h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hmm, seems formatting doesn't work!

It doesn't in the forums and journals. Links can be put in but only as the html://www.blah.blah.f****g.blah. A HREF is printed as A HREF. I find the most annoying thing to be the fact that all the gunk atop the page disappears as you scroll down.

Well, if it didn't scroll that'd mean a frames based page, and the amount of frames needed would be something like 42. Also, Netscape hates frames, hence the way h2g2 is. Probably.

Netscape hates frames? Eveery time I come to some Java-infested site filled with fancy animated crap and magic tinkling fonts I'm warned to come no further if my heart is 'Soft. Try that bloke who maintains the alleged real HHGG (which never seems to have owt on it) for an example. No, something like the forum page with a discrete window for the scrollling text would be nice. What would really be nice is for monitors to be aligned the other way round, more like a sheet of paper or page of a book. It's better on the eye muscles for one thing.

Well, my own site's revamp required chopping up a graphic into many frames. It behaves 100% in IE on the PC and 99% on the Mac (1 pixel out on one frame for some reason. Using exact HTML code as per W3C it looked horrible in Netscape, so much so that I had to do an entirely new frameset for that browser. Personally, I think both major browsers suck big time but then I'm using them at work all day every day to design so I would say that! NN can handle frames okay SO LONG as they don't have to align properly, hence why H2G2 is primarilly tables based. Probably.

When looking (for no reason at all as I can't understand a letter of it) at the page source for some h2g2 thing, I noticed the word "table" cropping up a lot. That'll be why, then. While I'm here, can anyone explain what, why, how and where is Java? I asked my mate but he does computer science and was therefore enthusiastic but unenlightening.

Javascript is used in web pages to make things go whiz-bang basically. One example is when you hold the cursor over a link: usually it shows the URL (ie: http://www.snub.dircon.co.uk ) but with javascipt you can make it say "Go to Snub.Communications - home of the dancing tree" instead. Basically, Javascript is used for dynamic content - ie: to make stuff happen. Java is a programming language proper and too complicated for normal people like you and me to understand!!!

I found an entry on Java™, went to look at the sites it suggested and tried to copy down some code but it wouldn't let me unless I could upload a file or two to a place from which they might be referred to by applets in the text herein. That being impossible until I find some server space somewhere in the public domain, I settled for a thing that makes the background colour change which i borrowed from my cousin's web page. Go to http://www.angelfire.com/ky/SvenZone/index.html
then to the "Holy Order of Sven" page for a thing that looks nice. My knowledge of programming is limited to Prof. Sinclair's finest but the sheer timewasting value of learning basic Java™ beckons when my exams are over.