In this section
The Code Style site has evolved by gradual refinement and accumulation of features and content. This review is part of a fully backdated site log and archive that sheds light on when, why and how particular features were implemented.
This log is sometimes updated several times per week, sometimes with a long overdue backlog of items. Many log entries refer to the Code Style Java package that delivers the servlet services and utilities used to manage this site.
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Reverse chronology
30th July 2003
Processed the latest updates to the Code Style font sampler and survey using the new servlet based implementation and added more prominent RSS feeds to each results page. Added the Mac Safari 8.5 browser to the user agent validation scripts.
27th July 2003
Added a first draft servlet implementation to the standalone FontStats class to compile font survey statistics offline. Very basic implementation initially with duplicated code to emulate the command line operation. Uses a servlet init method to get a range of servlet parameters including database name, vendor, and user name.
Updated various Ant build properties and filters files to apply new database parameters and add the PostgreSQL JDBC driver to the servlet wrapper classpath.
20th July 2003
Found that Netscape 4 does not properly handle query strings with spaces in them, so added a line to the abstract ViewableSequence class to URL-encode the title of the sequence using java.net.URLEncoder.
queryBuffer.append(URLEncoder.encode(getTitle()));
Added the new CSPersistent.css stylesheet to the CodeStyleTemplate class to match the changes applied to the main part of the site.
19th July 2003
Added various new answers to site FAQ pages: FAQ: Cascading Style Sheets, Font sampler and survey FAQ, FAQ: Media dependent style sheets, FAQ: Java servlets, FAQ: Site Manager and a new FAQ: HTML & XHTML page. Added new question links to all FAQ menus and separated some out into server side include files to include in the CSS style guide and CSS media monitor section home pages.
Added further clarification to the help request guidance, Asking the right question, including pointers to the most frequently asked questions.
Added a new section to the Anchor Points: Cascading Style Sheets page on hiding CSS from non-conformant browsers.
Added an extensive list of named robots to the exclusions in the site robots.txt file to limit bandwidth usage, which has been getting excessively high.
Ran a site link check and found all of David Baron's personal pages at Harvard University have been taken down, so removed all Anchor Points links. Also updated or deleted a number of links from Anchor Points: Fonts & font foundries.
18th July 2003
Changed the server side include paths for all custom error documents to use general head markup. Wrote a first draft Java glossary document and added various new answers to the FAQ: Javascript & DOM section.
5th July 2003
Excluded the ParseRDF and ParseRSS servlets from search engine spiders in the site robots.txt file to preserve bandwidth.
Previously on Code Style
These backdated pages record detailed changes to the Code Style Web site since July 2000, when development first got underway. Some pages may refer to documents or features that have since changed or are no longer part of the site, but the archive is checked to ensure there are no dead links.
Site log, origins to present
For a summary overview, see the annotated site log contents.
