Why I built this site this way?

Ease of Maintenance, amongst other things.

How ever there are two points that need to be made here. Why Specifically and why Generally

Specifically.

As a firm believer in equality for all, as well as ideas like the power of education to empower people [that should also be free or at least affordable] I am caught between a rock and a hard place.

The world wide web was originally 'conceived' as a way for Scientists to easily share and access information. This was achieved through an established set of standards that enabled all to see and write and share their own information, as web pages. I believe this 'spirit' should be kept alive, as do several others. At some point after 1995 around the time Microsoft brought it's 'free' browser out things went awry. Non proprietary code was often needed to be written to get certain effects and of course this code only worked in certain browsers, never in the competition's! The browser wars began, doubling the workload of designers and programmers alike. Now in the new century there has been a campaign for a return to standards. Couple this with the issues like bandwidth and brevity and this is one of the reasons why this site looks the way it does.

Several sites I made in the past, relied on heavily on gifs as navigational elements which look good but present problems when parts of the site are added to, or a change of colour scheme is felt needed. Using technologies like CSS speeds this process and can help address issues like monitor resolution, Operating System, Browser make or version.

These are just several of the reasons why this site looks this way, also as I am still grappling with/learning CSS I am probably not exploiting it to it's fullest potential.

Generally.

Over the years, this site has moved from a graphically intensive site to one that relies less on graphics and good design generally. Currently, I am trying to effectively communicate, both online and offline, by good design, with a smattering of fantastic eye candy. My formal training in photography in some ways is at odds with design generally. I am more used to starting with a frame, the camera, and placing that around a scene, and making the best possible composition from this.

Design on the other hand starts with an empty page so to speak and is built upon form this basic building block.

The web itself is yet another medium that stretches already established graphic design methods. Unlike traditional graphic design there is NO fixed medium such as paper size or colour or even orientation, in web design. This means information MUST be organised into a clear hierarchy. add the short attention spans of many media savvy web surfers and boy you have your work cut out for you.

All these issues present a whole host of 'issues' that I have tried to absorb and deal with since I began 'tinkering' in 1995/6.

This site is the current incarnation of that process I hope you enjoy, and perhaps come back in 6 months to a years time to see what changes have been made. More frequent visits will of course enable you to check out the changes in all my photographic art galleries, don't forget my flickr stream.