|
Curious
to know what has been updated recently, or to see how this
site has evolved over the years? From this page you can
read about recent updates and view previous versions of
my site's home page. Note: I do not maintain
the previous versions other than archiving the home pages
off for this log. Therefore, there is no guarantee the links
you find on old versions of my home pages will still work,
and in cases where links point to another one of my pages,
you will get the most up-to-date version of the linked page,
rather than the version that existed at the time. (Who's
going to be spending time looking at old, outdated versions
of my web site anyway, right? :) ).

show
change log
hide
change log
|
I will fondly
remember this as the PicturesOfPlaces.com-inspired
update. I have added a feature to let users
choose whether to use a popup window or the same
window to view full-size pictures when they click
on thumbnail images on my site. I also made several
changes to reduce the size of my pages including
fixes for bugs/oversights that made my pages larger
than intended, splitting some of the travel photo
pages into multiple smaller pages, and moving a
large amount of client-side Javascript code into
server-side ASP. Thanks go to PicturesOfPlaces.com
for pointing out just how big some of my pages really
were. :)
UPDATE 09 July 2006: Added some
photos from 2005 to the Arizona
page. To keep this page picturesofplaces.com-friendly
(i.e., reasonable size), I removed a few of the
2003 pictures to make room for the new ones. The
complete 2003 page is available here.
I also updated my Favorite
Photos page, and added a few of
the more recent photos to the rotating images on
both my regular
home page and Travel
Gallery home page. The Guestbook
is still broken, btw.
UPDATE 18 June 2006: I still haven't
fixed the Guestbook, but I did add some new pictures!
Photos from my Memorial Day weekend trip to Palo
Duro Canyon have been added to the Texas
page. I also added a "recent additions"
section to my Travel
Gallery home page.
UPDATE 01 May 2006: Was planning
to finally do some real updating to this site, but
discovered my Contact and Guestbook were broken.
I have fixed the Contact page, and will fix the
Guestbook sometime this month. Sorry for any inconvenience!
UPDATE 24 April 2005: Added links
to my Africa 2004
web log to the sidebar and travel gallery menus.
I am far from finished with that page, but since
I'm not getting any time to work on it thanks to...well...work,
I'm going to go ahead and make what I have so far
available for all to see. Hopefully, I can get that
page and the Africa part of my site sometime before
the end of the next decade!
UPDATE 16 March 2005: Changed
the Featured
Link. Lack of usage has severely
lowered my motivation to keep this page updated.
:(
UPDATE 17 December 2004: Changed
the Featured
Link. (Again, sorry for the delay).
I am pointing it to my recent Africa
web log for now.
UPDATE 06 September 2004: Changed
the Featured
Link. So much for making this
a monthly occurrence, I guess. I was busy, plus
I decided the site I had planned to put there for
August was no longer worthy of the honor. :)
UPDATE 24 July 2004: Added two
new drawings to the Art
Gallery.
UPDATE 03 July 2004: Changed the
Featured
Link. I'm going to try
to make this a monthly occurrence.
UPDATE 07 June 2004: Less than
an hour after I finished up the May 30 revision
of my site, I received a call that my mom had passed
away suddenly and unexpectedly. I have added a memorial
page for people to who knew her to share their memories,
and have updated the Featured
Link page to point there. |
|
Added a cookies-driven
feature to let users choose whether they
want to view pictures in a popup window,
or view them "inline". This was
added mainly in response to an e-mail I
got from PicturesOfPlace.com stating that
popups are not allowed in the sites they
link to. Since I get a huge number of visitors
to my site from theirs, keeping a listing
in their directory was a priority (especially
in light of my plans to add a commercial
component to this site later on this year
:) ). I sent out an e-mail to several friends
and family to get their opinion on whether
they prefer to see pictures in a popup window
or in the same window as the thumbnail.
