Here are some random notes of my thoughts about the design.
 

New: I use Microsoft FrontPage 2002 to build this website and I have decided to continue doing so for another year or so. FrontPage has been discontinued and superseded by Microsoft's Expression Web which I have now tried. It is clearly a very good application but I suspect that the next version might be more suitable for me. In particular it lacks support for building a navigation structure that can generate menus automatically. Third party code is available for doing this but I would rather wait in the hope that the facility will eventually be integrated.

When I started producing this web site I read that Tables should be used for layout and I have used this technique on most pages.  However tables are now out of fashion and Cascaded Style Sheets (CCS) should be used for layout.  I have tried this method using a trial version of Expression Web, guided by this book, and it's certainly a plausible alternative but the conversion would take a long time on this web site. Therefore I am hoping (probably in vein) that the next version of Expression Web will have facilities to make this easier. In the meantime I plan to make gradual changes using FrontPage, so that the web site is not so table-intensive by the time I stop using FrontPage.

It has long been known that FrontPage produces inefficient code and I have made matters worse by using tables and being lax in my use of Styles (although I do use External Style Sheets).  Nearly every page fails W3C validation!  Fortunately I don't think that this has had a serious effect on download times and browser compatibility because most of the displayed pages are fairly simple. Expression Web does have a facility for removing formatting and it has several ways of highlighting problems with the code, but all this processing takes time! So, I'm also hoping that the next version of Expression web (or equivalent) might include tools to speed up this process.

There are several other web editors out there ranging from Notepad to Dreamweaver and I might come across something more suitable than Expression Web (which is for professional web designers), but as it succeeds FrontPage I think that it probably offers the best migration path. I have tried Serif's Web Plus but although this seems very good when starting from scratch it doesn't seem to like starting with code generated by FrontPage,

Sorry, I know that this is a cop-out, for now at least, but I am not a professional web site designer - and I do have a life!

April 2007......

A link to a large pdf file on this website appeared on a discussion forum web site at the start of April and by 6 April the bandwidth allowance for BBCeng was exceeded.  I needed to take swift action to keep BBCeng operational, so I removed a number of large files and made the necessary arrangements with the web hosting company.  I would like to avoid a recurrence and so I plan to consider various options.  I would welcome relevant advice.

Early 2007......

In December 2006 I upgraded the webspace  from 500MB to 1GB.

I used to make some links open automatically in a new window, but I have since read that it is better to let the user decide whether to do this (e.g. by right clicking).  Tabbed browsing makes this even more appropriate.  So, I am gradually amending the links on BBCeng so that they do not automatically open in a new window or tab.

Early 2006......

Web generation software:  I have been using computers since 1970 and even made a few in the 'old days', but I am not very interested in programming languages and prefer to use applications.  On the other hand I don't want to spend ages learning how to use a very complex application.  So, I have not written this web site in HTML and I have not made it using Dreamweaver.  Instead I have used Microsoft FrontPage 2002.  I am well aware that FrontPage has its limitations and that many web designers prefer other approaches (probably including some of my ex-BBC colleagues!) but it suits me and I think that it is well matched to this particular task.

Redirection:  The earlier web sites were hosted on server space that comes with my broadband ISP service (www.ntlworld.com) and I used www.ukreg.com to redirect from www.onairbook.co.uk and www.bbcdd.org.uk.  This was not ideal because if I redirected in a frame the frame address remained on the browser's address display irrespective of the sub page selected, which made it difficult to link directly to a specific sub page (e.g. in an email).  Alternatively, if I redirected without a frame the browser showed my ISP address.  Perhaps it doesn't really matter for a web site such as this, but I was not very happy about it.

Hosting:  When I was sent a large number of EDI sheets occupying about 200MB I decided that, rather than just including a few samples, it would be much better to include them all.  Furthermore, as I wanted to learn about the additional facilities provided by a proper web hosting service, this gave me the excuse that I needed to use the Basic Website Hosting provided by http://www.freevirtualservers.com/hosting.htm.  I looked at other providers and decided that this one was the best match in terms of space (300MB), facilities (e.g. FrontPage Extensions) and cost.

Backup:  I am happy to pay for the hosting service, at least for a few years.  When it has developed to a suitable stage I plan to send it on disc to BBC Heritage and BBC Written Archives, because I hope it will become a worthwhile record of BBC engineering history.  If in the meantime if I "fall under a bus" arrangements are in hand for someone else to take it over.

Database:  The use of a spreadsheet or a basic list of links is probably not the best way to give access to the EDI sheets and eventually I might set up a different system using a database.