Up-and-Coming Site News!

...somebody told us the other day that we oughta be more approachable on this website - Y'know, lighten up a little, be more visitor friendly, show a more human face etc.
So we wallpapered this page with a more human face, if that's what you people really want - the face of our Webmaster. We don't usually let him out except at carnival time, but we figured his was the only face dorky enough to lighten things up.

Human enough for ya? Anyway, back at central office here in Rome, we all squatted down with a slab of pizza, a plate of sun-dried tomatoes and a few cans of Nastro Azzurro each and decided to put together this new page on the site - A page that brings you news of forthcoming additions and improvements to the site which may never actually happen. Or apologies for additions and improvements we did make, but which turned out to be totally half-baked.

ANYWAY, here's the news for this year -

We've taken a lot of cool new pictures of Rome this summer and added them to the site. And just so's you believe that we really do take all our own photographs on the site, here's a snap of our staff photographer in paparazzo mode, busy tracking down some more celebs on the Via Veneto...

Actually we're quite well aware of the fact that most of our images on the site are pretty low resolution and not so hot to look at. That's intentional though - we've indexed them right down to the minimum colours in most cases so that they load quicker. But for those of you who might wish to take a better look at some of our pictures, we've now put in a special page of links to some higher resolution scans of a selection of our favourite pics. Just click on the thumbnails there. We're also slowly working through all the images on other pages to make them clickable to the larger resolution scans as well.
If you want to download them for your own purposes, please feel free, but we'd very much appreciate it if you'd label them somehow as 'copyright Romebuddy.com' and put a little link from your page, back to us, either from the picture itself, or from anywhere on your site that's convenient to you. If a JPEG isn't good enough, we could arrange for you to buy an original high quality, large format hand-produced print of the photo you'd like. Deal?

We've built four new pages this summer (Four? BIG DEAL!). This is one of them. ("Hey that doesn't count", you're saying. "Yes it does" says the Webmaster, so yah, boo, sucks to YOU!)

Then there's a new diary page - the trials and sorrows of a Romebuddy. Don't expect daily entries though.

We also thought you might want to spend some money while you're here, so there's a kind of shopping page now too.

(What? You want links to these new pages? From this page? Get lost, what do you think this is, a user-friendly website? Get off your butts and go look for them yourselves!)

We're also putting in some more music here and there. Don't ask us how to turn it off though, We haven't learned that trick yet. If it gets unbearable, then by all means, mail us and tell us so.

As a matter of fact, do feel free to mail us to tell us anything; Tell us what you like or what you don't like about the site. Tell us if we have any dead links, or if something doesn't seem to be loading properly, or even if we have any typing errors. This is starting to be a mega-big site now and it's easy for us to overlook something. So just drop us an E-line and we'll do our best to fix it.

Oh, and something else that really falls into the category of empty promises - Our ChatRoom. One of these days we'll get it running properly, with a once a week chat-date for expatriates in Rome and other interested parties.

We've fixed up guestbook with a brand new look. We think it's really KEWL and dead easy and fun to fill in - Go take a look before you leave...

Ever built a 'no-frames' section to your site?
Well of course, that's how we all started five years ago, when frame-compatible browsers were nothing more than a twinkle in Marc Andreeson's eye, right? (come to think of it, five years ago, Marc Andreeson wasn't much more than a twinkle in his mother's eye).
But anyway, we all built single window sites, then we were told it was hip to build frame-based sites, then they reminded us that half the world's surfers still don't like browsing in frames.
Man, I thought it'd be easy - Got all the pages right? Just copy and pull-em out of their frames right?
NOT!
So we had to rebuild the whole dang thing didn't we, just for you stone-age critters out there. Well, it's okay, we're not so high-tech ourselves - As you may have noticed, we here at Romebuddy still think Java is a cup of coffee. And I personally still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
Actually, we think some of the new full-window pages look cooler than the framed ones - Framed sites are kind of like dying your hair green when you're fifteen - It's a phase you have to go through to learn about real dress-sense. Once you hit thirty you start hankering after Chester Barrie suits, sensible shoes and full-window web-pages instead - Cos now you've learned that it's not what you wear, it's how you wear it. Or maybe you're just getting old! Or maybe we are.
One day soon they'll let us loose on cascading style sheets, but they sound a bit racey, so first we wanna keep learning the basics.
Anyway, for now, get down off your funky ragga tip and enjoy the new pages...

Cool runnin's,
from the Webmaster and The Team at Romebuddy