I started this Web site simply enough as a way to put a few of my short stories onto the Interenet. There were six stories, a page about the stories and a page about myself, a few of my photographs, and of course, the ubiquitous resume. Just a dozen pages with a couple dozen files.
An Advanced Web Publishing class and a Designing Graphics for the Web class later and the site has grown to contain over 150 files and to comsume several more Megs, the old story oft told. For awhile I kept the Stories as the main site, and you pretty much had to be told where everything else was located.
I have just accomplished a major overhaul of the site. There is the new main entrance, and subdirectories abound. The older sections have been redesigned.
There are a few things that I have tried to accomplish that reflect my philosophy about web sites:
- A site should have a clean, consistant look to it--just because you can do something cute doesn't mean you should.
- The site should be easy to navigate.
- One should not have to scroll horizontally to read text, no matter how small their monitor or browser window. (This is one of my pet peeves. I usually suspect the culprit of having either a background in print and an unwillingness to flow with the fuidity of Web design, or of just having too big a monitor for their own good.)
- Pages should load quickly. (No mean feat.)
- The content should be worthwhile.
I have enjoyed designing for the Web. It has given me the opportunity to combine my writing, photographic, and graphic skills in an exciting medium. I would like to give special thanks to Le Nguyen and Linda Hemenway, who have taught me everything I know and a lot that I don't.
Please enjoy your tour.
Charles Kemper
December 1997
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