Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Family Genealogy in Colonial America and England

Moreland Family and Morland: "an ongoing project depicting documentation on the Moreland/Morland family in colonial America and England"

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Disadvantages of Using Word as a Web Publisher

Web Publishing: Using Word as Web Publisher?, UWEC: "Microsoft Word supports the creation of web pages; however, there are some inherent problems with this process. This document includes information on the problems of using Word as a web publisher.
Disadvantages of Using Word as a Web Publisher
Moving Content from Word to a Web Editor "

Bebington

Bebington
Ship: 924 Tons,
Captain: Peck
Surgeon Superintendent:
Sailed London 28th June 1872 - arrived Wellington 25th October 1872

nickname of "The Old Tub" and was one of the slowest boats on the New Zealand immigrant run.

Friday, March 25, 2005

Danish parish registers and census online - meeting in Copenhagen

Danish parish registers and census online help updated with a minute of the meeting about service and performance.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Henry Hacking

Henry Hacking the first time I have got a file HTML 4.01 validated OK

http://validator.w3.org/file-upload.html

but this validator does not like Line 26, column 10: there is no attribute "COLOR"
hr color="green"
in this file Victoria Australia setlers and ancestors even though it looks OK

random information about ISO-8859-1 useful to webmasters

David's SI metric FAQ scroll down to

Far too many web pages have an incorrect ``charset'' specified, then use decimal ``Numeric reference''. (I suspect that most of the time the HTML editor is to blame, not the web page author -- it looks fine on his machine ...). This causes decimal references between  and ÿ inclusive (since they are different between Macintosh and Windows, and vary even between different versions of Windows), to display completely different symbols on different machines.

snipped
When I originally wrote this page (back in 1995), The default character set for pages on the web was the ISO-8859-1 character set.

Now it seems everyone's moving to Unicode , making this section more and more obsolete.

( "HTML uses the much more complete character set called the Universal Character Set (UCS), defined in [ISO10646]. This standard defines a repertoire of thousands of characters used by communities all over the world. The character set defined in [ISO10646] is character-by-character equivalent to Unicode 2.0 ([UNICODE]) http://www.unicode.org/ ." -- http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/charset.html )


What is Unicode?: "Unicode provides a unique number for every character,
no matter what the platform,
no matter what the program,
no matter what the language.
Fundamentally, computers just deal with numbers. They store letters and other characters by assigning a number for each one. Before Unicode was invented, there were hundreds of different encoding systems for assigning these numbers. No single encoding could contain enough characters: for example, the European Union alone requires several different encodings to cover all its languages. Even for a single language like English no single encoding was adequate for all the letters, punctuation, and technical symbols in common use."

Cambourne Corwall England

Camborne.index.html: "In 1867, Camborne was situated in the deanery and hundred of Penwith. It was bounded on the north and east by the sea and Illogan, on the south by Crowan and Gwinear, and on the west by Gwithian. The parish is thought to take its name from the Cornish for a 'crooked hill', but it was also the site of a 'holy well' situated within it, from which the name could be derived.
Until the mining boom towards the end of the 18th century, which saw the Camborne and Redruth district become the richest mining area in the world at that time, Camborne was just a village. Influx of miners transformed the village into a town in a very short space of time. The town of Camborne is surrounded by numerous mine workings; it comprises several uniform streets which were filled with miners' cottages. The growth caused the parish to be spilt and three new parishes were created from Camborne to serve this boom: Tucking Mill in 1845, Treslothan also in 1845, and Penponds in 1854. "

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

More tips for creating a web aite

Great Website Design Tips was top of this google search today
Google Search: website+design+tips

Build your own website in 5 minutes ignore that is just a commercial plug for some software better see WebsiteTips.com sitemap, html tutorial, web design tips, web page design tips, web design tips, fonts, articles, tutorials, resources, HTML and a well laid out page too

