Back to Essays

The original intent of this page was to write down random thoughts I had on different topics - kind of like a blog, but before there were blogs. I never really kept up with it, though, so it's pretty short. Just for reference, I wrote most of this around the turn of the century (and even that last paragraph was years ago by now), and the web really has developed quite a bit since then.

 

This is just a random collection of thoughts that I have. I really don't expect anyone to read this unless they're really, really bored, or in the same state that I am when I write them. Don't look for any order in this. It's just going to be written in the order that I come up with the ideas. Chances are it will be either late at night or while I'm at work.

The first thing I want to talk about is my philosophy behind Web page design. Complex pages piss me off. They take too long to load, and don't really do anything special once they do load. I like pages to be laid out in a simple, easy to read manner. That's probably pretty evident from my pages. I realize my main page is a little graphics intensive, but I was careful to program in all the image sizes, and put captions, so that people don't need to wait for all the graphics to load before navigating through my site. I have a T3 connection during the school year, so I don't have to worry about load time, but I have to spend the summer using a modem, so I try to be conscientious in making sure that my pages don't take too long to load. The other thing that pisses me off is Java. It makes Web pages take too long to load whether you have a modem or a direct connection. And most pages I've seen that use Java don't even use it for anything useful. They're all just stupid marquees, or buttons for links. I've only seen a few useful Java pages (like crossword puzzles). The exception is Java Script. This is different from full blown Java. It doesn't really make the page take any longer to load, but it adds some neat features. Well, that's all the griping I have to do on that subject.

And that's all I have written here so far. Expect this page to grow as I write here to pass the time.

 

Actually, I do want to expand on this a bit. I wrote this page several years ago, back when Java was first coming out. Thankfully, it seems that people have finally figured out how to use it. There's not the same amount of pages that have Java just for the sake of having it, and it seems to be working pretty well. I still don't like overly graphics-intensive pages. In fact, my current page is even less reliant on graphics than the page I had when I wrote the above paragraph. I try to do as much as I can with code, because it takes much less time to load than image files. And the code itself is becoming more powerful (with JavaScript, CSS, and other software advancements) so that you don't need to use images to get the same effects you used to in the past. Granted, more people have DSL, cable modems, and high speed connections, but there's also a proliferation in low speed cell phone connections. It's still important to keep pages as small as possible to minimize transmission times.