paul smith's Snaps & Bytes e-home
TERMINAL INTERESTS INDEX OLD INFORMATION PAGE
Some information about this web site: I became interested in web design once I'd noticed the Internet, some time in 1999. I was amazing at first. So many groovy things to see and do! However, after a while, it seemed much of it looked and worked rather alike. The porn was just porn, the lists of stuff were just lists of stuff. After a while I got so bored of other peoples nonsense that I wanted to create something of my own and this is it. This site has grown and changed as I've learnt to do new things with it. It's moved host, changed name, been revamped from an old, 'bigger' version and developed into it's current form. More by evolution than design, it has become a place to put my photographs, videos, semi-professional wafflings and various other random thoughts and wisdom so that the rest of the world can see it. It's also become a shop window for my writing / photographic / design etc. skills, and I have earned commissions off the back of it. Much of what I've learnt to do with site design I've tried for a while and rejected. Some eye catching things you can do with JavaScript are nice enough, but if you spend all your time going 'hey, cool' then you'll likely miss the message of the page in question. The Flash animations which are dotted about are, on the other hand, totally justifiable. Not just as decoration, but as an integral navigation and fun element to my pages. Why not try my Who Wants To Be Quite Rich Flash quiz: Click logo, left, or here! Should you want to follow my shaky web designing footsteps, this is how I did it: The HTML guts of the site were created with the aid of The Complete Idiots Guide to Creating a Web Page by Paul McFedries (ISBN 0-7897-2256-9), plus the HomeSite 4 software by Allaire which came free with the book, seen left. If you click here you'll visit the writer of this books web site. Paul McFedries knows a thing or two about making web pages. The graphics (like the semitransparent Waffle-link-icon above) were either photographed or scanned in by me, and then edited with a paint and draw program. I tend to use MGI PhotoSUITE Platinum 4 to make GIF's, and a thing called Camera Access by FlashPoint Technology (c. 1997, can you imagine?!) for working with JPG's and BMP's. The Flash animations (the WWTBQR link above will take you to a nice one) were only possible because of another Complete Idiots Guide, this time to Macromedia Flash 5, by David Karlins (ISBN 0-7897-2442-1) and the desire to impress a girl called Bengy. Latterly I've been using Sams Teach Yourself Flash 5 in 24 Hours by Philip Kerman (ISBN 0-672-31892-X) to gain a deeper understanding of this very complex tool. Bengy remains unimpressed. The rest was just time, effort, desperation, experimentation, inspiration, constipation and far too many sugary drinks. I looked at other peoples sites (and right-clicked for code, when I wanted to) and saw how to do things. I then totally ignored them and went my own route. I left the stuff I thought was interesting and useful in and binned the rest. If I have one message for aspiring webmasters and mistresses, I'd say 'Do your own thing, in your own way, about something you love, and remember, it's supposed to be fun!' I accept it's quite a long message.
Legal notice - This page, inc. graphics and multimedia features are the intellectual property of Paul Smith and are protected by copyright. Last updated 01/11/03.