Viewing specifications:
These pages look and sound best using Internet Explorer 4 or 5, or Netscape Navigator 4.5 or 4.6 ... other versions of Netscape of at least level 4 will do okay. Opera browsers version 3 and above are okay. With IE 4/5, I suggest medium font size or slightly above medium for best display. With Netscape, experiment with font size until you get results you like. Attempts have been made to make virtually identical renderings regardless of browser. Lynx browsers will of course ignore the javascript commands and the image files, as well as the musical background. Unless Opera users get the required plugins they will probably not be able to view the audio-visual page or the chat page.
Background:
The wallpaper background changes frequently via a script which just juggles the files around. Many are various shades of blue background, with several others as well. There are 30 variations in total. See below on how selections are made.
Midi Files:
Each time you load the page, you are given a choice of music on or off and the name of the musical selection currently presented. You can toggle this if you change your mind by simply reloading the page and making the choice again. The midi files selected at random are as noted in the following list:
Number Name of Composition Running Time ====== =================== ============ 1 Bach: Fugue in D Minor - Giant length 3:18 2 Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake length 3:02 3 Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto length 4:02 4 Boellman: Tocatta From Gothic Suite length 3:33 5 Bach: Sheep May Safely Graze length 4:28 6 Bach: Prelude & Fugue in D Minor length 3:41 7 Tchaikovsky: Nutcracker Suite length 1:56 8 Mendolssohn: Sonata #3 length 2:08 9 Bach: BWV #577 'Gigue Fugue' length 3:13 10 Mozart: Symphony K622 length 4:42 11 Bach: Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring length 2:45 12 Welsh Folk Tune: 'Bossiney' length 3:01 13 Mouret: Rondeau length 4:12 14 Widor: Tocatta From Fifth Symphony length 6:00 15 Liszt: Sonata in F Major length 7:14 16 Handel: Messiah (For Unto Us) length 4:28 17 Mendelssohn: Midsummer Night's Dream length 4:26
How they are selected:
A javascript looks at browserTime.getseconds() and depending on the range of seconds (i.e. 0-3, 4-7, etc) that is the time when the page is called assigns a value to 'selection'. Then document.write adds this line to the html code: 'bgsound src=MIDI/selection.mid loop=infinite', or in Netscape's case, 'embed src=MIDI/selection.mid hidden=true loop=true'. About every three or four seconds a new selection becomes the file to use. The backgrounds are assigned at the same time. In order that the same background does not automatically appear with the same music each time, an additional small script called 'rotation' in my crontab periodically renumbers all the backgrounds forcing 'selection' to accept a different assignment. You will rarely if ever get the same background and midi in combination twice.
Regards language translation:
At the top of several pages is the notation, 'translate this page' with a drop-down menu of choices. All I do here is offer the user an HTML 'form', and I send the results to Babel Fish's cgi-bin for treatment and return. See this feature at AltaVista if you want more details. The translations leave a bit to be desired, but for 'on the fly' translating, it is not too bad.
Would you like to have web pages like this? Feel perfectly free to examine or copy the code as you wish, including the midi files and other decorative elements on each page. My gift to the net!
Please be patient as I continue my work!
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