How to Make a Website of Your Own
the tools of the trade are photoshop and dream weaver says Carmen Mardiros

Carmen Mardiros - spoil sport if link is broken LOL


at Web Site Marketing Services - Internet Marketing Consultant for UK Businesses


the absolute top web guru in my opinion is Jakob Nielsen



Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen/Norman Group

"But, says usability guru Dr Jakob Nielsen, some things have stayed constant in that decade, namely the principles of what makes a site easy to use.
Dr Nielsen has looked back at a decade of work on usability and considered whether the 34 core guidelines drawn up back then are relevant to the web of today.
'Roughly 80% of the things we found 10 years ago are still an issue today,' he said.
'Some have gone away because users have changed and 10% have changed because technology has changed.'" snipped

Dr Nielsen said the success of sites such as Google, Amazon, eBay and Yahoo showed that close attention to design and user needs was important.
"Those four sites are extremely profitable and extremely successful," said Dr Nielsen, adding that they have largely defined commercial success on the net.

All are based on user empowerment and make it easy for people to do things on the internet," he said.
"They are making simple but powerful tools available to the user.

"None of them have a fancy or glamorous look," he added,
declaring himself surprised that these sites have not been more widely copied.

In the future, Dr Nielsen believes that search engines will play an even bigger part in helping people get to grips with the huge amount of information online.
"They are becoming like the operating system to the internet," he said.


Design by Fire: An open letter to Jakob Nielsen

Digital Web Magazine - Dr. Jakob Nielsen: "Dr. Jakob Nielsen: Probably the most surprising recent finding came in our study of the usability of Web-based applications in Flash.
Even though the Flash designs themselves had plenty of usability issues and could be improved in many ways, the single biggest factor in the study turned out to be the integration between the application and the hosting Web site."


Books by Nielsen Norman Group authors:
"The members of Nielsen Norman Group are user experience pioneers: they defended users and usability before it became popular to do so. They were also hypertext pioneers years before the Web. Their books have defined the field: since 1986 they have published most of the classic books about human interfaces.

Don Norman's book, The Design of Everyday Things, was ranked as the best book ever written about user interfaces in a survey of user interface professionals at the CHI 2000 conference.

Jakob Nielsen's book, Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity is the number-one best-selling book ever about user interfaces, with more than a quarter million copies in print in 22 languages. "


other issues
Google Search: effective+website+navigation

Designing Effective Website Navigation: "Website navigation theory is perhaps one of the most essential skills required to build a successful website, yet it is also often a neglected course of study for many webmasters. Many webmasters wonder why visitors seldom seem to look beyond their index page. While you can't make everyone look at your entire website, designing an effective navigation system for your website can greatly improve the visitor's experience and encourage 'deeper' browsing."

What my american friends call elevator music - background music - is my number one hate (and in RL real life too - I feel it is an invasion of my privacy and my thoughts, a professional musicians like me thinks in sound too).

And I am sorry to say that number two is flash and heavy graphics, don't get me wrong - I love flash for film sequences and games and information - but these animations should be on the site and not in front of it.

Notice how tastefully the Macromedia site uses their own products
Studio MX 2004 or Studio with Flash Pro.
and see Macromedia - Volvo: Moved by Flash Video

and finally Google Search: web+design+readability

Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
... Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability ... that needs to be browsed or read on the screen into real web pages


Write for online, not print. To draw users into the text and support scannability, use well-documented tricks:

subheads
bulleted lists
highlighted keywords
short paragraphs
the inverted pyramid
a simple writing style, and
de-fluffed language devoid of marketese.

Jakob's Law of the Web User Experience states that "users spend most of their time on other websites."

This means that they form their expectations for your site based on what's commonly done on most other site. If you deviate, your site will be harder to use and users will leave.


Web Design For Dyslexia
Web Design for Dyslexic Users. ... Why don't you use larger fonts on this web site to make it easier for dyslexic people to read?

