About Site of Sights
			Site of Sights is about candid camera still photography. I've constructed it in order to display my work of photographing people in the city streets. I want to share what I see with you, and need your reaction to it. There is little I can say about the artistic merits of my work, its message or interest - but I promise to show clean, simple compositions [no strange object emerging from people's ears], clean techniques [properly focused shot with no specs or scratches] and efficient use of the Web medium. All pictures shown are scanned from film at 2700dpi resulting in ~27MBytes files, then processed using variable, selected areas compression and reduced to the final 70KBytes files you see on your screen. The pages are designed so that there is never a need for scrolling [in most browsers] to operate the pictures' selection, and the all pictures' sizes were selected so most viewers can see a full-screen picture within their browsers' window. All pictures are in public domain - you are free to do whatever you like in regard to my site and it's content.  There are no commercial advertisements in SoS: I made it a point to have SoS as pleasant as possible for the visitor. I refrain, as a rule, from any use of commercial stuff [no banners, no pop-up windows]. I even refuse "I'll show your links if you'll show mine" deals, in spite of my basic want for an audience. A visit to SoS should feel like entering an art gallery, not a supermarket. I promise to maintain all displayed pictures in good taste, and will never put any 'adult' material there. There are two candid camera portraits galleries in SoS. One that features total strangers' pictures [and is in constant growth] is found at the 'Beauty and Beast' section. Candid portrait pictures of people I know are found in the second section at the 'Family of Man' - this gallery is closed now and is not intended to grow any farther. Usually, updates are done weekly, so please come back soon. Signing my guestbook helps me more then you think - Thanks. ------ Yosi.

 

		Site of sights history
			March 16 99: Site of Sights was further accepted and indexed by the WebCrawler search engine, and the traffic is soaring high above 2000 pictures seen per month. Our host [probably as a result from the high traffic] posted a dynamic banner on top of each page, but [it took two days] I think I've managed to clear it now.. March 1 99: Site of Sights was accepted, registered and indexed by three major search engines, namely: aol-Netfind, Excite and Magellan. As a result, the visiting rate rose from 650 pictures seen per month to around 1600. This has to be checked further, though. Jan 29 99: Site of Sites was accepted and properly indexed by the AltaVista search engine, with no substantial effect on visiting rate. Jan 19 99: First viewer confirmed my suspects regarding the bug in Navigator 4.1 by monitoring a special written example 'selection page' file. - All selection pages were re-written, tested and mounted today. All versions of Navigator should work properly with SoS now. Jan 18 99: A bug that prevents viewers using Navigator 4.0x and 4.1 to navigate SoS was confirmed by a second viewer. All site upgrades and updates are suspended till the problem is finally solved. It's a pity, since I don't want to disappoint my loyal viewers [over 30 'hits' per day in the last couple of days]. Jan 18 99: This 'WebSite Story' section activated, though some [important] parts are not constructed yet. Jan 16 99: The third selection page installed at 'Family album' with three new pictures [the rest are place holders..]. Jan 14 99: General face lifting - redesigned all buttons for better readability and uniformity, shrunk the height of all select pages so switching and selecting can be achieved without scrolling in most browsers. Jan 12 99: The final version of the Guestbook installed [sign module at home server now] and tested by first guest entry. The layout finally matches the rest of the site's pages. Jan 10 99: First version of the GuestBook installed, runs with both 'sign' and 'view' modules at the guestbook's sever - has a small aesthetic flaw [a page break] at the sign module - can't have any control over this one. Jan 8 99: selection extended - now there can be more then one selection page - the second selection page installed at "Family Album', with most of the new dozen of pictures. Jan 7 99: A week spent in learning about interactivity in sites [things that are influenced by the visitors activities]. First interactive site module [visit counter] installed. It runs at the counter's server. The owner has to provide a password to view the site's statistics - but any viewer can get there without any restriction by clicking on the visit number that appears at the bottom of most pages.. Jan 1 99: New year's eve. Also terminating a week with photographic activity. Finally decided on Photoshop [what else] as the only application for preparing my pictures for publication, and the proper format to keep them as references [it's PNG - conserves everything, and more compact from others of it's kind like TIFF]. A picture file starts with some 28MBytes, and all adjustments are being done using the full format - then it's scaled down [Standard picture height is 468 pixels - always] and compressed to some 70KBytes in JPG format [Photoshop quality factor of 6 - sorry] for publication. All thumbnails are 72 pixels high and are saved at factor 3. Dec 23: spent a week to find a host for my site. During that time I've had my site installed in eight of them. I've decided that I need more then 10MBytes, that I would not tolerate any commercial stuff like banners and pop-up windows, and that speed is important. Mr. Sumner Alpert helped me with comparing speed [Israel vs. US], and at this day I've decided on the host to use. I managed to have a redirecting URL [address] so I could, in the future, switch hosts without upsetting my viewers. The site runs now with more than one selection page, and more then a dozen pictures at the 'Family Album' section. Dec 13 98: Worked over a week to have a thumbnail page at my site to select pictures - and decided that all pictures will have the same height in pixels, to be seen [on browsers known to me] without scrolling. Finally I got a simple structure to achieve all this - a main page, selection page, and some 5 pictures with proper background and frames. I think I'll keep this style for each picture's page from now on. I still run at my ISP's, but I know already that 1MBytes won't do to my purposes. I've installed five different html editors to choose from - it's a very hard choice, and I won't tell you what was the final decision, since it's a very dangerous applications indeed [when it sees a tag or an attribute that it does not recognizes, it just wipes it off] - but it allows me to work quite fast, then I use another one to straighten things up a bit. Dec 2 98: Uploaded my first homepage at my ISP's. There were no documents and nobody to explain how this have to be done. I've tried my password on many FTP addresses, then had to guess about the first document's name to be index1.htm. I thought I could build a directory structure there, but soon found out that it's better to put everything together at the main directory. I've also found, the hard way, that Unix differentiates cases and may store more then one DOS identical files in the same directory. It was a single page with few graphics. Dec 1 98: Bought a book about html authoring. Yammi said I should get the one that offers as little pages for the price, and so I did. I won't tell you the title - as I don't know if it's any good. It's still opened on page 12.

