This is an experimental entry today; we're trying out a new system. Tiring of putting my words onto your screen, Eileene dug up a new web utility at the Greymatter website which lets semi-ignorant schlubs like me put up readable web pages. For the graphic, I still have Eileene to thank. This is an experimental entry today; we're trying out a new system. Tiring of putting my words onto your screen, Eileene dug up a new web utility at the Greymatter website which lets semi-ignorant schlubs like me put up readable web pages. For the graphic, I still have Eileene to thank.
There's little more to it than setting up a template into which you cut-and-paste whatever you like. Greymatter provides you with an ordinarily but perfectly useable HTML format, complete with header notation and everything. If you are web-savvy and prefer to tinker, you can do that, too. Eileene spent last evening ooh-ing and ah-ing over all the customizable whatzits while I looked over her shoulder, uncomprehending. My suspicions that the special features were extras only a web designer could love seemed vindicated when her attempts to get up a test page failed. Twice. Three times. Four. I went to bed. But now, as she watches Jurassic Park III, I am grappling with the thing, and there are neat buttons to play with.
I can [i]italicize[/i]. I can [u]underline[/u]. I can [b]boldface[/b]. I can do it with proper HTML tags (not hard), or use a shorthand, like double-asterisks on either side to boldface. Colors. Fonts. Pretty cool, eh?
That's all standard stuff, what you might expect. But HTML doesn't easily do?
moving script
zigging back and forth across the page. If I should need it. Spellchecking is automatic, sort of a pain to override when you want to use a non-word, but I can close my eyes and get: foe lofts jiving sigma kHz winch wings waning.
The text is interactive, too, in surprising ways. It sends a cookie out into your computer to check which of eighty-three languages you prefer, and translates my essay into proper idiomatic phrasing for that language. (Sorry for you Tamils out there; we're working on it.) Greymatter searches your records for age, so you can get the hot, , *** version or get it automatically cleaned up for the kiddies. I can program words like
this
to react to your mouse as a graphic, dodging across the screen when your cursor approaches, like a pesky mosquito. HTML doesn't do that. Click the button in the lower right to pre-arrange individual letters to compensate for dyslexia. A Braille version on screen or printer. I can even use monitor radiation to reprogram your DNA through the LAN.
Oh, wait. It doesn't do any of that. What was I thinking?
Hey, if it just appears in one piece on the first try, that's a small miracle.