Main Points

  • Original Basic Pages Archived versions of the original webpages and the first redesign of the website after I learned to write HTML.
  • Our First Submission! Here's our first submitted page. Dad wrote up comments on my Internet Relevant Languages webpage, and it was so good, I edited it into its own webpage.
  • Reversed Colors I've been telling you about reversing the colors into a sepia tone version for awhile; I'd like ones that aren't hard to change.
  • Red-Green Color Blindness In these versions of the page, I make use of red... but of course in the green on black, we'd have problems with the single most common form of color blindness.

This stuff is less important now, but there's no reason to take it off. I figure I'll leave it for people who want to check it out. ...or who need a laugh.

Original Basic Pages

Before we go anywhere, I have the homepage in its first beta version as written by me, chroniclemaster1, in HTML. This is a triumph (or dangerous) because it means I can now write my own webpages. I've posted this so we have a reference back to the original homepage design. I've replaced all the graphic elements of the original webpage to correct the oversight, that Yahoo makes no official statement that they are public domain. The only things remaining in this version are the Javascript clock, the Presence graphic in the Contact Information section, and the counter. We need to replace these, with manually coded ones, or public domain scripts as soon as we can.

However, all the other elements were pretty easy to replace and I think the bordered tables, and horizontal lines do a good job of replacing the bars for now. Long term, hopefully we'll be able to design our own "pretty" graphics that won't have any copyright or ownership issues.

This is the homepage modified based on my current ideas and updated with current information. If nothing else changes, this is the version of the homepage I will post when I have all the other pages updated to EarthChronicle.com instead of the older Pages of History.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum... Everything went all right with the conversion to EarthChronicle.com, and all our webpages are pretty well standardized around a template. However, somewhere along the line the website structure changed radically. These home pages were too busy, too many things for a homepage, so the homepage design was simplified. It has a Timelines section where people can just explore history, a Reference Shelf section where people can go straight to specific information they're looking for, and an interactive page, The Roman Forum. The Roman Forum is the old homepage mentioned above, just redesigned a bit to include all the ways Earth Chroniclers can get involved. The idea is that the casual visitor has a simple entry and can use of the website easily, and those of you interested in being more involved have just one extra click to get to the "real homepage" with everything that you're interested in.

[chroniclemaster1, 2005/11/08]

Our First Submission!

Here's our first submission. Dad wrote up comments On my Internet Relevant Languages webpage, and it was so good, I just marked it up in HTML and I can cut out a LOT of useless background on the original webpage. I'm just going to include the link to Dad's stuff for those who are interested in the more complete explanation. Here's the first look at it.

Reversed Colors

I've been telling you about reversing the colors into a sepia tone version for awhile, it's about time I showed you something. In the first place, I'd like ones that aren't hard to change. That's why the color scheme is so important, if I choose colors so they look good in sepia as well as green text on black it's SOOOOoooooo easy to reverse the pages. There's one HTML tag which starts the viewable portion of the webpage called <body>. You can, and I do, add a couple attributes to set the default background color, and the default font color. The pages I've made so far have black backgrounds (#000000) and bright green font (#00CC00) and all I have to do is set <body> to <body bgcolor="#000000" text="00CC00"> If the other colors work either way all I have to do is set the background to tan (#FFCC99) and the font to dark brown (#330000) and I'm done.

Now I do use the brightest "full green" (#00FF00) to accent some things, which looks great for the pages I've done, but awful in sepia. Using a Find-Replace, it's not that hard to change fortunately, but it'll be a pain if there are several colors I have to do Every time for Every webpage. To keep the text accented, I tried pushing it from the normal dark brown (#330000) all the way down to black (#000000). The reversed page looks ok to me. (Note that I've added a link in the top right corner of the pages to allow people to easily flip back and forth depending on which version they prefer.) In playing around I also tried going the other way, and I think I like reversed page with accenting in white better. It gives the page a softer look that I associate with the sepia tone's old-fashioned appearance. I am worried that it may be too darned hard to see. Or that you may not like the color schemes. If they can't mesh, then we'll do what we have to do. Let me know how they work.

[chroniclemaster1, 2006/12/04]

As I repost these pages as we move to our first paid hosting company (AND upgrade from basic html to server side programming... WOW what a year), I look at this and think, yeah, I guess we don't have to worry about that anymore. A year and a half later, I've redone the website with CSS style sheets which pretty much makes all these issues moot. The CSS operates on the same pages, so there no duplication (the above method required making two copies of every webpage).

[chroniclemaster1, 2007/07/07]

Red-Green Color Blindness

In these versions of the page, I make use of red... but of course in the green on black, we'd have problems with the single most common form of color blindness, red-green color blind. Now if someone does have that problem it just means they'd lose a little of the highlighting and variation of the page. The page should look fine (it's not like I've placed red on a green background), it just wouldn't be as visually interesting to someone who's color blind. However, we could go with a shade of orange or yellow pretty easily and not mess things up too bad, though I don't think it works as well for sepia tones. Here's a Color Blind page for testing Reverse the page colors to see what you think. I tried different shades of orange and yellow for each instance of red on the page . Which one do you think works best? Or am I just crazy trying to make sure that someone who's color blind doesn't miss some accenting??

[chroniclemaster1, 2006/12/04]