How To Make a Homepage
Why make a homepage at all?

That is perhaps the best question. The primary reason is probably that I want to have somewhere to collect information about me other people could need. Or perhaps it is just some kind of ego boost.

I also felt that I could use a break from my usual 16hrs/day coding, and have now spend 16 hours coding HTML and pike code for this page instead. Go figure.

My layout and design philosophy

A homepage should be readable. Preferably even with text-only browsers, since some people still use them, and they are sometimes very handy when you want to get some information very quickly.

Since they should be readble, the default window width in Netscape and all other browsers I have seen so far is just to wide. It is hard to follow lines of text as long as the Netscape window. That's why I have placed quite a lot of space around the text.

A totaly white or black background is also out of the question, since that makes reading much harder. Off white is usualy best, but since a wanted a somewhat personalized look on the pages, I decided to use this color (it is called 'yellow4' in XWindows, or Roxen, and is a somewhat retro-70's kind of brown. Quite ugly on a wall, but I like it as a background.

Technical information

The headers are generated on the fly with the GText module in Roxen (see my projects page).

The rounded images and in the corners are generated with a short pike-script, using the image module. (they are in fact one quadrant of a circle)

The menu at the top of the image is generated by another short script, as is the layout. For some reason, I did not feel like writing a module this time, but instead used quite simple RXML and two small pike scripts.

The font used in the headers is Template Gothic Bold, the little red dots is the character 'l' in the 'wingding' font.

I use table backgrounds, but I have tried to keep the site readable for older browsers that support document colors as well.

The pages are designed for a gamma between 1.0 and 1.8. Most PC and Unix workstations have around 1.8, most Macs 1.4 or so.