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This desktop- and mobile-friendly website has been live since the mid 1990s. It hosts hundreds of pages spanning software-related topics including programming, technical education, and industry trends, and all of its code and content has always been both free and advertising free. This site has also always been more about substance than style; while it does keep pace with web fashion, its main focus is on providing tech material for tech readers.
This site works as you'd expect today, but here are a few quick tips. All of this site's content can be reached from its bottom-of-screen toolbar and Find page. Scroll or swipe the toolbar on smaller screens to access all its links (tap first to activate where required); its leftmost "Python Powered" image jumps to this site's home page. Many pages, including this one, also have floating "Top" buttons that jump to page content lists, and dynamic table-of-contents widgets which toggle content links.
Neither specific browsers nor JavaScript are required here, though some features work either best or only if the latter is enabled—including "Top," content widgets, and this site's many image galleries (more galleries here). Most content here renders equally well on mobile and desktop browsers, though at 26 years old and counting, you shouldn't be surprised if some of this site's more ancient pages are still desktop biased.
The rest of this page covers:
Related pages: see also this site's privacy statement, and the story of this site's original home at rmi.net/~lutz.
This section logs changes and site-usage tips that have cropped up in recent years:
chrome://flags per
ahead). Going narrower minimizes the need for
toolbar scrolls of either variety, and is a low-impact work-around for overlays.
This is a Windows+Chrome issue only; macOS, Linux, and Android and iOS mobiles do scrollbars better, and Firefox and Edge do them better on Windows. This also smacks of the old Edge URL-overlay bug chronicled here, but Google seems unlikely to provide a fix given their track record and dominance. In fact, this might be dismissed as a single-browser quirk, but for the mind-boggling hold Windows and Chrome have on the PC realm (though Android rules overall, and stats can be gray).
At this writing, Chrome may adopt a new and less obtrusive scrollbar-overlay model pioneered by Edge which would make overlays safe; see the web for more info. But as is, Chrome's Windows default in late 2022 is still scrollbar gutters (which feels like it's 1995), and its overlay scrollbars now break content (which feels rude). Where did browsers get the idea that page space is theirs for the taking?
Going narrower involved both shorter link words and a lower min-width
for the scroll cutoff. On PCs, the new min-width doesn't have any effect
on typical
windows,
and ensures that a toolbar scrollbar of any sort will be required
only when windows become unusually narrow, or fonts or zoom become unusually large.
That is, this makes scrollbars moot except in windows that are atypical for a PC;
here's the new
cutoff
on a small 13" display at 100% zoom.
On mobiles, going lower simply preserves former
layout,
despite space freed by the shorter words. Test for yourself, or find
more images here.
All of which may seem a trivial mod, but the alternative is a floating-menubutton redesign, which seems overkill for what's really yet another browser bug. This bug should probably be reported, of course, but this developer has grown overly tired of seeing bug reports languish—and eventually get closed with a "by design" quip. Such is the software field in the 2020s, eh?
Update, Oct-2022: after scouring the web's development forums (really, gossip mills, because that's often all there is to go on sans usable vendor documentation), it turns out that an obscure and browser-specific bit of CSS can hide the overlay-scrollbars bar in most browser/platform combinations:
.footerdiv::-webkit-scrollbar {
display: none; /* Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc. */
}
.footerdiv {
-ms-overflow-style: none; /* IE, old Edge */
scrollbar-width: none; /* Firefox */
}
With that Tower-of-Babel hack, Windows Chrome's disabling
overlay
indeed goes away in bottom-of-page toolbars, but toolbar scrolling
still works when needed (per the original overflow-x: auto). Here's the
scene.
The same thing happens in all of the seventeen desktop and mobile browsers tested
across five platforms, though other browsers don't make overlaid content inoperative
the way that Windows Chrome does today.
The downside—and there usually is one for ad-hoc proprietary extensions like this—is that this leaves people in the dark if they have no way to perform a left/right sideways scroll. This might arise if there is no touch screen or gesture-capable touch pad, and the pointing device is unable to issue a sideways scroll. Though likely rare today, mice with neither scroll wheels nor touch surfaces would fall into this category.
To compound this, detecting such limited devices seems a pipe dream;
a pointer: fine media query won't
cut it.