I got divided results, but the majority
preferred popups. So, I left popups as the
default, however, you can change to "inline"
viewing by clicking a link that now appears
on all of my travel photo pages as well
as the Travel Gallery home page (and the
Art Gallery too). Once you change the setting,
it stays that way for 30 days, or until
you change it again--even if you leave my
site and come back. The setting affects
my entire site, so if you select "inline"
on one of my pages, then that's what you
will get for all of them unless you change
the setting. (This feature uses cookies
to save the information, so your browser
settings must allow for this). If you have
never been to my site before or have never
changed the display method before, the default
will be popup windows in response to the
majority opinion from my little informal
poll. You can override the default display
method on the URL, for example:
http://www.virtual-realm.com/travel/html/iceland/photos.html?defaultImageDisplayType=inline
The above link will send you to my Iceland
page with the image display method defaulting
to inline, unless you have been to my site
before and explicitly chosen popups. (I
give deference to the user's previous choice
so PicturesOfPlaces.com or other sites can
create links to what is in essence a "default-to-no-popups"
version of my photo pages without overriding
a user's previously-selected setting). |
|
Fixed
a bug on the bottom bar image -- it was pointing
to the .png source file, which was 90K as
opposed to the < 4K .gif file it was supposed
to point to. |
|
Moved a bunch
of code from a client-side Javascript file
into a server-side ASP file. This coupled
with fixing the bottom bar image immediately
took nearly 200K off the size of each of my
pages. |
|
Ran the Australia
photos through a compression utility. I forgot
to do this previously, and as a result, the
Australia page was > 1mb! This took around
600K off the size of that page. |
|
Split the Arizona
pictures up into two pages of pictures taken
in 2003, and those taken between 1997-1999.
This put both pages under the PicturesOfPlaces.com
requirement of < 300K, and also solved
another problem I had with my older photos
looking a bit out of place next to the nice
new ones I took last year. :) Having done
this, I went ahead and re-added the "old"
Arizona photos I omitted in Revision 6.0.
Basically, the 1997-1999 Arizona page now
looks like my Rev 5.x Arizona page did, and
my 2003 Arizona page features entirely new
photos. |
|
Split the Asia
pictures up into a separate page for each
country: Bali,
Singapore,
and Malaysia.
The single page was pushing the size limit,
if not already over it, and by splitting the
pages up, they can now be listed separate
under each country. |
|
Split the Australia
photos up into separate pages for Sydney/New
South Wales, The
Great Barrier Reef/Cairns in Queensland,
and The
Northern Territory. |
|
Added a last-updated
string to the bottombar image. |
|
Updated the
Site
Map and FAQ
pages with information about the latest changes. |
|
show
change log
hide
change log
|
Major redesign
(finally!). Well, it was about time I guess,
considering I hadn't done a major update since mid-2000.
:) Many of the changes I made are intended to make
this site easier to maintain so hopefully I will be
more diligent in keeping it up to date in the future.
Among many other things, I completely changed the
look of the site, got rid of frames, added several
new photos and travel pages, updated the Art Gallery,
and added various new pages around the site. Incidentally,
the "curved-panorama-around-the-top" look
was an idea I had for a web site I developed for a
friend's business. He had a better idea for his own
site, so I used it for mine. :) |
|
Completely changed
the look and feel of the site. |
|
Moved
everything into Dreamweaver templates. Hopefully,
this will make the site easier to maintain
and motivate me to update more often. |
|
Got rid of frames.
Most people get to my site via a link to one
of the travel photo pages. With frames, they
never see the rest of the site. Now the menus
will be on every page. |
|
Got rid of the
all the title/header images. I'll use actual
text from now own (more of that making it
easier to maintain stuff :) ). |
|
Re-formatted
the Recent Updates and Site History
page (this page). Added the
hide/show change log feature. (It doesn't
work on Netscape 4x in case you were wondering,
but at least for recent browsers there won't
be such an overly-large amount of text on
this page when it first loads). |
|
Added random
photos to my main
page and Travel
Gallery home page. |
|
Added popup-window
functionality for viewing images. Now when
you click on a thumbnail image on my site
(Travel
Gallery, Art
Gallery, etc.) the image
and commentary are displayed in a popup-window.
This is easier to maintain, and works best
now that my site is no longer in frames. |
|
Added new drawings
to the Art
Gallery. |
|
Re-wrote, edited,
or updated the text on various pages around
the site. |
|
Moved the Who
Am I page underneath a new
Info menu item along
with newly-added Frequently
Asked Questions, Contact
Me, and Site
Map pages.. |
|
Removed the
Photo Album page
for now. I'll add it back later once I figure
out a good place to put it. |
|
Re-wrote the
Guest
Book. The old one was going
to be a real pain in the neck to work into
my new template-based design, so I just wrote
a new one. |
|
Added a Contact
Me link. Use this to send
questions, comments, or other feedback about
my site. |
|
Got rid of all
the dead links on the Other
Sites page. I also added
some (mostly under a Local News
and Information section). |
|
Changed the
Featured
Link slightly. I'm keeping
my brother-in-law's link up for a little while
longer since his music has moved from the
now-defunct mp3.com to his music site at www.WillWillis.us.
