This site was first put together way back in 2010, as a test bed for me to experiment with HTML and PHP and Javascript. It's not responsive - that was still just round the corner. The CSS was there, but most of the browsers were behind the tech. You had to put in different style sheets for different versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and another style sheet for all the rest. And to do fancy things with pictures and movies needed Adobe Flash.

So I'm just tweaking this up for 2021. I've taken out all the Flash bits which don't work anymore. I've taken out all the dead links. Still a lot to do, but it will happen for sure over the next few weeks.

Why Cobblers ?. One explanation (which only makes sense in England) is that "Cobblers" is a shortening of "Cobblers Awls" which is Cockney rhyming slang for "balls" which is a polite way of saying "bollocks" [i.e.testicles]. There may be other explanations.

When you are experimenting with server side technologies, you have to run your code on the machine which is going to host it - otherwise you can be sure that when you move from testing at home to live operation, there will be some unforseen snag.
The look and layout of the site are provided by a template made using Artisteer. CSS to the max !

I'm really curious to see if anyone visits this page !

Counter installed 5th April 2021

Welcome to The Entropy Zone.

Mouse over the word "Entropy" above to get a tooltip. And make sure you hover over the picture left.(Thanks to Jon Raasch for this neat bit of code.

Both these effects rely on the jQuery Javascript library, which is just about the best Javascript library in the world. Forget "Spry" which is supplied with Dreamweaver. It's very clunky. Actually, if you are going to forget Dreamweaver (recommended) and if you mainly use PHP or Ruby to write your websites then you should try the Netbeans IDE or Eclipse. Both are free and in my opinion very much superior to Dreamweaver for scripting work.

As for entropy, well my simple take on this is that everything is slowly turning into a disorganised mess, and there ain't a thing we can do about it. So this site is called Cobblers because it's a disorganised ragbag collection of bits and pieces, and is a mess.

HTML5 & CSS3

an image

Well - this is the NBT (Next Best Thing) right now ( Summer 2010 ). I've read a couple of books about it: Introducing HTML5 by Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp and HTML5 Designing Rich Internet Applications by Matthew David. The latter book is, in my opinion a cynical attempt to cash in on HTML5 - it must have been written in about 4 weeks - max. It's littered with typos, spelling mistakes, atrocious grammar and technical inaccuracies. The book by Lawson and Sharp is much better. It's not as shouty and gives a dispassionate review of all the new features.

Custom 404

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There's a customised 404 (HTTP protocol: page not found) error message on the site. To see it, just type in some url which does not exist on the site - like this one (cheese.html) for example.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Quisque sed felis. Aliquam sit amet felis. Mauris semper, velit semper laoreet dictum, quam diam dictum urna. Suspendisse quam nisl, placerat vel suscipit vitae, ornare a elit. Nunc volutpat nibh blandit tortor gravida ut porttitor nunc ullamcorper.

What's Lorum ipsum ?

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Lorum Ipsum is meaningless, mock-latin. It's used simply as a place holder for text, during the design and building of a web site. There are many sites (here's one) which will generate pages of the stuff for you.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Quisque sed felis. Aliquam sit amet felis. Mauris semper, velit semper laoreet dictum, quam diam dictum urna.

You'll see quite a lot of Lorem ipsum if you wander around this site !

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