This is where I'll announce the most recent additions to our web site. If you've visited it before and want to know what's changed, take a look here first.
I will try to keep the website up-to-date by removing older materials after they have had a fair airing. Some material, such as personal histories / snaps, nostalgic items, etc. would qualify for retention. Other material which is clearly dated, or served its purpose will be cleared. One way of doing this is would be to have, say, annual email 'brat chat' to agree on a clean-up. We'll play it by ear when we start running out of space or response/access times become unacceptable.
Site problems/improvement requests/additions
| Date | Name |
Problem/Suggestion/Comment |
Response |
| 14/6/02 | Bill Howell | Personal history | included |
| 3/9/01 | Roly | Personal history | included |
| 31/8/01 | Roly Oliver | NZ page | Created under 'Entry Information' |
| 24/8/01 | Roly Oliver | Some Halton Days pictures | Included in Roly's 'Brat Snaps' page |
| 11/8/01 | Roly Oliver | Larger font on header links, relocate instructions, brief descriptions of header links, move Webmaster addr. to top | Done |
| 8/7/01 | Bill | New link to RAF Halton Pipes and Drums site | Added to Links page |
| 6/7/01 | Del | Some reunion photos | Added to Brats Snaps/Reunions |
| 27/6/01 | Jim | Suggested modifications to Entry List/Missing List | Incorporated. Have removed number columns as suggested. |
| 24/6/01 | Del Holt | Del's story - Life after flying (how Del ended up in Canada) | Posted in Entry Info/Personal Histories |
| 21/6/01 | Jim | Additions/corrections to names | In progress. Links to 69th and 70th put on 'links' page. |
| 17/6/01 | John N. | Personal history/snaps input | I've changed the structure a little. Personal histories and snaps are now grouped together under Entry Info/Personal histories |
| 16/6/01 | Reg | I would suggest is that the photos submitted should be of a small file size to reduce the amount of time viewers have to spend accessing them. | Agreed. I mentioned 50kb max in my guide lines. If quality is not compromised too much by keeping them well below this we should do so. Where appropriate I'll put pictures on sub-pages and/or use place markers to name the picture. That way the display can be avoided/abandoned if of no interest. |
| 13/6/01 | Brian McC | Improve security on email addresses | The email column on the Entry List has been removed due to it being in the public domain. Instead I have created a private forum on the 'ezboard.com'. You can enter this forum with a password (either contact me or recall the nickname of our F.S A/A) on http://pub73.ezboard.com/fthe68thentryfrm2 It's not Enigma but it'll do for now. |
| 6/6/01 | Brian McC | The 'search' facility doesn't work. | Investigating. It could be an 'extension' that is not activated. |
| 6/6/01 | Brian McC | Introduction of an experimental chat room. | We'll give www.ezboard.com a try. Go to 'Chat links' page. You'll need a password. Contact me or try nickname for our F.S.A/A |
| 4/6/01 | John P. | New info/corrections to names in En.Brat. | En.Brat. updated. |
| 1/6/01 | Brian McC | Improvement in naming people on group photos. | have programmed the mouse pointer to display individuals names on some photos. If it's popular I'll use it more often. |
| 26/5/01 | John Nicholson | 1. Would like to fit the web
page onto one screen wide I had to change the view to 1024 x 768 which
even with my glasses and magnifying glass so of the reading was too small.
I had to change back to 800 x 600 and then all the pages had to be
scrolled to see the left and right hand sides. 2. Request to have link to family web site. |
1.See Dickie L's
report below
2.Link included to family web site under:- Entry Information / Personal Histories |
| 26/5/01 | Jim |
Would like a
more consistent approach to the “nominal roll”. Some of the Entry will
never be discovered and all you will be left with is their Christian name
initials. I would suggest that this is done in all cases and then, perhaps in brackets what they like to be called. For example in my case: Simpson J. (Jim). I appreciate that this will add to the data you already have such as * ** + and RNZAF etc. Perhaps additional column (s) may have to be included. |
I started the Entry list with a straight forward official 'Graduation' list. This name had to be dropped because many who had served time in the 68th were excluded. I think that we should be inclusive rather than exclusive 50 years on, so anybody who spent some time with us at Halton can be included if we know who they are and if it is their wish. I agree that the more 'colourful' nicknames should not be published. Nicknames are appropriate, I feel, on old snaps if their owners have no objection. The list of names is intended to be informative rather than formal, so where we know the current preferred name, be it forename, diminutive forename or nickname, I think it is appropriate to use it. Inoffensive Halton time AKA's will be included in brackets for ease of identification unless the owner would rather they weren't. |
| 25/5/01 | Bill | I've now run Netscape on the web site and because V 4.7 doesn't run side bars the whole page appears nicely. Went back into IE and closed Favourites and got the same result. | See Dickie L's report below |
| 25/5/01 | Bill | 1. 19" screen set to 1024 x 768
the pages are too wide and use a side slider to access all of the page. This
all applies to IE. As yet I have not opened it in Netscape. So it really
isn't a problem, but it could help others if the web page width was reduced
slightly.
2.What is the significance of "68th Entry Association"? |
1. See Dickie L's
report below
2. Proposed and created at the 50th Anniversary Reunion. Five quid and you're in. Contact Mike Williams - treasurer |
| 25/5/01 | Roy | 1. Change the width of the pages making them
slimmer so that we can read the page without having to move the left right
bottom bar. 2. Why not have a list of the missing gives everybody a chance to find our missing mates. 3. Let's have a memorial page listing our passed away members. 4. Try to put the email addresses with the list of members. Try hard to get the OK to list the email. Will generate a lot of correspondence 5. I see that we do not want to list addresses, but perhaps we can list country of residence. Example JJ Smith, Calgary Canada this way if I am going to Canada on holiday I can look up, JJ Smith 6. Maybe a social calendar listing get together events that are of interest to the apprentice and or 68 entry. |
1. See below 2. Will create a page of missing brats and invite them to come in from the cold (if they want to!). As a provisional measure they can contact me on my webmaster's email. A better solution would be for someone to be more generous by volunteering their name/email addr/address as the custodian of the lost soul database. 3. Will do - entitled In Memoriam. I'll hyperlink to a sub-page containing Obituaries if available. 4. Will include an extra column for email addresses (which will only be published with written/email consent). I am reluctant to 'try hard' to get people to put their email address in the public domain because of the risks of scams and spam. If we get around to using secure access (e.g. SSL) that would sell me more on the idea. One counter measure against 'email address robot crawlers' is to replace the '@' with some other character. That way such addresses will then manage to escape through the dragnet and avoid a possible spam avalanche. If spam doesn't bother you OK, otherwise I'll do the above per individual request. 5. Will add an extra column to the Entry List. 6. I have now included a subsection under the News page. |
| 24/5/01 | Dickie | My first comment is that I
normally use 800 x 600 resolution so the written pages required scrolling
across as well as down. At 1024 x 768 no problem with across scrolling but
tested the eyesight!
|
I use a 19" screen so had overlooked the possibility of scrolling/legibility problems (hence the beta phase). I go along with your suggestion that we aim for 800 X 600. I've implemented it. In order to get as much text across the screen as possible at this resolution, I've moved the side navigation bar to the top/bottom of the display. It works fine on 17" screens which seem to be the entry level in the Industry nowadays. If we get a lot of flak from a wider audience using 15" we can always review the situation. |