Everyone has to begin somewhere. This article forms a brief but honest history of my web design experience and the lessons learned.

Stumbling Upon HTML

I can’t recall the exact year I made my first website but I remember how it happened. It’s probably fairly unusual that my first experiences with HTML had nothing to do with the internet, but normal is boring. It all began with me idly browsing the cover disc of a PC magazine. One of the files had extension ”.html” which I vaguely recalled had something to do with the internet. I double-clicked and it loaded in Internet Explorer (probably version 3), it wasn’t anything interesting – just a questionnaire with a bunch of radio buttons – but for some reason the next thing I did was view the source.

I taught myself most of the basics of HTML by looking at other similar files on the cover disc, I learned how to use the font tag, frames. images and sounds. I made a few silly websites including some really poor (in retrospect) sites for my Dad’s business. Luckily this was back when no businesses except Microsoft, Netscape or Yahoo had websites worth mentioning so my work wasn’t too embarrassing for anybody. Eventually I stumbled across a copy of Microsoft Frontpage and made a site called “Goldeneye 64”, this was a fan site for Goldeneye 007 on the N64 and somehow had received thousands of visitors within a week of going on-line. Obviously the next step was to add message boards and guest books, I never actually looked closely at these but apparently quite a few people used them. In reality though it was just luck and the popularity of Goldeneye at the time that allowed me to get any visitors at all.

Lessons

Things progressed as expected for a while, I learned about using tables to make interesting layouts and stuck with using WYSIWYG editors for a long time. For several years I didn’t really make any real websites, certainly none that were as successful as Goldeneye 64. Instead I gained an interest in editing “Jedi Knight” on the PC, I produced a number of levels – most of them terrible. From time-to-time I found myself making sites for game mods that never got off the ground or gaming clans that I was part of. I heard a little bit about CSS during this time, but it just seemed like a way of getting certain effects like coloured scrollbars and hover states on links.

My final map for Jedi Knight was my good one. I got lucky and a player who really knew about the game helped me out with flow and item placement. At one point I rebuilt half of the level just to address a single flow issue. The theory was that if a player couldn’t find a circuit around the level without slowing down then something was wrong. Another big change in my approach was the placement of most powerful weapon. Most hobbyist level designers like to hide the powerful items away in secret locations or hard-to-reach spots. My approach (thanks to my friend) was instead to make the weapon as accessible as possible, in the end I think I counted 5 different ways of getting to it. This may all seem like a bit of a tangent, but it highlights that I was beginning to think about the user when making things.

After my final map for Jedi Knight I made a few for its sequel “Jedi Outcast”. I focused on capture-the-flag and my two main levels “Bespin Towers” and “Kashyyyk Tree Canopy” somehow ended up being two of the most played custom maps for the game. It’s a nice feeling when your maps get featured in trick-jumping videos.

Finally we get to the CSS

It was at university that I really paid attention to making websites again and it was a friend who convinced me to try using CSS for layouts. Naturally I was resistant to the change, using all the typical excuses for using tables instead, but eventually I gave it a go. I was astounded at how much easier everything was. I still wasn’t completely doing things in the spirit of standards but I had taken the first step. The next year and a half involved me reading everything I could find about CSS layouts and learning as many techniques and tricks as possible. But it wasn’t until some modules on Artificial Intelligence and parsing in my degree programme (Computer Science) that I started to pay attention to what semantics actually means. At the same time I was reading about design principles, previously I had just used colours and layouts without any proper reasoning – just doing what looked good. This new understanding of HTML and design principles has allowed probably the most dramatic improvement in my work to date. In terms of actual design ability I still have a lot to learn, but I finally feel that I have a good foundation to build on.