About this page
This page is written in HTML 4.01 Strict, using CSS 2 for all the styling. By virtue of using strict-style HTML, all stylistic elements are done in CSS, leaving the HTML as pure structural markup. This, of course, is the way it should be. It makes the page very flexible and easy to manage, quick to render in user agents, and accessible to the largest possible range of viewers and other clients.
The use of CSS for the styling means that, in older visual browsers which do not have good (or any!) CSS support, these pages will look extremely plain. Netscape 4.x and below is a common offender in this respect. However, the time has come (and past) for browsers to support these long-accepted standards. The sooner web developers stop using HTML hacks to achieve formatting instead of using stylesheets, the sooner the browser manufacturers will finish writing the support code that should have been written 15 years ago.
The HTML and CSS links at the bottom of each page show that each page is in full compliance in every detail with the published standards for HTML and CSS. Each image is a link to a validator page which parses the page looking for any errors, thus making it easy to verify that the pages are, in fact, totally compliant.
For more information on all this jazz, see my web development links.
See the copyright information for information about the copyright of this page, and the conditions for reproduction and use of the content.
The page is written using the vi text editor (specifically, vim). It is hosted on a FreeBSD server running the nginx HTTP server. It makes extensive use of Perl and the Template Toolkit, and runs via Plack.
About Matt's environment
Matt uses bzr to maintain these pages, as well as just about everything else. He uses ctwm as his window manager under X.Org on his FreeBSD -CURRENT workstation.