 

		Site of Sights News
			April 26 99: An 'Awards' page was added, accessible from 'Website Story' here, to display some of the awards won by young SoS this week. April 17 99: Due to the method used by our [previous] host for advertisements, [putting SoS on a  'frame'], SoS has lost all search engines registrations - the engines' robots usually can't handle frames. The visit rate dropped from 360 to 3 pictures daily, thus killing SoS altogether. I've moved the site to another host, and started to restore its reputation. It would take a month of intensive work, and another month or two for complete recovery - I'm not sure if I will be able to keep updating the site in the next couple of weeks. Sorry, but the site's existence in this unfriendly world comes first.. March 16 99: I did not update SoS for a long time now, as I was busy in keeping it in shape. Our host posted a dynamic banner on each page, and I've been working hard to have this cleared. Whenever you can, please use the redirecting address: http://yosi.server101.com in order to get into SoS. It's the fastest, cleanest way to enter. The site rate of visits is above 2000 pix/month now, and going strong. I did some work on absolute color balance, using a color printer as a reference. I hope to get back on upgrading the site next week. The second selection page of 'Beauty and Beast' was completed according to plans, and there are more pix to be posted there soon. March 1 99: Our host changed back the site's address, so in hope it stays there as it should, I've changed all pointers accordingly. You should not change anything - visit as you used to. Feb 28 99: Our host [XOOM] changed the site's address, and installed a faulty script to redirect visitors. I made all the needed arrangements [hope so] and adjustments so viewers can use the master URL pointer [at http://yosi.server101.com] to access the site, and navigate inside. Those who use one of the old addresses will have to exit the site and enter again using the master address [or make use of an appropriate bookmark]. Using the pointer at the first page right-bottom would not do. Feb 18 99: First selection page for 'Beauty & Beast' Candid Camera portraits done. Feb 15 99: Uploaded the structure and a couple of picture for the Candid Camera section, accessed by selecting 'Beauty and Beast' button. Some new family pictures [rotating] and a new Pick of the Week. Viewing rate as per last week activity is up to: 570 pics/month. Feb 5 99: Added the 'Last updated' caption to all selection pages, as I've found that most browsers will get you an old version of these key pages instead of fresh ones. Many updates, some are re-processing of the very first pictures.. Jan 31 99: Prepared the closing picture for the family gallery. I apologize for this picture to be an exception to SoS rules of good taste, street and available light photography - this one has neither of these attributes. I could not resist the perfect composition, color scheme and point of interest. I will pull it out if any viewer objects. Will mount it in a few days. Jan 30 99: Tested the new entry point to the site - it's the best. If you enter using "http://yosi.server101.com" there will never be a delay - the SoS HomePage will start to load immediately. Replaced the 'pix of the week", mounted another four pictures, and re-processed some of the pictures in the 1st selection - these were my first trials, before Photoshop. Now the skins are fair and teeth are white.. Please note: As this site is updated frequently, some pages, like the selection pages, get new content but keep the old file names. Most browsers [my Navigator does it] are designed to bring a file already stashed in the 'cache' if a request is made to a known filename, instead of fetching it from the Internet - you [and so do I] will get the older version instead of the updated one! In order to see the recent version, one has to reload the page. Reloading is done by using