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First, let me say I am extremely offended by your accusations that this
discussion is about self promotion and spamming! Not true. This
discussion IS about the merits of using the web, HTML and interactivity as
a documentation and learning tool. I am an instructor at the University
of Illinois and have been using the internet and the web to not only
teach HTML and JavaScript but also Calculus and Differential equations
and have had TREMENDOUS success.
Second, it is quite obvious that being rather stuck in old fashion ways
that you are rather threatened by the oncomming rush of reform that is
taking place and will leave you behind.
You said about interactive learning and I quote:
"Gee, I wonder how anyone managed to learn anything before multimedia
tools were invented. It couldn't have been by *reading* now, could it?"
I suspect the same kind of quote was said by a ignorant peasant when the
printing press was invented:
"Gee, I wonder how anyone managed to learn anything before books
were invented. It couldn't have been by *word of mouth* now, could it?"
Third, it is not my fault that microsoft internet explorer has bug (which
they admit), a fix is offered at the site (did you read it?).
Fourth, thousands of people have learned to make webpages at my site
and many of these people have written and praised the interactive nature
of the site. For example, please
see...http://www.useractive.com/complements.html
Interactivity offers a new level of communication in addition to written
text. If a picture is "worth a thousand words" the an Interactive
document is *worth 100,000 words*.
Evidently, Arlen you are a lost cause unwilling to enter the new millenium
with an open mind to fresh modes of communication and learning.
I pray that not all of the Tech writers on this list share your near sited
ideas.
Scott Gray
> Afraid it wouldn't work at this site, anyway. First thing I see when I
> enter the site is that it doesn't work with IE3, which is the standard
> browser at this site. Going in with IE4 (OK, so I'm a Mac user and
> therefore not too rigid at following standards set by the Wintel crowd)
I'm
> quickly informed that there's a bug in IE4 and the site may not work
> properly. Most of the net beginners I know would bail out at that point,
> rather than risk continuing. I kept going and sure enough encountered a
> script error on the page hawking his free web site hosting service. (If
I
> were more cynical, I'd suspect that Scott had been baiting us all just
get
> some exposure for the service. Noticed also something interesting in the
> source. He's listed as "keywords" for the benfit of site indexing
engines
> the key words "money", "career,""pagemill," "sex," "furniture," and
> "health" among many others. Thus ensuring that if you search the web for
> someone selling sofas, for example, you'll pull up his site. This time-
> honored technique is known as "spamming the search engines." Nothing
> illegal about it, though it *is* considered a bit tacky. It works with
most
> engines except Yahoo, as Yahoo gets indexed by humans and not robots,
and
> so they are not likely to confuse web-hosting services with furniture
> dealers. Yahoo has been known to de-list egregious offenders, but I
doubt
> this would qualify as such; it's fairly mild.)
>
> As a side note, I have some anti-virus software that triggers a scan
> whenever the file download area on my HD is accessed. It triggered twice
> while I was sitting at his site and not clicking on anything. No idea
what
> caused it, but it was that activity that caused me to pull up the source
of
> the page for a look-see.
>
> Beyond that, it looks like a good tutorial. About on the same level as,
> say, Lemay's book. I'll admit I didn't go through every page (probably
hit
> half the HTML tutorials and a few other random pages) but what I've seen
> there is about the same experience you get when using a good HTML book
and
> and HTML editor like PageMill or PageSpinner.
>
> For those that didn't take the trip, what he's done is create a frameset
> with the text of the tutorial on the top and a box on the bottom which
you
> can type HTML into and have it rendered at the click of a button.
>
> The differences between a book and the tutorial? With the book you don't
> have scroll around as much to see the text, but it also takes up more
desk
> space, and some folks don't have room for books at the keyboard. Seems
like
> a fair trade to me.
>
> Have fun,
> Arlen
> Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
> DNRC 224
>
> Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
> ----------------------------------------------
> In God we trust; all others must provide data.
> ----------------------------------------------
> Opinions expressed are mine and mine alone.
> If JCI had an opinion on this, they'd hire someone else to deliver it.
>