Perhaps worse, if overlay scrollbars are disabled (Chrome's current default),
the code above prevents a scrollbar
gutter
from appearing for the toolbar. Here's the
effect;
the same goes for macOS if scrollbars are set to Always in General Preferences.
Sideways scrolls still work on the toolbar in this state where available,
but this rules out disabling overlays as a solution for sideways-challenged
pointers: there's nothing to grab onto!
That being said, the scope of this tradeoff may be small:
Because the audience impacted by the code above is likely smaller than that crippled by Chrome's overlays, and because toolbar scrolls are relatively rare in any event, this code has been adopted as a temporary measure for footer toolbars only, pending better overlay scrollbars in Windows Chrome. If this makes toolbars unscrollable for you, please see the list above for recourses, or simply expand the window till scrolling isn't needed—a fallback made easier by the original mod here to narrow toolbars in general.
And for now, all bets on whether a Chrome fix shows up before a site redesign are officially off...
/etc/passwd file; the fetch was useless because the file by
convention simply forwards to another that's not accessible, but it was
sufficiently creepy to warrant the fix. Alas, the world wide web means everyone,
for better and worse. Read the seedy details at header "DON'T DISPLAY
FILES OUTSIDE THE WEBSITE FOLDER" in
the script,
and see the new reply from
the query.
Update, Nov-2021: the book-links page has now gone dark too, and both that and the home page now always use the dark theme regardless of system settings. Designing for both light and dark is complex, and dark is not that dark here. The home page now also uses rounded corners and collapses its links on narrower displays; web fashion marches on.
Update, Dec-2021: image galleries at this site, all of which are created by thumbspage, now also are darker, with a new default index-page color. It's not OLED dark, but that's easy to config.
Update, Sep-2024: a few years on, limited portions of this site now
use CSS media queries for prefers-color-scheme to select a color
theme based on the host device's dark-mode setting. See examples
here and
here.
This works well today, but is a bit of a jarring contrast with all the
former pages not designed for dark mode, either because it wasn't yet
well supported in CSS, or simply didn't yet exist. Change convolutes things.
Update, Mar-2022: regrettably, this Android Firefox bug remains unfixed as of version 98, and its report posted by this site was closed as stale without developer attention. In versions 95 through 98, the bug may have also morphed—after a scroll hides the toolbar, the bug can still be triggered by rotating orientation, but also by simply moving a stylus over widgets with hover actions. Here's the before and after of the latter. The only work-around remains toggling "Scroll to hide toolbar" in "Customize" off. Hey Firefox: your dynamic toolbar is still busted a year later; doesn't anyone care?
Update, Oct-2022: if you use the latest Firefox on Android (105.1 at this writing), you'll probably also want to turn off its "Swipe toolbar sideways to switch tabs" in Settings => Customize. Else, it's nearly impossible to operate this site's footer toolbar with a finger, because Firefox steals most swipes near the bottom of the screen—even if they are well above the browser's own toolbar. A stylus helps by providing more touch accuracy, but not everyone has one. Alas, this site's pages seem to keep running afoul of browser land grabs!
Update, Oct-2022: and if you use Firefox on Linux (only), you may notice that its versions 105 and 106 cover toolbar items with URL mouse-hover popups—just like Edge once did in the now-distant past. There is no work-around for this, and a bug fix seems fanciful given all of the above; see other browsers.
/* in a <pre> block
(and elsewhere); it was noted in version 53, but happily fixed by 60.
Things get better too.
Update, Jan-2022:
unfortunately, this Android Opera bug returned a few releases later, by
version 65. The work-around at this site required both a custom parsing
script, and manual replacement of all
/* with /* in three of eleven
pages having this pattern here—including
this and
this.
Alas, Opera appears to be performing some sort of naive page parsing—and
appears to have discovered it anew. One person's "agile" is
another's "reckless thrashing."
Specifically, this site's home page fits well in portrait mode up to 125% page zoom on the latest iPhone SE's 4.7" display, but only up to 100% on a 4" iPod. At higher zooms, your best options are a minor scroll where required; rotating to landscape for fit-to-screen viewing; or simply lowering your page-zoom level. Page redesigns or browser changes may address this someday, but the work-arounds are easy, screen zooms are tough to accommodate in full, and minuscule displays will never be ideal for text-heavy websites.
