KV5R Web Designs http://kv5r.com/index.asp en-us 8/28/2008 9:37:44 AM -0500 8/28/2008 9:37:44 AM -0500 KV5R Welcome! to the new kv5r.com web site! This new site is all handmade with clean HTML401 Strict and CSS2 coding, and a fresh new look. My plans are to expand it with a large amount of useful content. On the menu, you’ll find links leading to: About KV5R Whether you need a new web site or a makeover, KV5R can meet and exceed your needs and expectations. Under the ‘Brochure’ link are several pages covering my web design business, résumé, design gallery, and links to my other sites. http://kv5r.com/index.asp Brochure Web Design · Development · Writing · Maintenance This section is my on-line brochure. If you are interested in having a nice web site built, at a very reasonable rate, by a web designer of uncompromising skill and integrity, please take a few moments to read these pages. Who? Harold Melton, KV5R, is an independent contractor, performing technical works-for-hire for discerning clients. He is a fifty-year-old Christian man who works from home, via the Internet. http://kv5r.com/brochure/index.asp Compare High Quality at Reasonable Rates Take a Look! There are many choices to consider when selecting a web designer/developer. KV5R likes to do things a little differently! Consider: KV5R Web Designs Most Others Low overhead means low hourly rate, well under one-half the national average. Fixed-price contract, plus $60 per hour (and up) for all services not explicitly specified in the contract. Work-for-hire—client owns content upon completion, so can maintain own site or hire others to do so. http://kv5r.com/brochure/compare.asp Contact Need a Site? Let’s Talk! Please contact me via email to discuss your needs. I work and sleep ‘strange’ hours, so usually do not take phone calls, unless previously arranged (and my computer is on the phone most of the time). Please take a little time to write and detail your needs and expectations. I will answer you in a day or two, providing my thoughts on the matter. We will then proceed from there, developing a clear understanding and a plan to address your needs. http://kv5r.com/brochure/contact.asp KV5R’s Web Design Gallery Samples of Various Web Designs & Themes © 2002-2008 KV5R. KV5R.com (u/c) My newest design! 100% xhtml.1.0.strict + css2 compliant!Fluid paper on marble! Enhanced Well Stimulation (u/c) world-class training and consulting… Turn-Key Services Group (u/c) telecommunications engineering and construction East Texas Funeral Home a full-service funeral home Bee-Line USA (u/c) promotional products, signs, stone engraving Tropic Breeze a fun template I built Advantage Homes showcase for a custom homebuilder Lake Palestine Chamber of Commerce includes a relational membership database with online editor Dan Taylor and Associates a classy service business brochure Lake Athens Baptist Church includes dynamic content database, CMS, forum, event calendar, etc. http://kv5r.com/brochure/designs.asp My Other Web Sites Please visit my clients! Site: Link: KV5R Web Designs kv5r.com Turn-Key Services Group (u/c) turn-keysg.com East Texas Funeral Home etexfh.com Tropic Breeze (CSS template) kv5r.com/tropic/ CBCC (ASP-CMS template) kv5r.com/cbcc/ Texas Traffic Net texastrafficnet.org Bee-Line USA (u/c) bee-lineusa.com Lake Palestine Chamber of Commerce lakepalestinechamber. http://kv5r.com/brochure/links.asp Services KV5R provides several high-quality technical services. Web Designs KV5R designs web sites that are clean, uncluttered, and professional. His web design philosophy breaks the mold of over-complicated, ‘cookie-cutter’ web sites. Every KV5R design is new and fresh, themed to reflect clients’ interests and needs. His web designs avoid the confusing clutter and ‘machinery’ seen on most web sites, preferring pages that are clean, attractive, informative, and easy to use. http://kv5r.com/brochure/services.asp Résumé of Harold Melton Web Site Design, Development, and Maintenance Technical Writing and Documentation Personal: Harold Melton, KV5R Location: Athens, Texas. Relocate: No Objectives: Web-site design, development, and maintenance Technical document production, any phase—development, writing, editing, and formatting Full or part-time employment, or hourly agreement, via home-based Internet telecommuting Professional Experience (over 30 years): Commercial web site design, development, and maintenance Technical writing, editing, formatting, and training development Paper-based industrial procedures and manuals; aviation training manuals Web content development, aviation training documents Major computer applications mastered: Word, FrontPage, PageMaker, ToolBook, AutoCAD, et. http://kv5r.com/brochure/resume.asp Cleaning Windows Junk Files Free up 2 Gigs! © 2008 KV5R. If your hard drive space is short, or if you just want to reduce the size of your backups, you can remove about 2 gigs of stuff from Windows. Note: These instructions are from my personal rebuild/install log. Disclaimers: Use at own risk. The author is not responsible for misuse, damage, nor unexpected results! If you don’t know about registry editing, DON’T! These files are stored by the XP operating system to make it more stable with less maintenance. http://kv5r.com/articles/cleanwin.asp CSS Tricks Going from transitional to strict. © 2008 KV5R. Page Index Absmiddle with CSS