|
|
Added a Nevada
page with pictures from 2003. |
|
Added several
more pictures to the Arizona
page. I also dropped a few (mostly those that
I replaced with better versions from my 2003
trip). |
|
Made the Australia
photos page an official
part of the site, including an About
my Trip page. |
|
Added the country's
flag and a random photo to the About
My Trip page for each country.
|
|
Changed/added
photos to the My
Favorite Photos page. |
|
Added an introduction
and some on-page photos to my 2003 travel
journal about Sedona, Arizona. Made this page
an official part of the site under Digital
Sedona. |
|

|
Major
redesign--it was time. This site is now 800X600
friendly as much as possible, the text is much easier
to read, and it should load faster with fewer and smaller
graphics. I have also reduced the size of the
travel photos, and added the long-awaited commentary.
In case there's someone out there who prefers the larger
1024X768 images (even though the newer ones are much
higher quality), I have preserved the previous version
(Revision 4.3) of this site in its entirety, and it
may be accessed by clicking here.
|
Update:
14 October 2003
- Added
a few more pencil designs to the art gallery
(actually, this was done a while ago, I
just forgot to mention it here. :) )
- Changed
main page photo.
Update:
07 April 2002
- Revamped
art gallery. Added several new pencil
designs.
- Changed
Featured Link.
- Photos
from Australia are in the travel gallery.
These were actually added some time ago,
but I forgot to update the revisions page
and have long since forgotten the date I
added them. Currently, there's no
commentary, and the link on the Travel Gallery
page is rather temporary-looking.
I plan to rectify both of these deficiencies
in the next major update of this site (later
this year, or so goes best-laid-plans at
least).
- Changed
main page photo.
Update:
03 September 2000
- First
take at the Art Gallery. I'll add
more later.
Major
redesign--it was time. This site is
now 800X600 friendly as much as possible,
the text is much easier to read, and it should
load faster with fewer and smaller graphics.
I have also reduced the size of the travel
photos, and added the long-awaited commentary.
In case there's someone out there who prefers
the larger 1024X768 images (even though the
newer ones are much higher quality), I have
preserved the previous version (Revision 4.3)
of this site in its entirety, and it may be
accessed by clicking here.
Note:
This new site is still somewhat under construction.
However, even in its unfinished state, I still
think it is much nicer than the previous site,
so I am going to break with my "perfectionist"
temperament this time and make the new site
available before every last detail is complete.
I expect to have the remaining travel photos
labeled, the art gallery completed, and the
sidebar buttons added to the travel gallery
during the coming months. In the meantime,
enjoy what has been completed so far.
As always, suggestions for improvement are
welcome.
Acknowledgements:
- Will
Willis for "beta testing"
this revision and making several useful
suggestions on wording and design.
- Suman
Chepuri for suggestions on software
to make the photos as small as possible
and still retain the quality.
- Melissa
Willis for finding a rather amusing
typo.
- Magnus
Sigurdsson for correcting my translation
of "Mývatn".
Change
Log:
- Made
numerous design enhancements, including:
- Removed
all background
images to make the text easier to
read.
- Standardized
all text and link colors to black/blue/purple.
- Got
rid of the title bar frame. Two
frames are enough!
- Colorized
sidebars.
- Changed
font face to Helvetica/Arial on all
pages.
- Made
all links to other sites open in a new
browser window. Also did the same
for previous revisions, and pages that
open "outside" the frame.
- Made
many pages on my site that once opened
in a full window open in the frame instead.
This should make it easier to navigate
around.
- Created
graphics for most titles and headings
in place of dull, boring H1, H2, etc.
Past users may notice the title and
heading graphics were filled with images
that should
look familiar.
- Consolidated
Star Trek Sites, Family,
What's Happening at the South Pole,
and Other Miscellaneous Links
down into one page called Links to
Other Sites.
- Reformatted
dates on main and Revisions pages
to international standard.
- Moved
link to Revisions page over to
the sidebar and called it What's
New?.
- Removed
comment about "Complaints, compliments,
suggestions, and bugs", as well
as all Address lines at the bottom of
individual pages, in favor of a brief
note in the sidebars identifying me
and my e-mail address. This, in
conjunction with the above change to
move the Revisions link to the
sidebar lets 800X600 viewers see the
entire main page in their browser window
without needing to scroll.
- Completely
reorganized and redesigned the Travel
Gallery:
- Rescanned
all photos to take advantage of the
improved quality produced by the scanner
I now use. I also made the photos
smaller this time to be 800X600 friendly
and to decrease download time.
