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Past Diatribes |
Very Wise. Please Read Carefully. |
-- October 1999 -- |
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Do you want to play a fast, cool arcade-style game for free? Check out Tailgunner, one of my recent discoveries.
Tailgunner is what’s called a Java applet. Java is a recently-developed computer language custom-built for the Internet, if you want to know. (If there’s a lot of terms like Java and Broadband and XML that you’ve heard, but never really had defined for you, check out the Webpeodia--- another of my recent discoveries.) The code of the language itself looks a lot like C, C++, or (imagine that!) JavaScript--- if you have a notion of one of those, it’s easy to make the jump to programming Java. I’ve been teaching myself lately. The neat thing about Java is that once you have your program written in it and compiled ("finished"), about anyone on earth can visit your page and run the thing, no matter what sort of computer they are using or whether they’re using Internet Explorer or Netscape or whatever. This is a very big, very important, feature. Check out this new page I wrote about my Gateway Performance 450. Looks great, right? If so you’re surfing the web with IE. If it looks like crap--- well, you’re not surfing with IE! Even with fairly standard HTML code, the page that’s displayed formats differently under different company’s browsers. I didn’t take this into consideration when I wrote and fine-tuned all the different JavaScript code. All that work getting code that draws and opens the folders, and then changes the text/displays the different pictures depending on where the cursor is....! I’ll have to sit down one of these nights when I have some time and figure how to make the page display right under Netscape Communicator 4.6, then how to make the webpage aware of what browser the viewer is using, and then pick the right set of code to display. Whew! A lot more work! And even after all that, it’ll still look knaff to anyone who is surfing with Opera or one of those other browsers.Java eliminates all of that. Tailgunner looks, fits and runs the same on everyone’s screen, regardless. Over the next month I’m going to write me some applets and put them up here, so keep your eye out. Most leaves are changing color, now, and some are already gathered on pathways. The lights are on inside the 'Malahide Road Flyer,' ol’ Bus 27, on the long ride home. It’s absolutely black out by 8pm. WINTER IS COMING, these signs say. In this day and age, and place, I realize that decent is not of as much consequence as it’s been for most of human existence. But I’ve finally got around to reading Willa Cather’s My Antonia, and so my sense of the elemental and the enormous is heightened. Great book, that can do that. That's all for this installment, amigos. Keep in touch and let me know what's up with you. Peace. |
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