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In Reply to: Re: From the jaws of death posted by Coordinator on August 08, 2003 at 17:47:24:
Alan, your story amazes me and gives me something new every time I re-read it. I am so glad you put it online here. I hope you find the people you are looking for. We're just a small step away from releasing our contact system, the exFamily.org Directory and the CQ pages. If there's anything I can do to make it easier for you to access our pages, please let me know.
It is normally very difficult for people using these alternative browsers to find their way around a site that doesn't plan for it. I don't know if it had anything to do with it, but I am happy to say I developed the architecture of this site with some level of compliance to WAIS standards in mind. This enables disabled people and library cataloging systems to access are site and exchange information. It's a different way of programming for a site, takes a bit of planning. Basically there are alternate navigation routes, hidden tools and aids to getting to the pages you want, when they're not available by the usual browsers (Internet Explorer and Netscape). From the beginning, I wanted to make it easy to access our complex layout of pages (frames and script generated pages) for people using braille terminals.
If I'm doing it right, "bots" (agents or script robots) from search engines, computer nerds with unusual systems, the antique mainframe systems of universities and libraries, all should be able to automatically exchange, catalog, cache and store our content for reference and research. We made the site architecture scalable, so we can add on XML elements of data exchange when required.
About WAIS:
"WAIS [Wide-Area Information Services] is the best developed and most widely implemented text searching mechanism on the Internet. The
WAIS protocol is an adaptation of the ANSI Z39.50 standard protocol which was developed for library catalog systems."
OK, I'm done with speaking technicalese.
