The plain design of this website originated from various designs I have created over the years. This web site design was painstakingly arrived at by render testing in Internet Explorer 7.0, Fire Fox 2.0.0.8, and Safari 3.0.1. CSS Issues, variations in rendering standards, and browser implementation of industry standards created a steep challenge in nearly identical rendering between browsers. Through trial and error I found that complex design and layout issues are very difficult and time consuming to implement cleanly in three different browsers. Therefore, I chose functionality, usability, simplicity, and accessibility to reach the largest number of browsers as possible.
I love glitz and glamour of stylish websites but in the end is really about getting the job done cleanly, efficiently, and easily with the right content. My design is intended to reach even those who do not have one of the three browsers above and bring the web experience back to its roots. Content based, easy to read, easy to understand, simple to navigate.
The content was designed around the concept of collections. Humans, no matter what they do are habitual collectors of everything, even if virtual in nature. We collect friends and so we have social networking, we collect photos so we have photo sharing sites; we love our blogs so we have blog sites offering a multitude of blog activities. My thinking was to take a few of these collections and bring them together into one website. Yes, I know, not totally original; but I’m going for simplicity. If you think about it, the web itself is really a collection of links that get you something or somewhere. Overall, easy to use organized and understand makes content king. Glitz and glamour is meaningless if you don’t get what you need.
Humans also are group oriented, so we have built in groups to our website so that users can collect and group as they wish.
The purpose of this website is a launching point for both business and educational needs. I hope to transform this web based application into a services oriented architecture (SOA) in which we can move out of the web browser and into a much richer, more interactive experience through connected desktop applications. What does this mean? Simple, the internet is changing and the browser simply can’t do it all as hoped. Industry is now moving towards the user experience as opposed to the highly technical nature of computing in the past.
After working for fortune 500 companies for many years I hope to be independent and financially free by offering my talent and knowledge to those that need it. I hope to help educate the next generation of technology workers and users while at the same time making technology easy to use for the older generation. I will accomplish this through a balance of free and for fee services that will also help others be successful. After all, who really wants to work for someone else if they could be successful on their own?
This website was designed entirely with free tools. This website is written in ASP.NET 2.0 C# using the free Microsoft Visual Studio Express editions, SQL Server Express, and other free development tools. This site was developed and tested on Window VISTA home premium on an economy Gateway computer; e.g. a cheap computer. I used the photo album code from Microsoft’s free starter kits as a starting point but that’s where the use of Microsoft code ends. Very little of the Microsoft code made it into this very large application. Yes, it doesn’t look it but wow… this will grow. Currently the work I have done has statistics as follows: 325 Pages when put into MS word with .5 inch margin. 40,415 words, 409837, characters no spaces, 550962 characters with spaces, 16130 code lines. What does this describe? The current web application source code; C#, HTML, XML, TSQL all of the lines of code merged into a word doc to get a feel for the total size of the application. However, keep in mind that MS Word isn't the best measure but it was fun to do as a very close guess at the size. Why so large? Making technology simple takes a lot of work and a lot more lines of code trying to anticipate all possible use-case scenarios.
This web based application will get less browser-oriented and more services oriented, geared towards rich connected interactive user experiences for the PC. If I have architected and engineered well enough, I believe cross platform usability will be achieved and the largest audience of users will be satisfied.