It's worth adding that this issue—arguably an iOS Safari bug—does not occur in Android Chrome at any practical font or screen zoom. Here's this Chrome's normal and zoomed display; unlike Safari, fonts are increased without overflowing the viewport. Though no vendor is flux free, Apple's track record of breaking sites and programs with opinion-based morph is much too large an insert for this note.
Update, Oct-2022: this site's homepage now works without full-page horizontal scrolls on a 4" iPod up to 115% zoom in Safari, after its buttons shaved 10 pixels each for unrelated aesthetics. It's not pretty and 100% is still better, but this is probably a worst-case device for web views (with an audience size to match).
(See also the related and later note above)
Subtle thing: the preceding note's new Top buttons may slightly overlap page-bottom toolbars like this when viewed with most desktop browsers in very small and narrow PC windows, because these browsers reserve extra space for a scrollbar. This can happen on Windows, Linux, and macOS, though not on macOS when using a touchpad and the General preferences' automatic scrollbar-hiding default (which acts much like a mobile device). This behavior is also intentional: it allows more space for content in this atypical and cramped context, and can be avoided by simply enlarging your PC browser window. Moreover, always moving Top up would penalize normal cases by obscuring more content; positioning Top based on screen width would require JavaScript and may be inaccurate; and portable toolbar-less designs would require JavaScript for basic site usage—an explicit anti-goal here.
Update—minimizing scrollbars in Chrome: but if you really want your Top to fly free, at least for Chrome on Windows and Linux (where it's a.k.a. Chromium), it's possible to hide scrollbars and keep Top above toolbars, by setting a special flag like this: (1) type "chrome://flags" in Chrome's top-of-window address box; (2) type "Overlay Scrollbars" in the result page's search box; (3) select "Enabled" in the result page's pulldown list; and (4) select "Relaunch" to restart Chrome and apply the change. Here's the flag on Linux. You may also have to tweak some mouse or touchpad gestures, but the net effect allows scrolls with swipes in these Chromes, just like the default for all browsers on macOS, and the norm on mobiles. If there is an equivalent for Firefox or Edge today, it seems an even better kept secret.
Update, Mar-2022—ditto for Firefox and Edge: with the advent of overlay scrollbars on Windows 11, both Firefox and Edge now also support minimal scrollbars, which roughly mimic macOS and mobile, don't take up as much UI space, and react to swipe gestures on touch pads and screens. Enable this in the latest versions of these browsers as follows:
This site grew up with and marginally prefers to be viewed on desktop browsers. It has been verified to render well on all desktop browsers in common use today—including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer, and Edge. Per the updates above, a desktop-only caveat regarding toolbar overlays on URL hovers in Edge and Firefox was initially addressed by redesign, and later made moot by fixes in these browsers.
This site can also be read on and has been optimized specifically for mobile browsers—including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Opera. Although nearly all content here is now mobile friendly, some pages may still be best viewed in landscape mode, due to this site's wealth of text-oriented material (see also the Safari notes above). There's more on mobile-browser usage ahead.
In terms of tech and design, this site uses:
Some of the above is orchestrated by the site's .htaccess and CSS files. JavaScript is also used, but is optional, and run only for anonymous analytics, photo viewers, and in-page navigation if enabled (to see how, view the source of this page, an image viewer, or a page with navigation controls). Mobile-device support employs additional HTML and CSS techniques, per the next section.
This site is readable on all mobile browsers, and as of February 2018 has been heavily tuned to support smaller screens specifically. Mobile viewport settings alone worsened as many aspects as they improved, but usability issues were fixed with extra design changes, including:
That said, despite the redesign, a few parts of this site are still less than ideal on mobile devices, and others may never be optimized for mobile use. Code listings, for example, may require swipes to view in full; the class workbook is legacy desktop content generated by Word that cannot be easily changed; and the HTML user guides and screenshot galleries of desktop-only programs here have been converted, but for online use only.
In addition, given the volume of content here—most of which is text based and some of which dates back to the mid-1990s—landscape orientation may work better for some pages on smaller screens. Naturally, performance and preference may vary per device, browser, and user, and some browsers have reading-mode converters and text-scaling settings that may further improve user experience.
Like them or not, smaller screens are convenient but inherently limited; the goal here is to accommodate by enhanced style, not to pander by reduced substance. This site's traffic is currently 70–75% desktop browsers (depending on when it's checked), and its main reason for being is to support readers of books and learners of code. If you're not interested in reading words, well, how did you ever get this far?...