A lil bit of fun - My first WebPage ever

Hi guys,

thought to share some fun. I am planning a new series of screencasts and it has a lot to do with the very first beginnings. So I went through my archive to find out when I started with “web rumbling”. It was in April, 2008 I started my first project - which will mean that I missed my 5 years of jubilee (grrr).

Unfortunately my initial project doesn’t exist anymore, but still got the FW file. So I took a screener cause I don’t want to keep this back:

I simply like to thank you for all these great moments of fun and tears and hope on good deal more of them, literally.

Cheers

Thomas


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That took me to the Wayback Machine! (literally). I found my very first site, but the archive of it is quite broken, so you can’t really see anything (lots of missing images and background images). But I found my second site, made in 2002 or so, and then this print ad I made for Softpress, which is easily one of my favorites over the years:

https://web.archive.org/web/20031010223408/http://pluto.walterdavis.net/ad/200.html

This was from right around the time that Adobe had bought Macromedia. I made a cartoon of two dinosaurs getting married, with the tag line “Gee, I wonder what the kids’ll look like…”. I can’t remember which one came first, though.

Walter

On Dec 12, 2013, at 10:53 AM, Thomas Kimmich wrote:

Hi guys,

thought to share some fun. I am planning a new series of screencasts and it has a lot to do with the very first beginnings. So I went through my archive to find out when I started with “web rumbling”. It was in April, 2008 I started my first project - which will mean that I missed my 5 years of jubilee (grrr).

Unfortunately my initial project doesn’t exist anymore, but still got the FW file. So I took a screener cause I don’t want to keep this back:

my-first-webpage-20131212-163726.jpg

I simply like to thank you for all these great moments of fun and tears and hope on good deal more of them, literally.

Cheers

Thomas


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Retro design. I love it. :slight_smile: By the way, that a pretty good FIRST website Thomas.

K


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Hi Kelly - thanks. I even did it without FreewayTalk (but with the help of Joe once :-). I signed in here in Jan. 2009.

Walter - I even remember that campaign cause I am under the impression that we talked about it elsewhere. The funny thing:

I planned the above mentioned project by using (Macromedia) Dreamweaver, but stumbled even upon the very first step:

Setting the proper upload dialog credentials.

This was less an app problem - I was simply dumb. Tried a couple of others (GoLive e.g.) - with all the same result.

After running this (today) simple process within Freeway (hooorrray) I knew how my child would look like - never regretted.

I have to correct the initial date btw. It was even April 2007 (2008 was the first review regarding content - not design). Wondered if it was Version 3.5 at that time?

But I know that you are one of the real Dinos starting with 1.0 in the back-days of 1998 (?) - that’s still impressive.

Cheers

Thomas


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I think I started with Claris HomePage, or something of that ilk, in early 1995 or 6. I remember trying GoLive when that was the name of the company. In November 1997 I picked up Freeway 1 (still beta) and used it to make a new Web site for the agency where I worked. There had been two abortive attempts by the agency leaders prior to that, with all-hands meetings, outside consultants, much pizza eaten, and little accomplished in total. There was talk of making the site “sticky” and what-not. Too many hands in the job, and nobody was ultimately responsible.

I was at loose ends, because a new team of creative directors had been hired, and the chemistry was really bad. (The previous creative directors were still there, also in limbo, and they had hired me, so I was tainted.) I found a junior copywriter with nothing billable to do, and between the two of us (and the IT guy, who wrote a form handler in classic ASP, and figured out hosting for us) we built a complete 100-page Web site with a full portfolio and bio section in less than a month. We launched at the agency Christmas party.

At that point, all of the account executives came out of the woodwork with projects for us to do. A senior executive appointed himself our team leader, and I became the creative director of the new Web group. It was a major turning point in my career (arguably saved me from the dole at the time) and I’ve been eternally grateful since.

Walter

On Dec 13, 2013, at 3:38 AM, Thomas Kimmich wrote:

But I know that you are one of the real Dinos starting with 1.0 in the back-days of 1998 (?) - that’s still impressive.


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saved me from the dole at the time

Interesting - I thought that ‘dole’ was specifically a british concept.

D


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That’s the label that’s british, the idea of collecting “unemployment” is pretty universal.

Walter

On Dec 13, 2013, at 1:50 PM, DeltaDave wrote:

saved me from the dole at the time

Interesting - I thought that ‘dole’ was specifically a british concept.

D


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Yes - ‘concept’ was the wrong word choice.

So is ‘dole’ recognised US wide - or just in the educated east


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[Laughs] “Just” in the educated east? Dare I ask what the north, south and west are?

Todd

So is ‘dole’ recognised US wide - or just in the educated east


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When I wrote ‘educated east’ I was referring to that particular area in the east where Walter lives… :wink:


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I had a similar experience at pretty much the same sort of time. I seem to recall that I started out using Adobe PageMill 1 which at the time I thought was amazing. It allowed me to create a web site in less time than it would to try and hand code a single page and given that a page was 90% tables it took a lot of pain away from having to work out table cell widths manually. Looking back it was a PITA to use and it didn’t go far enough but it got me up and running with web design.

I’ve still got the site I first did in PageMill although I doubt I’ve a floppy drive anywhere that’ll read the files!

Needless to say that when I first saw Richard Logan demoing Freeway 2 at the MacUser show in 1999 I was blown away and got my credit card out there and then. You have him to blame. :slight_smile:
Regards,
Tim.

On 13 Dec 2013, at 13:35, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

I think I started with Claris HomePage, or something of that ilk, in early 1995 or 6.


