In response to my request for guidance for formatting on the Weather Topics I'd be submitting, here are three HTML samples of the stuff I was writing for USAF weather forecasters as a training and operational reference. The coding provided has been cleaned up a bit, but strictly HTML only -- No CSS. It was written as a body part for Cold Fusion output. CF provided the header, header menu, and footer for the page.
The topics on Latent Heat refer to the energy content of water, ice, and water vapor as it relates to weather. Mountain Wave you might have heard of in regards to severe turbulence affecting aircraft in mountainous areas. Anyway, some examples for you.:
- Latent Heat - General - A basic description with illustration.
- Latent Heat - Physics - Math behind the above with an illustrative story..
- Mountain Wave - A graphics intensive topic explanation.
Obviously, I was writing for trained professionals about their daily work, but this gives you a flavor of my styles. The entirety is sprinkled with internal referenced links to define or cross reference related topics. The first is pretty much the straight facts, the second is explanation by way of an amusing aside, and the third is a combination of facts with supporting photo essay. I think you can see that just a straight DOC text file wouldn't quite carry the message as well.
My writing for this project would be aimed at Joe Sixpack and Jane Soccer Mom in keeping with the basic goal of helping them understand the weather world around them a bit better. And a bit about SciFi ray guns. But I won't be assuming the readers are idiots either. This will be information they can use.
Oh -- and I'm writing this in NVU KompoZer with a bit of CSS tossed in just for fun. Well, for clear margins and such. I hate it when text wraps right to the edge of the screen, and CSS fixes that simply. I see the Eject(3) site uses CSS, so I suppose it will eventually be part of the Library anyway. I hope so -- because it makes things really, really easy to reformat across the board. Check out CSS Zen Garden for examples. If you haven't seen it, just by clicking any "Select a Design" link (right side) will reformat the page entirely, but without modifying any of the text contents or HTML code! CSS drives the layout, not HTML. Beauty! I'm sure your techies know this, but you might not be aware of what it can do for you.
OK? Thoughts/Comments?
Regards,
Chuck Lee