January 4, 1998

Death Valley - A Guide has a revamped map system. Previously you went right from a slow, ugly index map to a finely detailed map page. Some complained that the port hole was too tiny and that an intermediate or zoomed out map view would be useful. There were 48 of the existing detailed maps. I added an intermediate layer with 12 map pages that are 4X the area of the detailed maps which are still there as the most detailed layer in the map hierarchy.

I added clearer map system usage directions below each map. Hopefully this will make use of scrolling edge bars clearer for new users.

The index map is new. It is faster and provides a better view of the area. Combined with the intermediate layer of 12 map pages, this new index should make map navigation easier and faster.

But, if you still prefer one big map sheet and your our internal navigation system you now have an alternative. The entire 1938 Death Valley Map at the most detailed resolution can be yours via FTP download from the Map Index page. A detailed description on that page explains this free offering for personal, non-commercial use.

The word Index page is updated. It is still not quite complete but this is a big improvement over the old version. Directions are provided for use of a browser's "find in page" feature so that those new to the web can learn to search individual pages. If you are not familiar with page searching, just go to a page, press Ctrl+F and enter the word or phrase to search on. The Index will take you to the right page within the book and your browser's "find in page" feature will find the word or phrase you are looking for.

I did some HTML fixup but doubt anyone will notice. Any new pages will probably use Cascading Style Sheets so it will be wise to update your browser to version 4 - Nav or MSIE.

You can get Nav v4 from the button on the Dotted Dog homepage. It is highly recommended over MSIE if you live on a peer-to-peer network and like to share resources since Nav v4 has the useful feature of NOT sharing full disk access with the entire web. The HTML v4 implementation in MSIE is slightly more complete but Nav v4.04 has fewer bugs and is quite reliable. HTML v4 will likely be a short lived "standard" as both Netscape and Microsoft are rumored to be introducing XML capablity with the v5 browsers. XML will be a built-in, almost native format for MS Word and other editors and will become a standard format for Help files on Windows OS computers. We can hope only that unlike the current v4 browsers from Microsoft and Netscape, that new v5 implementations will offer a consistent set of XML features. XML has the potential to eliminate "this page looks best if viewed with ..." while offering a rich set of capabilities but it is up to the browser vendors to offer an XML compliant product. Web pages can be more interesting and consistent if they do.

I hope to get more photos put up eventually. I have them but just need to do the scanning and get the HTML written. Maybe by this time next year.

Ed Scott

-- Ed Scott (dotted.dog@worldnet.att.net), January 05, 1998