of a navigation bar at the top of the page.
   5. The overall design is hierarchical: much of the rest of the site content is made available by way of self-contained “sections” on various subjects, such as math, computers, drawing or writing.
   6. As far as possible, all sections and all pages within sections will share a common layout.
   7. In addition to the various sections, there are a number of semi-independent “sub-sites”; these sub-sites may not share the same layout as the the rest of the site.
5. How was skraus.org made?
1. skrause.org was made "by hand" using: emacs, vi and, nano under Linux.
2. Photos were scanned in with a Umax 600P and an AGFA Snap-Scan Touch scanner, and edited with PaintShop Pro (Windows), The Gimp (Linux), and/or ImageMagick (Linux/MacOSX).
3. Other graphics were created and edited with PaintShop Pro and/or The Gimp.
4. This site was tested on Lynx, Netscape Navigator, and mozilla.
5. When possible, pages where put together using a standard template file, common Server Side Includes (SSI), and a common Cascading Style Sheet file, so as to give the whole site a consistent look and feel.
6. A note on HTML
   1. I believe in the slogan “Best viewed with any browser” and “K.I.S.S.” HTML is a markup language, not a page-layout languge, and I have attempted to structure my content in a logical (rather than “physical”) manner. I will not make my site browser specific and use browser specific tags. The site uses HTML 4.0, but should be viewable with most browsers.
   2. I use CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, on this site. CSS are not supported at all by really old browsers, and are not supported well by many recent browsers. I use CSS only to set font sizes, types, and colors: older browsers ignore these style declarations.
   3. I want people to be able to view this site, regardless of the type/speed of internet connection they have (modem, cable/dsl, T1, etc.). Therefore, I have tried to keep my use of graphics minimal, except where appropriate, such as on pages of photographs and drawings. I do not use a graphical logo or background image in most of my sections.
   4. The Netscape 4.x series of browsers has broken CSS support, and difficulties with numerous character entities that are part of the HTML 4.0 (and above) standard. In particular, this includes m-dashes and left/right double quotes. I keep my use of such characters to a minimum, but if you are using a Netscape 4.x browser, you may notice a few “issues.”
   5. I validate my HTML (but not my English!). However, sometimes errors slip in. In addition, there are different HTML standards; I have designed this site to validate under HTML 4.0, but I use few features (only CSS) specific to HTML 4.0, so my pages should display well on older browsers. If you experience difficulty viewing any of my pages, please contact me.
   6. Feel free to check my HTML if you think there is something wrong with it. I code all my HTML by hand, and have tried to make it relatively easy to read by way of indentation (when feasible).