About This Site
The SDSPS website was created using Macromedia's
Dreamweaver MX 2004 Studio and utilizes a Dreamweaver Template.
All pages, with some exceptions such as the Sail Fleet SIs, use the same
template. All that changes from page to page is the content in this center
panel. The navigation panel on the left and the Upcoming/What's New pane
on the right are constant on each page to allow for consistent navigation.
The right panel changes dynamically in height depending on the varying
amount of content. The template, and thus all of the pages, were designed
to the World
Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Extensible
Hyper link Markup Language (XHTML) 1.0 Transitional specification.
You can validate the XHTML of any page on this website by clicking
on the » xhtml « link
on the bottom of the left navigation panel of that page, or validate this
page by clicking here: 
The layout and formatting are done entirely with Cascading Style Sheets
(CSS) to the W3C CSS
2.1 specification. You can view the CSS file here (some
browsers may not display this correctly). Each page's layout, the panel's
position on the page as well as the font size, color, and spacing are all
done with CSS and the entire website can take on a completely different
look by simply modifying the CSS file. To see how this page would look
without the CSS file, click here. The CSS
file can be validated by clicking on the » css « link
on the bottom of the left navigation panel on any page, or validate this
page by clicking here: 
The color scheme uses blue #003399, which I have nicknamed "SDSPS Blue" and white (#FFFFFF). The left navigation panel uses a SDSPS Blue background and white lettering. Everywhere else, the lettering is SDSPS Blue. The background of the Upcoming/What's New panel is white and the background of the center panel (this panel) is a chart of San Diego Bay that was scanned and the opacity reduced to 80%. If your browser is displaying the background correctly, the background should completely cover the browser window and appear to be underneath everything, including the right and left panel. It should also remain stationary while you scroll up or down the page (not all browsers do this correctly, namely Internet Explorer. A CSS entry was made to fool IE into thinking that this is the background for the entire body).
All active links are bold and reverse in color/background when rolled over with the cursor, depending on which panel they are in.
This site makes use of "bread crumbs", which is a navigation aid that shows you where you are hierarchically in the site and how to get back home. The bread crumb navigation is in the second small horizontal panel below the header image. As you drill down through the website, it will always show the path to get back to the home page. You can click on any link in the bread crumb trail to go back to each prior level or just jump back home if you wish.
The Upcoming Events and Upcoming Courses content, including the active links, is pulled from MySQL databases with PHP scripting. The two databases are populated with all events for the current year and all courses for the current year. If an event is added or changed, the change is made in the database. The Upcoming Events panel shows all events from today through the next 30 days. The Upcoming Courses panel shows the next two or three upcoming courses. As events/courses occur, they will fall off and new events/courses will take their place. The What's New panel is updated manually as I add new or updated information to the website.
Each page has "last updated" info at the bottom of the left hand navigation panel. When the main content of a page is changed, the date that it was changed will be shown here. If the main content has not been updated recently doesn't mean that the information is not up-to-date, it just means that there was no reason to change the information as it is still relevant.
The site search is a customized version of Google Search, which is provided by Google for free. It will scan through every page on the site to find the search results using the well-known Google Search engine. Try it, it's amazingly fast and effective.
The site conforms to the USPS Website Requirements as determined by the National Information Technology Committee, the National Law Committee and others for publicly viewable USPS websites. The USPS Website Recognition Award is awarded to websites that meet the basic criteria of presenting USPS to the public and members. The USPS Website Excellence Award is awarded to websites that exceed the minimum requirements and provide information in an especially organized, informative and artistic manner that encourages visitors to view all of the information available. The SDSPS website has won the Excellence Award several times. The years that the award has been won is shown on the bottom of the right panel of each page. Note to SDSPS Web reviewers: My definition of "appropriate animated gifs" is none at all. You won't find them here, so if you feel that this site must be downgraded for wanting to look more professional, so be it. This is by design, not by oversite, just so you know. If this site has animated graphics, it will be in Flash.
If you would like additional information about the technical aspects of this website, please feel free to contact me at webmaster@sdsps.org.