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Origin Nice Teachers Let Me Know! Amiga Credits HTML Resources
These pages will move to stheliers.school.nz if and when the school's web site is up, and a link will go from here.
The SpaceURLs pages provide quick access, for many levels of interest, to most space topics. They are a compendium of links, some difficult to find, but not an information resource as such. You are welcome to link through, but if you intend using them heavily, for class use for instance, please download them to your own computer, or school, or classroom resource area (Save As). In this way you will get best use of these space URLs and bandwidth will be saved on this site. In particular do not make links to the few big pictures. Save/Download for best netiquette!
Note where you can get up-to-the-minute information on planet positions, starmaps, and monthly PDF maps for Northern and Southern hemisphere stars. Note also the calendar of Space related activities for the coming year. There are events virtually every day, astronomical, launchings, conferences and symposiums and even anniversaries. It is found in the General list on each page of URLs.
This compilation of URLs began as a quick way to get some Year 8 students at St Heliers School, Auckland, New Zealand, into action in pursuit of individual space topics selected by themselves. Although most sites can be found from the general sites, this takes time. The list has been expanded a little, and styled as a learning exercise in HTML.
You are welcome to use this. I suggest copying it to your classroom folder where you can easily assign student names to topics or sites, amend topic instructions on the Solar System page, and add or subtract URLs.
If you want to edit this and are new to HTML you will still be able to figure out what to do fairly easily, using a basic text editor such as Notepad. The wysiwyg editor, Microsoft Word, might seem easier but you have to be able to live with it's scary tendancy to do things you do not intend! If you want to learn to use HTML I've included some very good links below.
All the images go in a sub-directory (folder) labelled SpaceImages. Of course students can there substitute their own images which might be entertaining! Ordinary linked texts which have not been marked up for HTML, go into the texts folder.
Some links to hot topics may have died when those items were removed to archives. Also there are areas where the selection of URLs can be improved or added to. Available time on line is the main reason I have not been able to get everything to my satisfaction. Whatever you can come up with, Let me know.
(Um dedicated Amiga users). These space pages were mainly authored on an Amiga A4000 using CygnusEd with the help of some macros, deliberately avoiding use of dedicated editors so that I could learn what HTML tags do. Then a `must have' programme called Tidy, was thrown at them. They looked good on iBrowse, Microsoft Explorer and Netscape, but two Amiga Browsers, or at least their Demos, did not handle blockquotes in a way satisfactory to me. By replacing every blockquote with an unordered list, I managed to retain indents and most of the appearance I wished on all Browsers, but this is not the recognized way to indent text. Tidy does not like it one bit and reinserts all the blockquotes!
All of the small pictures (.png), have been reduced from 16 million colors, most to between 8 and 64 colors to speed up loading and improve bandwidth.
My thanks to Madeleine Yolland for sharing her class with me, part of the time, for Information Technology and Space Studies, which started this off; to Maureen Green, Principal of St Heliers School, for the key to the Computer room (returned); to the Computer Suite Administrator, my sister, Dawn Whiteman, for coping with the problems I strive to give her; to Garran Whitley for assistance in aquiring the skills needed, and of course to Amiga Auckland Inc.
Almost all images originate with NASA but most came to me as thumbnails!! on a CD set of images. Star Whizz and Space Bug (A take off of the Caduceus, Staff of Hermes), are my own creations and Smiley Sun was contributed to the Amiga Auckland Club magazine, Amsmag, many years ago.
Noel Fuller
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Last ammended 15 January, 2000. Compiled by Noel Fuller Comment and correction welcome.