December 24, 2004

The New York Times Provides DropCap

ELL, for these many long years I have been looking for something that would allow me to create a true dropcap in html. Yesterday, I noticed the New York Times was displaying just such a device on one of its online stories. I found I could use the characters as long as the Src was on the NYT server. The images did not work when they were on my own hard drive. There seems to be something in the code that sets up the page that allows things to properly work with the gif images on the NYT server. This seems to be the way to go as long as the New York Times doesn't change what it is using on its server. Since that is an unlikely prospect, I will likely not be able to use this feature very long.

Ah, but one does keep learning. After I opened this file in DreamWeaver the "A" gif appeared inside the folder that contains the html file. "Where did that come from," I wondered? It was downloaded by DreamWeaver, I suppose. After reconnecting the Src to the new image on my hard drive, everything worked. So I now conclude that the location of the image is not what is important, but the code itself. What specific portion of the code is essential? I will find out by eliminating code and testing. And so one learns how things work. I am independant of the New York Times, which is a good thing!

I just substituted the "W" above which I created myself. Now I know that the gif image is not related to the nice dropcap effect which is created by the html code. This works extremely well. Thanks go to the websters at the New York Times online edition. I shall be using this!