about
Help
07/12/2024
Help
definitions, navigation, viewing contents
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"There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full."
- Henry Kissinger
- Henry Kissinger
1.0 Site Structure:
These include Thread, Story, Bites, Bits, Repositories, and tracks.
Site Structure Definitions
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Thread | Sequence of linked web pages using Next, Prev, and Pages links |
| Story | Thread that covers some relatively large topic, e.g., the C++ Story. A story promises to cover its topic fairly completely in at least an intermediate level of detail. |
| Bites | Thread were each page focuses on a single small topic, but all share the same area of discourse, e.g., some important topics in the Rust programming language. A Bite thread makes no promise to cover its area completely, e.g., here's some interesting topics in ... |
| Bits | Small code fragments in some programming language intended to support comparisons with other languages that implement the same fragments, similar to comparing sentences in English and Spanish. |
| Repository | A Documentation Page and a linked github repository holding code and code resources. Each Repository is linked to by a Repository Summary Page as shown in Figure 1. |
| Track | A Track Summary page, a Story, and Bites Not all tracks have both stories and bites, but will eventually. |
- Site contains links to information about how the site works plus the Home page.
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Tracks provides quick access to the languages and technologies explored in the site.
Figure 1. Repositories This site has Repositories for C++, Rust, C#, Javascript, and Other code. - Repros dropdown organizes about 100 github code repositories, focusing on C++, Rust, and C#. Repos links to summaries, for each of the focus languages, which order and name each of a set of individual repositories. Hover over Repos menu item at the top of this page to see a list of supported code categories. Each supported language has its own Repo summary that users can quickly scan to see what code is available. The summaries point to documentation pages for each of the github repositories as illustrated in Figure 1, and each documentation page links to a github repository containing its code.
- Stories collect references to language Stories, Bites, and Bits. Stories are ebooks for several languages. Bites are collections of pages, each of which focus on one specific feature of the focus languages. Bits provide simple introductions to each of five languages: C++, Rust, C#, Python, and JavaScript, intended to highlight comparisons and the advantages of each.
- Resrcs contains references to resources that don't fit into a collection. They are individual contributions that are useful outside the context of other parts. Many of these entries are in need of a refresh of content and/or new page format.
- Blogs are, at the moment, a legacy of thoughts and opinions expressed as part of my graduate courses at Syracuse University. I expect to begin adding new blog entries soon.
- Help at the top level is this page. Eventually there will be help pages tailored for each track. That hasn't happened yet.
2.0 Navigation
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This site provides Explorers for the Site and each of its Tracks.
Explorers provide a page with a topic links panel and an embedded iframe panel to display content.
Clicking a topic link changes content displayed in the iframe.
- Site Explorer, supports site-wide navigation
- Track Explorers, e.g., Basics, C++, Rust, C#, Bits, WebDev, Design, Deployment, Projects, Prototypes support navigation through code and reference material.
- Enter Explorers from the Site and Tracks dropdown menus.
- Many pages support entering and exiting Explorer mode by clicking on the page's header block. This page does - try it. Click to enter, click to leave.
Navigating in an Explorer iframe using content menu selections or page links does not change the page's browsing history. That means that the browser back arrow will go to the first page loaded in the iframe. That may not be what you expect. -
Almost all links embedded in page text open the destination in a new tab.
That allows you to quickly switch back and forth between source and destination pages. But that can result in a lot of open browser tabs; not a problem if you close tabs as soon as you are done with them.
Most links accessed from the menus relocate current window to selected destination. This Help page is an exception. It opens as a new tab that can be torn off to view in a seperate window, while viewing the page for which you need help. -
Keys supports keyboard navigation:
Depressing the k | K key pops up a list of keys that navigate to specific pages or page locations. You get the same list by clicking on the "Keys" button on the bottom menu.
- SiteMap - links to almost everything in site.
- Personal Computer Security
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Note:
Pages like this one don't have a predecessor or successor, and so do not have Prev, Next, or Pages buttons.