Unfortunately, the preferences of dyslexic people vary considerably.

snipped

We also do not use background images or patterns, flashing text, or animated graphics. All of these can make reading more difficult.
We have also tried to make our pages readable in text only format, and compatible with speech-synthesizing software. For that reason, we do not capitalize words or phrases.

Many speech-syntesizer programs will read a capitalized word letter-by-letter.
Abigail Marshall, DDAI

Sunday, March 20, 2005

TOWNSHIP INCLUDES ALEXANDRIA BAY, PLESSIS, AND REDWOOD

ALEXANDRIA WELCOMES YOU

Still on schedule, which is amazing to me. The schedule, should anyone be interested, is that something be added to the site every Friday. Some weeks it takes all week to prepare the text and pictures, and some can go up hurriedly.

Noticing that the Roman Catholic churches of the towns of Alexandria had been given short shrift, we asked Greta Sweet, Town Historian, for some history of the church. She came up with the little article, and we found a group of young people photographed Memories.

Some of those names look decidedly queer to me, so if anyone can correct my spelling, please do so. We prize accuracy.

Web Site Search Engine, Free and Pro Versions - FreeFind.com

Web Site Search Engine, Free and Pro Versions - FreeFind.com

Advanced site search and navigation technology can be added to your website in minutes. You'll get high speed, high availability, hosted search technology from the company that pioneered the field. There's nothing to download or install. It's free and easy.

Demonstration Sites -- FreeFind.com: "Here are a few of the many thousands of sites using the FreeFind search engine. None of these sites are related to FreeFind.com, and they are all real live sites - not special demo sites. "

[RW-Help] new website

from the RootsWeb-Help-L list in my email

I need step by step instructions on how to open a new website.
I have a password from rootsweb, ftp capability, and enough html for simple stuff.
Simple stuff is just what I want the website for. Can anyone help?
There must be a place somewhere that would offer a minimal tutorial.
I have maintained a website for three or four years. Just never opened one.
Nan Dixon
http://www.rootsweb.com/~nycalexa

my answer:-

very simple
(a)
your first file is called index.html that is your front door

(b)
make a folder - subdirectory - called images to put graphics on ( like a storage cupboard for clutter)

(c)
with pencil and paper think about the structure you will create

(d)
the next page is sitemap.html
here is one of mine
http://www.rootsweb.com/~dnkcen/sitemap.html
the url are written out to make them easy to copy paste into email

here is my standard footer:-


dnkcen Site Map
updated May 21 2004 Hugh Watkins


that formula goes on the bottom of ALL my pages

dnkcen Site Map -- this links to the site map so no two pages /sections are more than two clicks from each other

updated May 21 2004 -- this helps me keep a check on things - nearly 100 pages

Hugh Watkins -- a special email address - so spam is not a problem, and I can see straight away where my new contact is coming from

(a2)
here is my front page
Danish Census and Church Books : Welcome http://www.rootsweb.com/~dnkcen/index.html

(d2)
here is my BIG site map
dnkcen Full Site Map mainly for web crawlers
http://www.rootsweb.com/~dnkcen/fullsitemap.html

scroll down and I have copy pasted part of the Directory Listing from
http://www.rootsweb.com/fileman/file_manager.cgi?
which I use rather than ftp
eg

Listing of http://www.rootsweb.com/~dnkcen/
ETC these are tne names of folders AKA sub-directories
FAQ
OSS
amt
bedsted
brumleby
da
en
images
library
randers
sitehistory
daisy

and I used the windows wizard My network places to link to my site and drag and drop any images I needed.
BTW it also works the other way I can drag and drop my site to my own computer for back up purposes

I administer another site which I tidied up and then made this site map
http://users.rootsweb.com/~wlsmer/sitemap.html

I kept the old pages but moved all the images into an image folder, and I made an Inventory of images fom the file manager page on the 14th February 2004
http://users.rootsweb.com/~wlsmer/images/index.html