The old Travel Photo Gallery site, complete
with the 1024X768 images, background
images, and even a link back to the
previous revision of my web site can
be found here. A
few of the photos from the previous
site were omitted because I either couldn't
find the original prints, thought they
were redundant, or both. However,
I also have added a lot of new photos
too, which should more than make up
for the half dozen or so that were not
carried over.
- The
long-awaited commentary has arrived!
The entire "mission" of this
site has now changed. Instead
of just being a photo gallery, each
country or state contains information
about the country/state, details of
my trip(s) there, links to other sites
about the country/state, in addition
to the newly-scanned, smaller photos.
Rather than having a single page of
photos, each country/state will now
have a frame page with navigational
sidebar.
- Added
additional pictures of Iceland (in part
to make up for some of the previous
ones that I can no longer find).
- Added
additional pictures of Arizona from
my 1999 trip to Sedona.
- Added
additional pictures of Texas from my
1999 trip to Big Bend.
- Added
a link to the Revisions page.
Previously this was only found at www.virtual-realm.com.
- Added
My Favorite Photos page.
- Updated
the information on the Who Am I?
page.
- Took
the "new" off of the Guest
Book link (15+ months is quite enough).
- Changed
Donna's Travel Photo Gallery link
to just Travel Gallery.
- Removed
What's the Story Behind Those Background
Images? link.
- Corrected
several misspellings and changed some wording
on the Revisions page.
- Added
new page called Featured Link.
Unlike (ahem!) certain
other family members, I will not attempt
a Link of the Week or Link of
the Month. The Featured Link
page will be updated periodically, probably
twice a year or so.
|
|
|
Bug fixes and other minor
changes mostly to travel pages. |
-
Renamed
travel page to Donna's Travel Photo Gallery.
-
For
anyone who cares, the actual URL to the
Photo Gallery is: http://www.virtual-realm.com/donna/travel/index.html
and not http://www.virtual-realm.com/donna/travel/html/index.html
as previously reported.
-
Thanks
go to Rick Stromberg of Waymark.Net
for finding a bug on the Travel Gallery
main page--clicking on the miniature Austin
photo will now bring up a larger version
of that picture, and not a picture from
the Grand Canyon. Thanks Rick!
:)
-
Added
Copyright logo and a message on how to
bring up the full-size pictures on all
travel photo pages.
-
Made
images on Travel Photo Gallery main page
open in full window.
-
Fixed
bug on this page--Revision 4.1 was pointing
to 4.0.
|
|
|
Minor
bug fixes, and reorganized a few things. |
|
|
Name
change, major overhaul, and move to new site. I have
done my best to catch links that still point to dfw.net,
but please email me if you find some I missed.
|
-
Changed
name from "Donna's Domain" to
"Donna's Virtual Realm". This
is the LAST TIME I am changing the name
of this site! This time, I did a very
thorough search for other sites with the
same name, and came up empty--if someone
else opens one in the future, well, there
will just have to be two of us... :)
-
Moved
from DFWnet to new site with lots of available
disk space. The new address, "www.virtual-realm.com",
is my own registered domain name, so as
long I don't fall on hard times, the address
to this site shouldn't be changing again
anytime soon. :)
-
Changed
e-mail address on all pages to point to
my new address.
-
Some
changes, courtesy of Microsoft Frontpage:
-
Changed
picture on main page--the old
one was from 1994.
-
Made
"Travel" section into a separate
page.
-
Added
the long-awaited pictures from Singpore/Bali/Malaysia
and Nebraska/South
Dakota/Wyoming/Montana.
-
New,
improved South
Pole page.
-
Updated
out-dated links on the Star Trek links
page.
-
Added
new page for family members.
-
Updated
Background
images page.
|
|
|
The
Arizona pictures are here! |
-
Added
Arizona page. For the curious, the background
image was created in a similar manner
as the others
on my pages. It was based on a cut from
the thumbnail version of arz11.jpg.
-
Updated
link to Vidiot's Star Trek site.
|
|
|
Where
are all you new visitors coming from? :) |
-
Updated
"NOTES" section--removed notice
about vanishing pictures, added information
on why this page has been stagnant for
3 months, and request for folks to let
me know how they find out about my page.
-
Announced
upcoming addition of pictures from Florida,
Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana,
and Arizona.
-
Added
"Where am I going next?" link.
-
Added
new Iceland pictures link--this version
of the Iceland pictures uses http:// URL's
instead of ftp://.
|
|
|
The
Austin pictures are finally here! |
-
Created
Austin pictures page, complete with new,
smaller background.