Center a Table with CSS Drop-Cap with CSS Friendly Menus with CSS Nowrap=nowrap Target=_blank In this section, I will attempt to document and demonstrate how to overcome some of the little problems that many developers encounter while transitioning from transitional to strict doctypes. How to Absmiddle with CSS One of the things I recently encountered is how to replace the deprecated ‘absmiddle’ feature of floated images using CSS. http://kv5r.com/articles/csstricks.asp DOCTYPEs Let browsers know what to expect! © 2007 KV5R. Which DOCTYPE to use? Some people don’t even use a doctype, leaving their pages vulnerable to XSS attacks and making browsers render in ‘quirks’ mode. When I decided to migrate all my work to XHTML, which one to use? I studied the matter a bit and came to an informed decision. Updated August 2008: What a shock. All this time I thought the web was migrating toward XHTML. Then I read this article, and found out that: XHTML is not the future of the web Consortium members are migrating toward HTML5 XHTML is served by virtually all public web servers as html, not xhtml For web development, XHTML offers no advantages over HTML401 Strict. http://kv5r.com/articles/doctypes.asp The New CSS Font-Family List Because the old list is outdated! © 2007 KV5R. Guess what I did a while back? Ok—so you read the title! Purpose: To create a modern list of Font-Family settings for use in CSS, to make web pages render as closely as possible to the designer’s intent, on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Reason: The installed base of font-families has considerably changed in the last few years. The old ‘arial, helvetica, sans-serif’ and ‘Times New Roman, Times, serif’ typeface listings used in most CSS are no longer valid. http://kv5r.com/articles/font-family.asp Setting Up a Lan For home networks with DSL © 2008 KV5R. This article covers the initially confusing issue of setting up a small Local Area Network (LAN) for file, printer, and Internet sharing. It is primarily intended for DSL subscribers that want to add more computers to their Internet connection. I’ve been configuring computers for over 20 years, but networks are something I ignored for as long as possible. Then I needed one, so I had to study the subject. http://kv5r.com/articles/lan.asp Lighting for Developers Setting your brain’s white-balance with full-spectrum lighting. © 2008 KV5R. What is the ‘correct’ lighting environment for computer-based designers and developers? What does ‘full-spectrum’ really mean? Why it important? This is not intended as a technical article, but a guide to practical and correct solutions (my standard m.o.). Background One sunny day, I was driving along a country road, wearing blue-blocking sunglasses. http://kv5r.com/articles/lighting.asp Linux what’s so great about it? © 2008 KV5R. The average computer user has never heard of Linux, or if they have, they don’t know beans about it. What is it, and why should one care to know anything about it? Linux is an operating system. It’s a fantastic operating system. What's so fantastic about it? Linux is based on UNIX, an industrial-strength operating system with about 40 years of history. Linux is scalable—it is used in everything from DVD players to mammoth data centers. http://kv5r.com/articles/linux.asp Web Design Articles Welcome! This site is a little collection of things I’ve learned while designing and developing web sites. Every new task is an opportunity to spend way too many hours searching the web and digging out reasonable, useable solutions, then refining and adapting them to the need. I hope you will visit all these pages and find simple, straightforward answers to your questions. My philosophy in design and coding is, “Make it elegant, but keep it simple!” I have developed this section with the idea of returning to the community some of what I’ve collected along the way by demonstrating… just how easy it is to design a fluid layout, the proper use of CSS-controlled tables for layout, neat css tricks using the proper doctype using modern font-families coding for browser compatibility workspace lighting for web developers setting up a lan and more…   Next: articles/tablerules. http://kv5r.com/articles/index.asp CSS Layout Tables css and divs and tables for web page layout © 2008 KV5R. About divs and tables: This site is designed entirely with CSS-controlled DIV layout. Several of my other sites are designed entirely with CSS-controlled TABLE layout. In each case, it’s the layout that determines whether I’ll use divs or tables. Sometimes I use both. This article is not about which way is “better,” because both are useful in various circumstances. http://kv5r.com/articles/tablerules.asp Web-safe colors when tradition trumps design © 2008 KV5R. Web-safe: Colors and fonts that should display properly in all browsers. No web designer/developer worth any salt would think of using otherwise, right? Well… The web-safe colors of ten years ago are outdated. According to various surveys, very few users (under 2%) are still using 256-color displays. We should now be designing for 1024x768, 16.7M colors, and using modern font-families, as the ‘web-safe’ basis for all new web designs. http://kv5r.com/articles/websafe.asp Amateur Radio Home of my famous Amateur radio articles, and more! Please visit http://athensarc. http://kv5r.com/amateur/index.asp