RootsWeb: Database Index

RootsWeb: Database Index

Our Most Popular Searchable Indexes:
World Connect — 372,595,410 names in family trees
Search Thingy — a silly name for our powerful site-wide search engine
Meta Search — search multiple databases with one entry
RootsWeb Surname List (RSL) — more than one million surname entries

WorldConnect Project -- Connecting the World One GEDCOM at Time this is a secondary source or worse
copies of copies - there is definitely some bad data here so just like the IGI check and recheck against original documents

Search Thingy — a silly name for our powerful site-wide search engine
the first three hits of my test search were 404 not found

RootsWeb Image Shop - Title

RootsWeb Image Shop - Title
Welcome to the RootsWeb Image Shop. This site has been created so that new webmasters can have access to image files (.gif and .jpg) for their web pages. You are free to link to any of these images -- but please do not copy them to your own account.
If you have freeware gifs that you have created for your website and would like to donate them to RootsWeb so that all of our users can have access to them - please send email to Carol Hepburn and I will include your image link to image file here.


found this by accident

Monday, 06-Apr-98 12:37:27 PDT Sorry, this page is under construction
long time no see

RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative

Friday, March 18, 2005

Button Maker :: useful for home page makers

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Marshall Genealogy Family Index

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Hello : Introducing BloggerBot

stuff you never thought you wanted to know about google

Pagerank, PR, banned by Google: "The Web is boosted to be such a great thing because it is fully distributed and no central authority that controls it. This is not true any more. It is at best a centralized lookup system with a distributed file storage. 80-90 of the web traffic originates from Google. The central is Google, and if you get on the bad side of Google you are finished on the web."

Fragments main page: " - stuff you never thought you wanted to know.
Fragments are bits of useful information."

Never use META tag in html, syntax.: "A concept from the past.
written by: Jon Berg. - jon.berg |a| turtlemeat.com "

Most high ranked pages of the web: "Try to type in http in Google, and you will get the highest ranked web pages." Google Search: http

at Turtlemeat.com
Google customize and personalize - Make your own google search page, your logo, your colors.



Monday, March 14, 2005

WHAT IS THE RSL AND HOW IS IT USED?

Overview of the RootsWeb Surname List (RSL): "
The RootsWeb Surname List (RSL) is a list or registry of surnames (at the time I write this, there are more than 977,000 surnames that have been submitted by more than 194,000 genealogists, with additional names arriving at the rate of more 700 a day). Associated with each surname are dates and locations, and information about how to contact the person who submitted the surname. If you are researching a family with the same surname, in the same area and similar time frame, then you might find it useful to contact the person who submitted the surname to share and compare notes."
RootsWeb Surname List -- Interactive Search

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Genealogy Look Up Forum

Genealogy Look Up Forum: "Welcome to Genealogy Look Up Forum. I wanted to create this website for people who are looking for information on their genealogy research. On the behalf of myself and my volunteer associates all look ups are free of charge. We sometimes know how hard it is to find information on your family. That is why we are happy to help. Please when you make a request always Thank your volunteer for their time. Also please allow 5-10 days for them to get back with you with your requests. We do get lots of people needing requests, so please be patient and i assure you will get a reply back."

Genealogy Chat Room

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Danish parish registers and census online help

Share your Research and be a volunteer SKS

RootsWeb: Share Your Family History: "The primary purpose and function of RootsWeb.com is to connect people so that they can help each other and share genealogical research. Most resources on RootsWeb.com are designed to facilitate such connections. "

RootsWeb hosts many of the largest volunteer genealogy projects on the Internet.
Volunteers locate, transcribe, and publish genealogical data and help new users.

SKS Some Kind Soul - a volunteer who does look-ups on and off line

dnkcen Full Site Map

dnkcen Full Site Map Making this is how I am spending this Saturday afternoon, because I just found out that the web crawlers do not go more than about 1 or 2 levels down in the directories.

