About this website
It is supposed to look like this.
Purpose
The primary purpose of this website is maintaining continuous online publication of the scientific works of astrophysicist Halton C. Arp.
The site is monitored more or less regularly, daily to weekly. It is made and run by a devoted individual, whose knowledge of the relevant astro-science is rather limited ;-). Halton Arp supervises the site and I make sure it all works. As far as I know nobody else is involved.
Copyrights
It goes without saying that you may and are in fact encouraged to link to any piece of content on this site from wherever you like, however you like. It is VERY preferable that you link to the content here rather than mirroring and/or re-posting it elsewhere on Internet. Not because we are mean. It's just that this way it is much easier to work with the material which, after all, originates and is maintained here.
Your Contribution
If you know about something which you think should be on this website, please contact the webmaster. If it is deemed appropriate, it will be considered.
Technology
This website is built according to modern Web standards. This ensures that the hypertext and visual style will behave as intended with new Web technologies coming out in the future.
This site does not aim browsers, it aims a set of standards, the very purpose of whose is to help websites gain independence from Web browser vendors, and thus provide best possible experience to as many users with as many different computers and browsers as possible. The more standards compliant your browser is already, the better.
Specification
- Strictly follows the XHTML 1.0 and HTML 4.01 standards by W3C.
- Strictly follows the CSS 2.1 standard.
- Uses standards-compliant (DOM) client side scripting.
- Separates content and presentation as much as possible.
- Provides above average browsing experience for people with disabilities.
- Is optimised for content extraction and categorisation by search engines.
- Is optimised for simple "no-style" text mode browsing, such as with Lynx.
- Favours free open-source technologies like the PNG.
- Uses content negotiation - same content may be delivered in multiple formats.
If your site experience is unsatisfactory...
An update to a newer version of your favourite browser product will likely help, as subsequent versions achieve closer and closer standards compliance. If however even the latest version of your preferred web browser does not work with the site, your only option for improving the matter is using another browser altogether. Currently more than one vendor already delivers a product which does the job. As of this writing at least Opera and Mozilla Firefox browsers are able to provide the exact experience this website was designed for. They are widely available for most computer platforms. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 is the next best thing.
Since most of the issues are of visual character, as a last resort, you may disable the visual style of the site completely from within your browser, thus using the default "bare-bones" site presentation.
Why Web standards now?
As more websites adhere to common Web standards, it will become increasingly difficult to ignore these standards. As certain Web browser vendors are forced to catch up and since Web standards indirectly bring the effect of "make once, run anywhere, anytime" practice, this in turn will move the wheel further, towards even easier website development, even tighter standards integration and will ultimately advance the Internet, which means more online possibilities for you - the end user.