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How embarassing finding our old table based site on the way back machine in 2002. Sadly a bit mangled…

David Owen

On 13 Dec 2013, at 22:00, Tim Plumb email@hidden wrote:

I had a similar experience at pretty much the same sort of time. I seem to recall that I started out using Adobe PageMill 1 which at the time I thought was amazing. It allowed me to create a web site in less time than it would to try and hand code a single page and given that a page was 90% tables it took a lot of pain away from having to work out table cell widths manually. Looking back it was a PITA to use and it didn’t go far enough but it got me up and running with web design.

I’ve still got the site I first did in PageMill although I doubt I’ve a floppy drive anywhere that’ll read the files!

Needless to say that when I first saw Richard Logan demoing Freeway 2 at the MacUser show in 1999 I was blown away and got my credit card out there and then. You have him to blame. :slight_smile:
Regards,
Tim.

On 13 Dec 2013, at 13:35, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

I think I started with Claris HomePage, or something of that ilk, in early 1995 or 6.


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As long as we are discovering that the internet is like our moms and NEVER
FORGETS ANYTHING… there’s this

http://web.archive.org/web/20040323041710/http://www.thebigerns.com/

Not my first Freeway site ever, but not long after I settled down with
Freeway. Done with FWP3.

I swear my first intro to Freeway was a free CD bundle around 1997 - I
remember after I tried it they produced a new pay-for version (v2?). I went
back and forth a lot back then with all the different softwares everyone
has already mentioned, trying hard to get what I wanted while avoiding all
the code learning part.

Around 2006, I had improved my skills a bit more by hanging around whatever
incarnation of FreewayTalk we had then. It was an intense learning time for
me, reading everything I could and discussing it in the forum. Eventually,
I had some idea about creating a blog about my Freeway ideas - and dubbed
it The CSSWAY.

It still exists today but isn’t very well cared for… I use it to post
samples and examples for comment here, and that’s about it.

http://cssway.thebigerns.com/products/
http://cssway.thebigerns.com/workbench/

I still hadn’t made a commercial site by then, but eventually I got around
to it and made a few. My latest one is this one - Bradford Hardware | Jewelry for Your Home


Ernie Simpson


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On 13 Dec 2013, 10:55 pm, The Big Erns wrote:

I still hadn’t made a commercial site by then, but eventually I got around
to it and made a few. My latest one is this one - Bradford Hardware | Jewelry for Your Home

Ernie Simpson

This is really well done, and responsive! Nice work Ernie.


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Ernie, I noticed you used a class for the Bradford logo. That’s an interesting idea that I hadn’t considered. Usually I just use a placed image. May I ask why you chose that method?

@media screen { #bradfordlogo { 
	margin: 0px; 
	padding-top: 150px; 
	width: 540px; 
	background-image: url(Resources/bradfordlogo-large.jpg); 
	background-repeat: no-repeat; 
	overflow: hidden; 
	height: 150px; 
	voice-family: ""}""; 
	voice-family: inherit; 
	height: 0; 
}
#bradfordlogo a { 
	display: block;
	position: absolute;
	top: 0;
	left: 0;
	text-indent:-9999px;
	width: 540px; 
	height: 150px; 
	}
}

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I also noticed that many of your stylesheets are much better formatted than a typical FWP stylesheet. How did you accomplish that?


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Kelly, we went over this in class, how is a class and id defined in CSS? Now look at Ernie’s code again.

Todd

I noticed you used a class for the Bradford logo.


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I also noticed that many of your stylesheets are much better formatted
than a typical FWP stylesheet. How did you accomplish that?

Almost all stylesheets are produced by Freeway Pro - the only one I wrote
directly is the devices (responsive) stylesheet.

Of course, that lets me comment further and point out that my thing is
mainly about controlling what Freeway Pro does, influencing even the code
it produces. So it’s fair to say that FWP is indirectly producing my
code. If you accept that, then surely the answer to why my page or CSS code
looks different would simply be due to my exercising a greater level of
control of what the application is doing.

Ernie, I noticed you used a class for the Bradford logo. That’s an
interesting idea that I hadn’t considered. Usually I just use a placed
image. May I ask why you chose that method?

This is something known as Image Replacement… a CSS technique that was
developed to replace blocks of actual text with an image. The original
concept was a way to make headers appear in a certain font, substituting
graphic text for actual text. Invisible to the viewer, the actual text is
still available to any readers who do not use CSS to view the page…
assisted devices and search engines. Check out the page again in Safari and
use the Developer menu to disable CSS. The logo is now a semantically rich
header.

Certain images like logos are historically and culturally significant to
sighted viewers. They arguably are visually semantic. The trouble is that
there is no way on the web yet to express visual semantics to search
engines and assistive devices. IR is a technique which tries to bridge that
gap.

Now, in another thread you asked about my usage of actions - while I am
quite capable of employing IR techniques in FWP, this is an example of my
use of the Image Replacement action by Walter Davis. You won’t always find
me using this action, but here it is to benefit my client who also uses FWP
and may find IR a harder concept to deal with than my layouts.

Here’s an interesting article on IR and how the technique has been updated
over time.


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And a similar one I posted a couple months ago http://csswizardry.com/2010/10/your-logo-is-an-image-not-a-h1/.

Todd

Here’s an interesting article on IR and how the technique has been updated
over time.
Replacing the -9999px hack (new image replacement) - Zeldman on Web and Interaction Design


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On 14 Dec 2013, 2:21 pm, Todd wrote:

Kelly, we went over this in class, how is a class and id defined in CSS? Now look at Ernie’s code again.

Todd
http://xiiro.com

I noticed you used a class for the Bradford logo.

Oops. Sorry. I keep getting the two mixed up. #example, like Ernie used, is an id, whereas .example is a class.

An id is used to specify a style for a single, unique element. A class is used to specify a style for a group of elements.


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