Friday, March 11, 2005

Michigan Obituaries

Michigan Obituaries & Searchable Databases:

" I hope you'll find some new and exciting places that you haven't been to yet here.
Please keep in mind that I DO NOT do re-search for others!!

Some sites are more informative than others.
The Newspaper section goes directly to the newspaper; make sure to click on Obituary, if it doesn't automatically come up.
These sites have free searches unless they state otherwise, but I have tried to keep them FREE!!
If you have anything that you would like to have me add to the following pages PLEASE email me, I'll check them out and get them listed as soon as I can.

Please remember they don't have to be just for Michigan! I'll be adding more as time allows."

and

Michigan Searchable Databases includes 1870 Census by the Library of Michigan

Michigan Obituaries

Michigan Obituaries & Searchable Databases: " I hope you'll find some new and exciting places that you haven't been to yet here. Please keep in mind that I DO NOT do re-search for others!! Some sites are more informative than others. The Newspaper section goes directly to the newspaper; make sure to click on Obituary, if it doesn't automatically come up. These sites have free searches unless they state otherwise, but I have tried to keep them FREE!! If you have anything that you would like to have me add to the following pages PLEASE email me, I'll check them out and get them listed as soon as I can. Please remember they don't have to be just for Michigan! I'll be adding more as time allows."

and

Michigan Searchable Databases includes some cemsus

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Census UK FAQ NEW VERSION

Census UK FAQ updated March 4 2005

looks best in netscape where the panel Family History Centers in UK is centered
thepagews edited in Netscape composer

Google Search: site:freepages.rootsweb.com

Friday, March 04, 2005

Census UK

Census UK: updated June 20 2004 - anothe one for my to-do list

Thursday, March 03, 2005

bloated code

Google Search: bloated code

from my emil [FreeHelp] about WYSIWYG Editor : MS Word 2003

- - - Word creates bloated code for web pages. I think there
has been a discussion of this topic before on this list and if you search
the archives for bloated code, you should be able to read most of them. You
also might want to check out this page - Using Word as a Web Publisher.


http://www.uwec.edu/help/Webpub/wordweb.htm

Pat Geary
http://huuweb.org/
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~gearyfamily/
http://www.rootsweb.com/~vamscdar/



Google Search: bloated code WYSIWYG Editor

Web Authoring Tools [encyclopedia]

SecuritySpace

SecuritySpace

Web Probe
Find out the server type, response time, site history as well as security protocol, cipher info and certifcate data for SSL sites.

========== testing ============
Basic Information

Site being probed: hometown.aol.co.uk

Web Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) Resin/2.0.5


Page Retrieval Time 0.39 seconds
Connect time: 0.26
Wait time: 0.04
Data Recv time: 0.09
Other: 0.00


Size of page: 8633 bytes

Server History:
Date IP address Server String

Dec 22, 2004 205.188.226.153 No signature returned
Nov 20, 2004 205.188.226.153 Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) Resin/2.0.5

snip
Apr 11, 2001 205.188.160.50 Apache/1.3.17 (Unix) Resin/1.2.3

===============
TRACERT hometown.aol.co.uk

Tracing route to mtapach-vip.aol.com [205.188.226.153]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 17 ms 20 ms 17 ms rt-lostc17.dial.aol.com [195.93.23.81]
2 17 ms 18 ms 17 ms iptfarmlc-los-ve3.proxy.aol.com [195.93.17.94]
3 17 ms 21 ms 18 ms accessl1-los-ae2.router.aol.com [172.17.169.43]