function key #5 at IExplorer, or clicking on the round-arrow button at Navigator. It's most important if you want to get what I've been putting there. Jan 29 99: Site of sights accepted and registered by AltaVista search engine. Jan 24 99: I invest whatever I can to make this site different from others [like an art gallery rather then a supermarket] by keeping it free from any kind of commercial advertisements. If you've noticed there was, however, a single instance when this rule was broken - by the service that direct you to the site at the very beginning. Today I managed to solve this too, and I have a new URL address that will take you to the site without any intermediate screens or delay. I will use it myself for a week, and if found to give no trouble, I will change all references to the site accordingly. [In secret, in case you'd like to test it too, it is: "http://yosi.server101.com"]. I will continue to keep the site advertise free in the future! Jan 24 99: Solved the meter problem [Navigator Gold 3.04 stuck when viewing stats], improved color scheme and layout, mounted four new pictures and a new Pick of the Week [called 'Love' or 'Ice-cream' - whatever you like]. The big secret is that I've been feeding you rejects until now - but Yammi finally helped my find the 'real' negatives that were misplaced while we moved to our new house  - so there will be more pix to come, but I will have to rotate them when they become too many. So if you plan to print some, now is the time to do it - a few will be dropped soon. Tell anyone you know. Jan 19 99: Friends checked my specially written test 'selection page' and found its performance, using Navigator 4.1, satisfactory. This means that the bug in this browser's version can have a work-around by the programmer, as predicted by me. All 'selection pages' were therefore re-written according to the appropriate rules [never merge a table cell positioned left to a graphic element or a pointer], tested and uploaded. SoS can be seen by all versions of Navigator now. I do beg any viewer experiencing any technical difficulty at all to e-mail me or publish it in the GuestBook - I will attend to any such problem immediately. Jan 18 99: In response to my e-mail to all viewers I've got the needed confirmation about SoS not being readable using Navigator ver. 4.0x and 4.1. I use five different html editors, and check each document using these, and three different browsers [Nav 4.x not being one of them, since I hate to use it, and prefer the 3.04 Gold - they can't coexist in a single system]. I have a suspicion it has to do with Nav 4.x not being able to correctly execute complex table html code, where table cells at the left margin are merged in the column direction. Some [very slow responding] friends are supposed to check my new version for one page [the second selection page at the Family album] which I've re-written using a lots of redundant code - with no cell merge at the left margin whatsoever. For this reason I've suspended all regular [mostly photographic] activity at the site, until this problem is solved. It might take a couple of days [or eternity, if Nav 4.x can't read basic html]. I imagine some third of the viewers are using this browser, and would hate to loose them. Jan 17 99: By a special request from the subject involved, we can all enjoy the current 'Pick of the Week' for another week - I think she deserves it.

 

		Site of Sights Plans
			Immediate: to construct selection page for Candid Camera at 'Beauty and Beast, and mount the first dozen of street photography portraits. *** Done -first selection page- on Feb 18th *** Immediate: to re-write the first [HomePage] document according to the new table rules, and while doing so to shrink the HomePage vertically as much as possible, to eliminate the need for scrolling while using this page too [I think no scrolling is needed now in any of the other 'operational' pages. *** Done on Jan 19th. ***