Useful Software and Links

About me

My name is Martin Fischer and I live in Karlsruhe, Germany. The money for model railroading comes from a large IT Service Provider, where I get paid for implementing new technology.
I have been model railroading for a long time, following German prototypes in standard and narrow gauge until I discovered my first Narrow Gauge And Shortline Gazette and American narrow gauge in 1989.

This site

I'm a firm believer that websites should make best use of HTML without limiting access for some browsers. So the HTML was validated and thoroughly tested with several browsers: Netscape 4.01 and 4.78, Internet Explorer 5 and 6, Mozilla 1.1, Konqueror 2.2 and lynx. It works and is usable with all of them. Optimum results are achieved with a recent browser (Mozilla or current Internet Explorer).

Software

My favorite operating system is LINUX. This site was almost completely done with freely available software for this system.

• Of course, The Gimp was used to create all the graphics used here. Especially the scripting feature was helpful in avoiding repetitive tasks.
• WPP The Web Preprocessor is used to give all the pages a consistent look and reduce the time needed to replicate design changes to all individual files.
• The process of creating the photo galleries was significantly eased by using album .

Track plans

• All, except for one older plan, were created using XTrkCAD , a nice trackplanning package available for LINUX as well as Windows.

HTML and related information

There were several sites I found really useful during the design of this site.

• The Caching Tutorial explains how caching works on the Web and helped me solve a problem with my script.
• The Yale CAIM Style Guide taught me a lot about web design. I tried to follow many, but not all, of the ideas presented there and I hope, I didn't make too many mistakes ;-).
• This great collection of articles and links regarding WWW and HTML authoring helped me a lot with my own efforts.
• The excellent pixel font Silkscreen used in some places can be downloaded from the designer Jason Kottke's website .