J-Walk & Associates, Inc.

Welcome To The New Spreadsheet Page

If you're reading this, then you've found the new Spreadsheet Page. It was long overdue, and (amazingly) it took only about 12 days to redesign the site and transfer the old information over.

The old site was done with Microsoft FrontPage -- which is so old (and so bad) that Microsoft doesn't even support it any more. For the new site, I use Expression Engine, and the hosting is by Engine Hosting.

I must say that I am very impressed with Expression Engine. I've used it for the J-Walk Blog for several years, but I never had a need to really put it through its paces. Once I understood a few key concepts, it went very smoothly. Perhaps the best testimonial is that there was nothing that I wanted to do that couldn't be done. Best of all, it will be much easier to add new material to this site.

Take some time and browse through the site, then let me know what you think.

- Reader Comments -

Following are comments in response to this item.
The most recent comment is at the bottom.

1. By Doug Glancy. Comment posted 30 July, 2008 8:18pm

   Congratulations John! Your site looks good.
   
   I use Expression Engine at work to maintain our web site, which was designed by somebody else. I came from FrontPage too, which I was never fond of. I find EE rather clunky and slow to get around in, but you're the second wise person in two days I've heard speak highly of it. It seems to be taking off in popularity.
   
   Randomly I downloaded your permutations workbook. It came up with an information message that macros are now edited in the VBE, not in the workbook. I guess you must have first written that a while back? I don't think I've ever seen that message before. Why does it still come up if there's no XLM?
2. By John Walkenbach. Comment posted 30 July, 2008 9:06pm

   The trick to being productive in EE is to keep multiple tabs open in your browser. It can get pretty slow when you use the menus to go back and forth between the various sections.
   
   Yeah, I got that "macros are now edited" message too (using Excel 2007). Very confusing. Did Microsoft forget that VBA macros were never edited in macro sheets? It's a very old file. I'm pretty sure it was originally saved in Excel 5.
3. By Doug Glancy. Comment posted 30 July, 2008 9:35pm

   You're right. I usually have a couple of EE tabs and a couple with our web site. I've got a huge new monitor which also helps. The thing that's burned the most brain cells was creating a new "submit" form. I think there were 4 different places to go in EE to create the form.
   
   The other thing that's a little nerve-wracking is that I don't know for sure how something looks until I look at it live on the web. On the other hand it is very fast to update and then refresh the page I'm working on, back and forth, until I get it right.
4. By Robert. Comment posted 31 July, 2008 2:09am

   Congratulations!! John
   
   I learned a lot from your old site and even bought a book you wrote in chinese translation at Taiwan.
   
   I am looking forward to your new marvelous material here.
5. By Toad. Comment posted 31 July, 2008 11:34am

   Products
   I sell a few Excel add-in products. Go here to the buy one:
   
   Can't you get your legion of blog groupies to do some free proofreading for you? You could even give away a prize (Sanskrit version of The Excel Bible?) for the most errors found.
   
   No need to thank me.
6. By John Walkenbach. Comment posted 31 July, 2008 11:50am

   Can’t you get your legion of blog groupies to do some free proofreading for you?
   
   Yes I can, and it's working. <strike>Thank you, legionnaire.</strike>
7. By Dave. Comment posted 31 July, 2008 1:03pm

   Will you keep j-walk.com and essentially freeze the content?
   
   Will lots of links in newsgroups responses that are archived in Google break?
8. By John Walkenbach. Comment posted 31 July, 2008 1:16pm

   I'm not sure what I will do with that old site. Broken links will be a problem.
   
   My plan for thee short term is to determine the page URLs that are accessed most often, and provide an automatic redirect to the equivalent page here. Eventually, I'll take it all down and a request for anything at j-walk.com/ss will automatically go here.
9. By Blayne. Comment posted 31 July, 2008 2:12pm

   Under Obscure Shortcut Keys And Mouse Clicks,
   
   There are a couple of "space charactors" VBA procedure�, �If you use the.
   
   Great look by the way!
10. By Blayne. Comment posted 31 July, 2008 2:14pm

    Dang! another one in the same area, these shortcuts are�.
11. By John Walkenbach. Comment posted 31 July, 2008 2:19pm

    Thanks Blayne. The technical name for that is Leftover FrontPage Garbage (LFG). I thought I got rid of them, but obviously not.
12. By LES FERGUSON. Comment posted 31 July, 2008 10:12pm

    Nice new look J.W.
    I've signed up to the RSS feed and await wonderous new excel tips on a daily basis
    shalom
13. By Harald Staff. Comment posted 01 August, 2008 3:53am

    Congratulation John! Very classy, very user friendly.
    You seem to have had a couple of very productive years.
14. By LES FERGUSON. Comment posted 10 August, 2008 11:18am

    I seem to be getting multiple copies of posts in my RSS feed. Now, whether this is a problem at my end or yours ??????
    I thought it best to let you know.
15. By John Walkenbach. Comment posted 10 August, 2008 11:42am

    Thanks, LES. I'm pretty sure that's my fault. I had the same topic title in two different weblogs, and ExpressionEngine was doing some screwy things. So I changed one of the titles -- which is probably why you saw it again.
16. By John Mansfield. Comment posted 04 September, 2008 4:45am

    John, congratulations on your new site and blog. I really like the format - it's simple, easy to navigate, and very professional. Thanks for putting this site together with the information it provides - I can appreciate the effort it takes.
    
    I use ExpressionEngine too and always find it interesting to see how others use it.