-
Updated
backgrounds
page accordingly. :)
-
Restored
missing Sweden, England, and DC pictures.
Hopefully they'll stay around this time!
-
Removed
notice about DFWnet data loss--I've "punished"
them enough for this I think. :)
-
Added
notice about Sweden, England, and DC picture
loss/restoration. *Sigh*
-
Added
copyright information to pictures pages.
(Maybe I'm just feeling paranoid tonight?)
-
Added
"What's going on at the South Pole"
section.
-
Fixed
"Miscellaneous items" bug on
main page.
-
Fixed
background page link back to Revisions
page (it still pointed to the old name
"updates.html")
-
Changed
default background color to black so my
pages will be more readable when the text
loads before the background image. Thanks
go to Mike Comberiate
for making this observation.
|
|
|
My
page is now back online with a few minor changes following
massive data loss at dfw.net. |
-
Increased
font size on main page.
-
Added
two new links to the Star Trek link section.
-
Added
note on first page to inform folks of
data loss, and request that anyone who
notices anything missing please let me
know.
-
Removed
link to Revision 3.2--sorry, but I wasn't
able to restore this one. :(
-
Austin
pictures are coming soon!!
|
|
|
Washington
DC pictures are finally here! (Some of them, anyway).
|
-
Added
links and page for Washington DC pictures.
-
Changed
the name of this page to "revisions.html",
since that's what I'm always typing whenever
I want to edit it.
|
|
|
Some
minor "enhancements". (And yes, to anyone
who was wondering, the Washington DC pictures really
ARE coming soon). :) |
|
|
"Emergency"
bug-fixes. :) |
-
Fixed
several "lack of ending quote mark"
bugs on main page and background page
that were causing links not to be displayed
(Hey, they showed up just fine on my old,
decrepit version of Netscape! :) ).
-
Took
out line feeds on England and Iceland
picture pages. Let Netscape decide where
line breaks should occur.
-
Fixed
date on "Revision 3.0" on Updates
and Revision page.
|
|
|
Added
background images, Sweden pictures, and site history
page. |
-
Added
background images. For anyone who is curious:
To find out how these background images
were created, click here
to learn the secret. :)
-
More
changes to colors to accommodate new background
images.
-
Added
Revision section. Added the page you're
now reading. :)
-
Increased
font size on "Who am I" link
to introduction. Much easier to see now.
-
Color/font
changes and addition of background image
to Introduction page.
-
Added
"And now a...." line to top
of Introduction page.
-
Travel
section:
-
Changed
list to reverse-chronological order
rather than chronological order. That
way, most recent trips will be on
top.
-
Added
link to Sweden pictures.
-
Color
changes to Iceland Pictures and England
pictures to acommodate new background
images. Also increased font sizes
and centered the thumbnail images.
|
|
|
Work-in-progress
revision--I was this far along with work on Revision
3.0, and since I liked this better than 2.0, I went
ahead and put it out there. :) |
|
|
"Clean-up"
revision in preparation for major overhaul. |
-
Changed
page title from "Donna's Homepage"
to "Donna's Domain".
-
Re-scanned
JPEG image donna1.jpg. New image is much
higher quality than the old one was.
-
Updated
personal introduction and moved it to
a page of its own. Added donna2.jpg to
the introduction page.
-
Removed
"dead" link to GIFserv Archives.
After this long, I give up on ever finding
anyone to host my Jurassic Park/Stargate
pictures. :(
-
Removed
link to Matchmaker Modem. I'll make a
separate link page for sites such as this
later on down the line.
-
Added
Travel section. Added Iceland pictures
to Travel section. Created "placeholders"
for Sweden/England and Washington DC,
as I haven't scanned in these pictures
yet.
-
Photo
Album: Changed wording on stormie.gif
from "My pet Cockatiel..." to
"My ex"--that bird has been
with his new family over a year now.
-
Star
Trek Sites: Removed "dead" links
to sites that no longer exist. Removed
"illegal" pictures of DS9 and
TNG--Paramount says we aren't to have
these sorts of things out there anymore.
Also removed solicitation for other such
items.
-
Removed
Movie Web Pages section. The only two
movie sites links I had were from 1994.
This section might come back later if
I come across any really cool movie web
sites in the future.
-
Other
miscellaneous links: Removed link to Nameless
Mud (I give up on that mud ever coming
back up). Removed link to DFWLUG Homepage
as it appears to be "dead".
|
|
Here
is what my page looked like prior to 09 February 1997: |
|
|
|
|
|