Welcome

Welcome to my personal website. It began as a place to learn a little about building web 2.0 web sites.

Web 2.0 Graphics and design

Originally, the site was strictly devoted to graphics and design. It seemed to me that if the site would "be" web 2.0, then it should look 2.0, and, because aesthetics, graphics and such were part of basic web construction ... I did a Google search on the keywords "web 2.0 graphics" and turned up a few sites that look promising:

  1. Web 2.0 Tutorials roundup
  2. Create a Reflection effect in 5 simple steps
  3. Using Gimp to make Web 2.0 Buttons and Graphics

Plus, an old logo (that's no longer used on this page) was created using The Web2.0V Logo Creatr.

What is 2.0?

During some part of working on making web 2.0 buttons (and attempting to make the web pages work in browsers other than Microsoft IE), I realized that my understand of web 2.0 was lacking.

On April 23, 2008, Wikipedia showed the following:

Web 2.0 is a trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to facilitate creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. These concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. The term became notable after the first O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004.

Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use webs. According to Tim O'Reilly:

“ Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.”

Some technology experts, notably Tim Berners-Lee, have questioned whether one can use the term in a meaningful way, since many of the technology components of "Web 2.0" have existed since the early days of the Web.

So, this site isn't very 2.0. It doesn't facilitate collaboration nearly as well as most and it isn't a business.

Currently Exploring

I'm currently exploring how to add custom buttons to a Google toolbar and examining different ways to add a search box to a personal website. I'm also wading through a number of sites about basic web design. The Web 2.0 Design Guide seems like a nice place to start. | More...

The Design of This site

The previous design of this site more-or-less didn't work in Firefox, so I'm now using a modified version of SmallPark's OrangeTwo from OSWD. Here's a little more about the site design.