4 18 ms 19 ms 17 ms pop1-loh-P7-0.atdn.net [66.185.143.193]
5 17 ms 16 ms 18 ms bb2-loh-P5-0.atdn.net [66.185.136.226]
6 85 ms 84 ms 83 ms bb2-nye-P5-0.atdn.net [66.185.152.140]
7 88 ms 88 ms 92 ms bb2-vie-P12-0.atdn.net [66.185.152.201]
8 88 ms 92 ms 89 ms pop1-vie-P1-0.atdn.net [66.185.139.83]
9 90 ms 91 ms 89 ms dar2-dtc-S0-0-0.atdn.net [66.185.141.114]
10 90 ms 91 ms 90 ms ow2-dr5-SO0-0-0.router.aol.com [172.18.52.26]
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 *



Basic Information

Site being probed: mtapach-vip.aol.com

Web Server: Unknown


Page Retrieval Time 0.63 seconds
Connect time: 0.03
Wait time: 0.00
Data Recv time: 0.00
Other: 0.60



===
===================
Basic Information

Site being probed: hometown.aol.com

Web Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) Resin/2.0.5


Page Retrieval Time 1.88 seconds
Connect time: 1.66
Wait time: 0.10
Data Recv time: 0.12
Other: 0.00


Size of page: 8591 bytes

Server History:
Date IP address Server String

Dec 22, 2004 205.188.226.184 No signature returned
Nov 20, 2004 205.188.226.153 Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) Resin/2.0.5
Oct 18, 2004 205.188.226.152 Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) Resin/2.0.5
snipped
Sep 11, 2003 205.188.226.153 Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) Resin/2.0.5
Aug 20, 2003 205.188.134.245 AOLserver/3.4.2
snip
Sep 15, 2002 205.188.134.245 AOLserver/3.4.2
Aug 12, 2002 205.188.160.50 Apache/1.3.17 (Unix) Resin/2.0.5
Jul 11, 2002 205.188.134.245 Apache/1.3.17 (Unix) Resin/2.0.5
Jun 11, 2002 205.188.134.245 No contact
May 7, 2002 205.188.160.50 No contact
Apr 9, 2002 205.188.160.50 Apache/1.3.17 (Unix) Resin/1.2.3
big snip
Aug 27, 1998 N/A NaviServer/2.0 AOLserver/2.3m3

===========================
TRACERT hometown.aol.com


Tracing route to hometown.aol.com [205.188.226.153]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 16 ms 16 ms 17 ms rt-lostc17.dial.aol.com [195.93.23.81]
2 17 ms 16 ms 17 ms iptfarmlc-los-ve3.proxy.aol.com [195.93.17.94]
3 42 ms 18 ms 16 ms accessl1-los-ae2.router.aol.com [172.17.169.43]

4 16 ms 17 ms 18 ms pop1-loh-P7-0.atdn.net [66.185.143.193]
5 16 ms 21 ms 17 ms bb2-loh-P5-0.atdn.net [66.185.136.226]
6 84 ms 85 ms 84 ms bb2-nye-P5-0.atdn.net [66.185.152.140]
7 90 ms 87 ms 91 ms bb2-vie-P12-0.atdn.net [66.185.152.201]
8 89 ms 89 ms 92 ms pop1-vie-P1-0.atdn.net [66.185.139.83]
9 93 ms 98 ms 90 ms dar2-dtc-S0-0-0.atdn.net [66.185.141.114]
10 90 ms 90 ms 91 ms ow2-dr5-SO0-1-0.router.aol.com [172.18.52.18]
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 *

RootsWeb Site Search

Benjamin Bennett Graves 1831 - 1865 North Carolina

Chesterfield County Graves Family: "This site is for the descendants of Benjamin Bennett Graves and his wife Synthia Sellars. Benjamin Bennett Graves was born in Montgomery Co., North Carolina in 1831, and Synthia Sellars was born in Chesterfield Co., South Carolina in abt. 1832. Their marriage was short lived, as Benjamin Bennett Graves is thought to have died in service to his southern heritage in abt. 1865, and then Synthia raised her children in Chesterfield Co., South Carolina. These six children, listed below, . . . . "