The New, Improved Palmtop Paper Web Site

Ed gives a sneak preview of coming attractions on The HP Palmtop Paper Web site.

By Ed Keefe

By the time you read this, the new www.PalmtopPaper.com Web site will be in the testing phase. It has taken almost three months to update the electronic home of The HP Palmtop Paper with an additional 50MB of information and an entirely new appearance.

The site contains all the information needed to purchase new and used Palmtops, accessories, upgrades, software and knowledge products.

The addition of all the past issues of The HP Palmtop Paper and the e-mail Newsletter will make this site the ultimate reference source for Palmtop users.

Screen 1 shows the opening screen of the site. The overall color scheme is blue and orange and black, the color scheme of the printed version of The HP Palmtop Paper.

Some More Blue Keys

The navigation buttons, on the left side of the screen, should make Palmtop users feel right at home. They're our addition to the blue keys on the HP Palmtop. The buttons will work on any Web browser but, to see them in action, your browser must support Javascript.

The Palmtop Paper Online

When you click on the button labeled Palmtop Paper Archives, you'll jump to the subweb that contains The Palmtop Paper Online.

Screen 2 shows one of the opening screens for The Palmtop Paper Online.

By clicking on one of the images of The HP Palmtop Paper, you'll have access to the six issues for that year. Clicking on the label for the issue will send you to a table of contents.

This part of the Web site will be available on the 2000 CD InfoBase in case you're not on the Internet.

With this knowledge base you'll be able to search for individual topics or snag a couple of issues, load them on your Palmtop and take them with you in your pocket. With a 64MB Palmtop, you should be able to squeeze all of the issues on to your machine.

The work of converting all the issues to HTML was done by a team of volunteer users: Rod Whitby, Gary Spiers, Quinton Jones, Ripin Pen, Jeff Malka, Mike Little, Mike Kopplin, Gilles Kohl, Brent Hodges, Neil Currie, Lisa Cook, Al Chin, and Steve Carder.

We debated whether to edit the material and delete or change information that is out of date. The consensus was to leave the issues as they originally appeared. As such, they contain the same information as printed versions of The HP Palmtop Paper and the HyperReader version on past and current CD InfoBases.

Since the out of date information will be on the Web and available to the general public, we've added a "disclaimer page." See the sidebar for our disclaimer.

What's New?

When you click on the picture of The HP Palmtop Paper labeled "What's New?" you'll link to another new feature of the Web site: a section devoted to upcoming articles for The HP Palmtop Paper. You'll be able to preview the articles and offer your own insights and comments.

The button that invites you to subscribe to the Palmtop E-mail Newsletter will also let you read all the past newsletters at the click of button.

Technical Details

In case you're wondering, yes, some of the early stages of development of the Web site were done on the Palmtop. I used Project Vision to create a timeline and Notetaker to keep notes and a custom appointment book to keep on target.

However, when it came time to build the site, I resorted to a WinNT desktop and a combination of MS Front Page (pretty good for keeping things together--not so good for tweaking HTML code), Jasc's Paint Shop Pro 6.0, Visio Pro, MS PowerPoint along with TextEdit 4.0 for the HTML and Javascript coding.

The goal was to create a Web site that struck a balance between eye-appeal and speed. As a result the graphics aren't as brilliant as they could be but they are as fast as they can be.

The past three months have been, for me, the typical development cycle of frustration and elation -- disappointment when three days of work gets blown away in a Windows crash and elation when something actually works the way it's supposed to.