Gallery
Web Design [Personal Sites]
I've been making lots of personal websites since 1998.
Here are some web designs which are not used anymore but I wanted to preserve,
because each and every design enhancements were big challenge to me.
2008-- "Omnipot"
Upon renewal, I made all source-code XHTML to make it more versatile. This made various features possible such as: image expansion viewer (using JS), BBS in PHP... At this moment the major browsers were IE6, IE7, Firefox, and Safari, so the cross-brower independency was essential. It once had CSS style switcher just for fun.
http://www.omnipot.jp/
2006-- "Omnipot"
From 2006, I started to work as a web designer. Then I finally understood why it's so important about CSS designing (was it too late?).
This was my first private renewal totally designed by CSS without using a single table. It worked out nicely and I used it for two years, but as I look back, I still feel it's old-fashioned.
2005-- "Philharmonia"
This was a full model change for my web gallery.
There are nothing new in technological aspect, but I spent a lot of time deciding colors for backgrounds and layouts. (I wanted to make mysterious patterns and the illustration merge naturally with some transparent taste)
It was difficult because vivid colors (even blue) could ruin the apparance of whole gallery contents, so I decided to use blue of low saturation to minimize the interference. http://www.omnipot.jp/gallery/
2004-- "Omnipot"
When I came back from Africa, the first thing I did was to build my personal website now called "omnipot".
I tried to be as creative as I could, using complicated table layouts and 3 layers of frames. Also this was the first time I used CSS (though it was only for text decorations).
This layout wasn't a mature one since it had lots of redundancy in the menu area, making the maintenance a headache. Anyway I liked the colors and all the photos showing up randomly, so I used it for 2 years with 5 times of minor changes.
2002-- "Shortie's Sites"
I made this just before departing to Africa (and I was married at that time). We knew it will be a long trip going on for more than a year, so it was better for us to have a bilingual website.
I put the texts as images, to avoid the Japanese characters garbled.
It was made in a big hurry and there's no consentration in designs at all, but this website was very important for me because later it became "omnipot".
Never mind a little motorcycle following your mouse....
2001-- "Shortie's Gallery"
At this time, I was silly enough to use CGI to make a dynamically produced toppage. It gave several page designs randomly (and surely it was fun), but to do this I had to sacrifice index.html.
Now I don't understand why I wanted to do such a stupid thing, but back then, it was more important for me to stay up late coding Perl scripts.
Since all of my toppage sources are produced from CGI, there were no ways for the search engines to find my gallery!
I wasn't smart enough to think it that way :-p.
2000-- "Shortie's Gallery"
I was really eager back then, that I also wanted to make a gallery website for my drawings (besides motorcycling).
Well, since it's a gallery, I was bit conscious of making it look more interesting. So I separated the top page from the rest of contents... but I was quite sinful using 70KB image for the background when most of the people were using dial-up internet connection.
1999-- "Shortie's Motorcycling"
My first major design enhancement for "Chiisame", and I renamed it to make the website a bit international. This was the first time I used frames, separating menu and contents.
Eventhough frames are one of the most basic layout techniques, it was a big challenge to me at that point :-)
I also used digital scanners to read illustrations and photographs, and that was another innovation too!
Thanks to all of my sleepless efforts, I'm still using this design for the URL below.
http://www.geocities.jp/jpnaoko/
1998-- "Chiisame"
This was my first website created in 1998, and it was about motorcycling. (I used Geocities HTML editor to code the sources)
Since I had no imaging equipment, I made the title with Microsoft Word, and drew a picture of motorcycle using a mouse. And there were no other images!
At this point, I wasn't conscious enough about web designing, but at least had fun coordinationg the colors using hex RGB fot the first time.
2008-- "Omnipot"Upon renewal, I made all source-code XHTML to make it more versatile. This made various features possible such as: image expansion viewer (using JS), BBS in PHP... At this moment the major browsers were IE6, IE7, Firefox, and Safari, so the cross-brower independency was essential. It once had CSS style switcher just for fun.
http://www.omnipot.jp/
2006-- "Omnipot"From 2006, I started to work as a web designer. Then I finally understood why it's so important about CSS designing (was it too late?).
This was my first private renewal totally designed by CSS without using a single table. It worked out nicely and I used it for two years, but as I look back, I still feel it's old-fashioned.
2005-- "Philharmonia"This was a full model change for my web gallery.
There are nothing new in technological aspect, but I spent a lot of time deciding colors for backgrounds and layouts. (I wanted to make mysterious patterns and the illustration merge naturally with some transparent taste)
It was difficult because vivid colors (even blue) could ruin the apparance of whole gallery contents, so I decided to use blue of low saturation to minimize the interference. http://www.omnipot.jp/gallery/
2004-- "Omnipot"When I came back from Africa, the first thing I did was to build my personal website now called "omnipot".
I tried to be as creative as I could, using complicated table layouts and 3 layers of frames. Also this was the first time I used CSS (though it was only for text decorations).
This layout wasn't a mature one since it had lots of redundancy in the menu area, making the maintenance a headache. Anyway I liked the colors and all the photos showing up randomly, so I used it for 2 years with 5 times of minor changes.
2002-- "Shortie's Sites"I made this just before departing to Africa (and I was married at that time). We knew it will be a long trip going on for more than a year, so it was better for us to have a bilingual website.
I put the texts as images, to avoid the Japanese characters garbled.
It was made in a big hurry and there's no consentration in designs at all, but this website was very important for me because later it became "omnipot".
Never mind a little motorcycle following your mouse....
2001-- "Shortie's Gallery"At this time, I was silly enough to use CGI to make a dynamically produced toppage. It gave several page designs randomly (and surely it was fun), but to do this I had to sacrifice index.html.
Now I don't understand why I wanted to do such a stupid thing, but back then, it was more important for me to stay up late coding Perl scripts.
Since all of my toppage sources are produced from CGI, there were no ways for the search engines to find my gallery!
I wasn't smart enough to think it that way :-p.
2000-- "Shortie's Gallery"I was really eager back then, that I also wanted to make a gallery website for my drawings (besides motorcycling).
Well, since it's a gallery, I was bit conscious of making it look more interesting. So I separated the top page from the rest of contents... but I was quite sinful using 70KB image for the background when most of the people were using dial-up internet connection.
1999-- "Shortie's Motorcycling"My first major design enhancement for "Chiisame", and I renamed it to make the website a bit international. This was the first time I used frames, separating menu and contents.
Eventhough frames are one of the most basic layout techniques, it was a big challenge to me at that point :-)
I also used digital scanners to read illustrations and photographs, and that was another innovation too!
Thanks to all of my sleepless efforts, I'm still using this design for the URL below.
http://www.geocities.jp/jpnaoko/
1998-- "Chiisame"This was my first website created in 1998, and it was about motorcycling. (I used Geocities HTML editor to code the sources)
Since I had no imaging equipment, I made the title with Microsoft Word, and drew a picture of motorcycle using a mouse. And there were no other images!
At this point, I wasn't conscious enough about web designing, but at least had fun coordinationg the colors using hex RGB fot the first time.