About...
OurTimeLines.com
This site is a direct outgrowth of genealogical software that is used to create
the genealogy pages on one of the most comprehensive family genealogy sites on the net,
www.blish.org.
On that site, the genealogy software creates extensive timeline detail for family
members. This adds a wonderful new dimension that truly brings home a sense of what
the times were like for that specific individual.
The author of that software built the CGI code for OurTimeLines.com so that
OurTimeLines.com could offer you the same benefits.
Your use of our Timelines
You may use the timelines you generate here on your own web pages (by copying the page source code,
which you can view with your browser's "View Source" menu command.)
The only condition is that you ensure that there is a link from each page where the
timeline is used back to www.OurTimeLines.com so that your web page visitors
may also have an opportunity to generate their own timelines.
We have two link buttons you can use (or you can make your own, if you prefer):
(For use on white pages)
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(For use on black pages)
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Linking to OurTimeLines.com
When you link to the site, it is very important that you link only to the
root URL (in other words,
http://www.ourtimelines.com/) rather than
"deep-linking" to the timeline generation page.
The generation page form will
change its URL as we improve the site, and your links will break if you
try to link to the forms pages. So please, save everyone some grief and just link
to the root URL - and thanks!
Browser Compatibility
& How to make the Timeline pages work on your site
Microsoft Explorer 5.0 and Netscape Communicator 4.51
The timelines use some fairly complex HTML table code. They format correctly when viewed
with Microsoft Explorer 5 and Netscape's Communicator 4.51.
However, Netscape Communicator
has far weaker table handling than does Explorer, and in order to make the timelines
work with Communicator, a 1x1 pixel "transparent" GIF image is embedded in certain of the
table cells - without this tiny placeholder GIF, Netscape will not obey the COLOR
parameter within the table cell tags, and the timeline page formatting breaks.
The upshot of this is that in order for you to use these timelines on your site,
you also must have a 1x1 transparent GIF image in same directory as the timeline page.
This image must have a file name of "z.gif" This image
exists on our site at this location...
http://www.ourtimelines.com/z.gif
...and you are welcome to copy it to your site for this specific use.
Opera
Recently, we ran Opera 4.0, Beta 5, against the site. Everything worked.
There's better news, too. Opera is much - and I mean much faster than either Explorer or Communicator. Not only in page drawing, but in actual "go get the data" speed. At least, it is if you have a high speed connection. We run a DSL connection capable of about 500k/sec, compared to the 5.6k/sec of a typical 56kbit modem. Previous to installing Opera, I had never, ever seen that kind of speed. Opera, however, promptly opens up as many connections as there are images and other data chunks on a page, and snap - pages that had been taking a minute or more to load were completely loaded in about 4 seconds. Now that is something to write home about. My network status monitor indicated a bandwidth demand through the DSL of over 500k/second, and as I am sure you've guessed, I'll be running Opera rather than the other two products as much as humanly possible. I highly, highly recommend it to you as well.
Opera is 100% compatible with www.ourtimelines.com. Cool!
FireFox, Beta 0.8 (Linux and Windows versions)
Works just fine.
Other Browsers
We can't speak for the compatibility of non-mainstream web browsers; as we
said, the HTML table code required to make the timelines is extremely complex
and somewhat convoluted (though completely within the specifications of
legal HTML), and the odds are good that many less-capable browsers will
not be able to display the timelines correctly.
If you run into this,
please contact the creator(s) of the web browser in question, not us, as they are the only ones who can fix the problem. This kind of problem is not the result of a problem with the timelines. The correctness of the generated timelines HTML code has been repeatedly validated with CSE HTML Validator, an outstanding and exhaustive compliance assurance tool.
What we can't do for you...
We can't help you with building your own HTML pages. The timeline code will
work - exactly as we generate it - on your site under the web browsers specified
above as long as you copy or create the aforementioned 1x1 GIF image and place it
in the same directory. If you can handle that, you're good to go. Otherwise, we
suggest you locate someone with a little more experience to get our generated
timelines up and running on your own web site.
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