A new year, a new home page

My home page was getting a bit stale, so I decided to “update” it. Unbelievably, it’s been nearly 20 years since my first web page, so I thought I would go retro with it, but using modern techniques.

Here’s how I did it:

ISINDEX search
This is just a form, using a Google Search restricted to boulter.com.

Frames
No FRAME tags here; it uses a div with CSS floats.

Weblog and Twitter
Something you used do with server-side includes can now be done with jQuery and jQuery plugins.

Visitor counter
Inserted with JavaScript, the dial numbers use CSS gradients.

Blinking text
Uses JavaScript to periodically toggle element visibility

Select box navigation
This used to be done with a form submit and a server redirect. Today, it’s a trivial amount of JavaScript.

Small caps
You used to do this with lots of font tags. Today, you can use the CSS font-variant: small-caps.

Thick table borders
There’s no tables in the page. The div uses the border-style: ridge style.

Bullets
Formerly accomplished with an inline image next to each item, CSS supports this with
list-style-image: url(reddot.gif).

You can see all the CSS in my web10.css file.

The web surely has come a long way in 20 years. I’m sure in another 20, it will be nearly unrecognizable to us today.

2 Comments

    • Whoah there. Are you sure these technologies are supported by enough browsers now? I was thinking of easing into the 2000s with some Java Applets or maybe this new Adobe “Flash” thing.

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