There are a lot of web sites about treehouses and first kisses. Such as this short story, "I Remember Angels", and this one: "Goodbye". Hmmmm.. Scroll down this page for more... What is it about treehouses?

And this reference to Disneyland's Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse in a page on the Top 10 Disneyland Rides to Have Sex On: "Your imagination would have to work overtime to come up with a treehouse as clever and cozy as this one."

And the lyrics to a song by laureen brian entitled "Treehouse": "(if you feel like i do) (come on up) and you can carve your initials in my treehouse".

And finally, this news feature about Matt Roloff, a computer industry deal-maker who is also a father, and a dwarf, and the builder of a giant treehouse:

"He pulls Amy into his arms, and then his eyes drift to the window and his world beyond. In the moonlit night, he sees the pirate ship, the treehouse and the Top of the World. His favorite fantasy -- the one where Disney calls to say the Magic Kingdom needs a guy like him -- dances through his mind."

First rule of web page innovation should be the same as for doctors: do no harm. Non-techies click here to skip this article.

Cascading Style Sheets were incredibly hyped and turned out to be mostly useless. For example, this cookbook makes it sound easy. Read this article from A List Apart: Netscape's dirty little secret is that they can't do CSS. Then read this Lighthouse article and follow the links. They explain why I have been reduced to using CSS for litle style touches that should work even without CSS - i.e., non essentials, such as removing the underline on links and adding a color change on link hover.

Here is my original style sheet:

<style>
<!--
a:hover   { color:cyan;
            text-decoration:none }
a:link    { text-decoration:none }
a:visited { text-decoration:none }
-->
</style>

<style>
<!--

a:hover { color:cyan;
          text-decoration:none }
a:link  { color:#417295; 
          text-decoration:none }
a:visited { color:#6DAAD5; 
            text-decoration:none }
a:active { color:red; 
           text-decoration:none }
-->
</style>

This works on Netscape and IE, but not Opera. Why? Because Opera tries to adhere to the CSS standard! The standard requires the underline text-decoration to be inherited by child elelemts, so the text-decoration:none on links should be ignored. Opera does it "correctly", but they don't suggest an alternative, and removing underline is the most common use of CSS on the web. I am sure this is why Opera comes out of the box with link-underline disabled by default, since they could not bring themselves to violate the CSS standard.

Another Style Sheet feature that seems to work (i.e, render reasonably in old browsers) is creating " Color Highlighters" (i.e., like you use to mark up textbooks). Here is the revised style sheet:

<style>
<!--
STRONG {
	color: black;
	background-color: #99ffff;
	font-weight: normal;	
	font-style: normal; }
EM {	color: black;
	background-color: #ffff66;
	font-weight: normal;	
	font-style: normal; }
a:hover { color:cyan;
          text-decoration:none }
a:link  { color:blue; text-decoration:none }
a:visited { color:purple; text-decoration:none }
A:active  { color:red; text-docoration:none }
-->
</style>

End Rant.

Samantha and Milhouse, first kiss, in Bart's treehouse.

Warrior Princess Xena has a treehouse, at least according to this fan's story (more by this author). Found at:

If the story link breaks, as many fan sites do (see the x-files treehouse for example), try the cache copy at google. Bonus: menacing Xena pix and a happy Xena pix and a tender one from Australian Xena site.

For fun I added a poll at the bottom of this page. It is about the true inner meaning of treehouses. I got it from Freepolls, which is the second on-line poll server I tried. I have 2 more I could try. Will report later on server quality (and poll results!).

Carlos at the University of Illinois is doing a treehouse survey, with questions like: "Owning a treehouse is its own reward : Agree or Disagree".

Finally saw the movie on TV tonight. Great treehouse.

And a nice romance (treehouse romance is the theme this week)

I ran into a problem linking to some of my old stories in this Pitas site using the Pagename as anchor. It only happens in cases where a special character like ? occurs in the story title/Pagename. Some browser textbox is converting them into numeric Entity codes (? equals ?) and then the link fails.

For example, this link for Spam-free email address does not work. The anchor code is <a name="Mailto Encoder: Spam-free links&#63;"></a>

So, don't use special characters in your story title if you are going to use it as link. For these 3 articles in the Pitas howto you will have to go to the archive page and scroll down to find the article:

• Spam-free email addresses
• Tracking Weblog changes with Linkwatcher
• How did I change the Pitas background?

"In the spring orange blossoms on the trees bring with them dozens of hummingbirds zipping madly here and there."

Here is a webring without members. Lesson: don't add Forums to your site until you have hundreds, even thousands of site visitors -- only a tiny fraction will post to a forum. And it takes an even larger population to support a chat room.

A short story: "He had to stoop because the treehouse was too low for him. ... Before I knew it, we met at the treehouse everyday. I thought it was best if my parents never found out. It made it more dangerous meeting in secret and more romantic. My 16 year old heart was feeling things it had never felt before. And on one hot, starry night we kissed."

This page is an example of Pitas. I have added a Pitas howto along the left border of this page. Just click any of these links to read any of the treehouse stories on how to create a Pitas site.

"Of Adventure, Romance, Treehouses and Reality"

"TREEHOUSES. There is something very romantic about staying in a 'treehouse' in the jungle. It's true, it can ignite passions heretofore unknown; but it can also scare the daylights out of someone not completely prepared for the experience."