Earth Chronicle History

Main Points

• Historical Websites Live Want to see what the website really used to look like?
• Earth Chronicle Early History The beginnings of Earth Chronicle.
• Customized CSS Building a system of customizable CSS for Earth Chronicle users.
• XHTML Website Design and Development The conversion of the website from HTML to the more sophisticated XHTML.

Here's a look at the historical development of Earth Chronicle itself. Review the early website design and HTML code (such as it was). See the process by which we learned. Or see how the websites looked right before major redesigns. Also Please note that you won't see too many workingLink colored links. These pages are so old that they weren't very conducive to update like normal, so be prepared to use your back button a lot.

Historical Websites Live

Here are some archaic versions of the website at various points in Earth Chronicle's development. Mostly these are the "latest" versions of the website right before a major design shift in the website.

• Here is the first website in its black and green version. It includes our first attempt at Earth Chronicle Atlas, and the last all HTML version of Earthchronicle Beta. We converted the Beta website to ASP.NET when we obtained web hosting, but you can see it shares much more stylistically with the current site than the old black and green look. This site was originally launched in 05/04/06 and developed until 07/06/23 when we converted to ASP.NET.
• After the black and green phase, we went through repeated revamps of EC Beta piece by piece. By the time we got something ready to go, there was another critical piece within our reach that we started before revising Earth Chronicle. Finally, with the development of an ASP.NET master page template, it became manageable to revise pages and we could relaunch the other Earth Chronicle websites. Therefore, virtually all development in this phase was confined to EC Beta. Here is our last website design before we implemented master pages and launched Earth Chronicle 2.0. This shows all of our XHTML design and our first forays into things like Flash, Javascript, and CSS. All important steps in creating the HTML that would be used in the master page. Note that it's all EC Beta, because Earth Chronicle itself was never built using these designs - the poor thing was still stuck alone and unloved in the black and green phase. This site was originally launched 07/06/23 as our first .NET site and developed until 09/01/20 when we launched master pages.

Earth Chronicle Early History

The beginnings of Earth Chronicle. Now purely historical but the first time that the webpage was put together the way I really wanted it.

• Early Origins of Earth Chronicle Development
  The story behind the little homepage redesign, that became major.
• Early Navbar Development
  The early development of the navbar using Javascript and CSS. The navbar was finally completed in the XHTML Changeover.

[chroniclemaster1, 2006/12/05]

Customized CSS

Creating styles that are easily customizable for visitors.

• Customized CSS
  We now have 5 style sheets up for review. We also need someone who knows Javascript(?) to figure out a functional, easy, and highly cross-platform compatible way to program a functional selector. Otherwise, we'll have to pick just one.

[chroniclemaster1, 2006/12/05]

XHTML Website Design and Development

• XHTML Changeover
  The next full site redesign is beginning here. Add your input now! :D We're moving to XHTML using external CSS for both layout (box model) and appearance to maximize flexibility and ease of maintenance.
• Accessibility Testing
  We've solidified what we think will be the new page template. It still needs some testing to maximize flexibility. For the most part however, we're cleaning up details and it's time to conduct accessibility testing and look at SEO before we start polishing too much.

[chroniclemaster1, 2006/12/05]