After many trials, I was finally able to get the Shadowbox effect working. Basically, this gives me the ability to display a window containing a picture, graphic, a slideshow, even a video, when the user clicks on a link. It’s called Shadowbox because the original window gets displayed in a “shadow” (greyed out) while the new window is active. When the user closes the new window, it goes away, and he/she is returned to the original window. I will be using this effect a lot.

The amazing thing about Shadowbox is that it is totally free software, and the support is superb. I tried to get it working without success (lots of html code to insert in various files, lots of downloaded files to put in various folders, all rather complicated). When I couldn’t get it going, I headed for the Realmac Software forums (these are the guys who produced RapidWeaver), typed in my questions, and got responses in literally minutes. The experts finally figured out what was wrong by my uploading my website with my Shadowbox changes in place, and then they took a look at the html code I had introduced: they soon found a tiny little typo that caused everything to fail. Amazing service!

Up until now, I’ve been reloading the entire web site even if all I do is add one blog entry. This time I am going to upload just the blog file(s), and see if it catches this entry, and that the whole website still holds together. Here we go…

Ah, it worked. Now, the next thing is to get the Gold Lake chart to open in its own window. After much fiddling around, I was able to do that as follows:

1. Create an html file to display the chart, with an img line referencing the gold lake chart file, “Gold_lake_2008_med.jpg”, and with width and height values equal to the dimensions of the chart file, in pixels.
2. Put both the html file and the chart file in a folder, “myfiles”, and upload that to the server.
3. Add a link to the home page of the website that points to the url “myfiles/Gold_lake_2008.html”.

Pretty darn simple, right?

Now to go back to the RapidWeaver user forum, and thank the gentleman who told me how to do this. And to move on to the next problem: how to have a page click cause a photo to appear on the page, and then be able to close it and return to the page…

Updated the condo website once more, with Caren’s corrections to the text. Next step: get it translated into Spanish, at which time I will have to figure out how to provide an easy was to switch between English and Spanish. I also should see about optimizing all of the pictures for the web so that they don’t take so long to download. Ah, web design, there is always room for improvement…

And, in addition, I added to the family website a bunch of Rachael’s China pictures. To see them, click here. In fact, here’s one of them.

Trying out a new (simpler) look to the website – didn’t like the big, thick header, or the sidebar: Back to basics. Also, trying to figure out how best to get the genealogy information displayed in a simple, attractive, interactive way. Filed some questions in the RapidWeaver User’s Forum, and got responses almost immediately – nice! Finally, I’ve added the Gold Lake chart, but can’t really test it until I upload my changes, which I’m about to do. Wish me luck…

Also added my first few “genealogy” pages. The idea is to have a home page for each person: the person’s picture will be in the center, info about him/here on the left, husband/wife (if any) on the right, parents above, children below (I haven’t figured out where to put the pets yet). Clicking on the center picture gives you a page devoted to that person; clicking on any other person gets you to the home page of that person. Sounds simple – we’ll see if it works out. It will be interesting to see how it handles divorces and re-marriages.

Rachael uploaded a bunch of pictures, the first of which is here (to see them all, go to Shutterfly).

It fired its first beam around the track this morning. This is a very big deal. This may be the key to understanding the deepest mysterious of the universe. For a fuller report, click here.

And, hardly less significant: the 21-month occupation of an oak grove at UCSB has ended, with the remaining four protesters (none of whom was a UC student) descending from their perches in redwood trees, and getting immediately arrested. Rachael, you will be happy to know that the UCSC protesters are still in their perch (now 10 months and counting).

And I added a page of Phoebe’s pictures.

I created my first blog page with a wonderful product for the Mac called RapidWeaver, from Real Mac Software. Inexpensive, easy to use, beautiful themes (or skins as they are called in trade), etc. Then I added a product called Blocks, from YourHead, which expands RapidWeaver’s capabilities in a number of areas I wanted to try out. It’s been a lot of fun using both products. My hope is that they won’t run out of steam and oblige me to step up to the gold standard, DreamWeaver. Here’s why:

RapidWeaver………….$79
Blocks………………….$125
DreamWeaver…….$1799

I had troubles using RapidWeaver’s upload function to move my files to my hosting server, so I download the free FileZilla, which works like a charm.

OK, I spent some time on godaddy.com, trying to figure out my next step – I finally gave up and asked good old Google, and rapidly learned that just owning a name for my website wasn’t enough; next, I needed a place (a server, to be exact) which could HOST my website: that is, keep my website pages so that when people typed in “www.samedwardsfamily.com”, the server could send the pages to the screen of the lucky family member who did the typing.

So, back to godaddy, where I found, after considerable searching, between Domains and Site builders, the word Hosting. Clicking on it revealed for me the Hosting and Servers menu. Where to begin? Virtual Dedicated had some appeal, as did Hosting Package Deals –

, not to mention Go Daddy Hosting Connection: a plethora of riches! After much looking about, I decided Web Site Hosting was for me; clicking on it revealed three available plans; I of course chose the cheapest ($50/yr), with the least number of features, most of which I couldn’t understand.

Next step was to activate my new hosting site – meaning, I think, that I needed to tell the folks at godaddy that my new website was to be hosted there. This hosting setup procedure, I am sad to report, turned out to have an interesting stumbling block in wait: the first step in the setup procedure offered me a choice of activating either my recently purchased Economy site, or a Free site. Hey, I know a good deal when I see one: I canceled my Economy site, setup my Free site, and congratulated myself on my business acumen. But more about that after I describe how I created my first blog page…

Hi mom and dad,

Happy early birthday!! I got the book in the mail-thank you pops. It looks really good!! I leave tonight on a sleeper train to the grasslands of inner mongolia! I hope your birthday is really nice and I’ll be thinking about you ( I do all the time anyways). Many pictures are being taken, but the internet is retarded. Also, if it’s not too much money can you send me the lonely planet on china-i’ve decided i really do need it. Thanks guys! I love you mucho. Keep dana out of trouble.
love rach
P.S. how are the new weeds episodes? the only tv we get here is junk.
PPS I’ll try to call you guys but I’m not sure if there will be a phone in our yurt.
ppps My school is NW of the forbidden city,resting on the inside of the third ring-I just put a map up in my room and I mark everywhere I go!