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col-o-phon |
Okay, so not everybody likes to look at a collection of decrepit radios, especially in a small town, many miles from any swap-meets, so whaddya do? Put up a web site and hope that there are folks out there who are looking for what you can show them. It happens - I've gotten email from collectors who were trying to find out more about models that they have, and some who wanted to share some information with me.
Initially, this was sketched out using Netscape Composer and Adobe Pagemill, then cleaned up with BBEdit Lite a nice freeware no-nonsense text editor. I would check it out in iCab, or Netscape Navigator, and sometimes even in Microsoft (spit!) Internet Explorer. At first I would have said that real men don't use a wysiwyg HTML editor, but with more than a few connected pages, it's a lot easier to update and make site-wide changes if you have something more than a text-based editor. Unfortunately, all of the free or cheap ones generate really awful code, with redundant nested tags, or spontaneously resizing table cells, and so on.
Eventually, it was my wife that decided we needed Macromedia® Dreamweaver™ 3.0 (not just for my radio site, of course). So far, it's been pretty good, and I'm gradually updating the entire Vintage Radios site with it, as I learn about its whistles and bells. You can read more about it and download a fully-functioning 30-day demo of the latest version from their Dreamweaver page.
As much as possible, I try not to control the appearance of the page. Most of the text uses the browser's default font family (except where I name Verdana), and the character sizes are relative, not absolute. All tables and cell widths are given as percentages of the window size.
Image capture: Kodak DC215 digital camera, Epson ES-1000C flatbed scanner. Several images, however, were downloaded or emailed to me.
Image editor: Adobe Photoshop - several versions, but most recently 6.0. The most useful feature (5.x) is the pen tool for creating paths, which were turned into selections for cropping out backgrounds. Version 6.0 has "Save for Web" which is great for getting the good compression without too many artifacts. The drop-shadow black and white graphics used the "Layer Effects".
Mousepad with gel-filled wrist rest, Sennheiser headphones, electric mug hotplate (to keep the beverage hot).
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