Previously, I began this article by discussing my first experience making a website back in 1995, along with mentioning a custom program I wrote to help speed up the process.
Over the years, the web has grown considerably, and the HTML “language” has evolved and added more features. (Does anyone remember the “blink” HTML tag?) It’s taken two decades, but we are finally getting to the point where web browsers are finally standardized enough that website designers don’t have to rely on all kinds of hacks and tricks just to make their sites appear similar on different systems.
In the early days, a browser called Netscape dominated. Microsoft introduced their first Internet Explorer (bringing the World Wide Web to PC users) and Apple had whatever the heck it had. Other operating systems, like IBM’s OS/2 Warp, had browsers of their own … and all rendered HTML a bit differently.
It was a mess.
Pages wouldn’t look the same when using Netscape on a PC versus Mac. Internet Explorer was even made for Macs at one point, and initially it added features that the PC version didn’t have.
It was a mess.
I know I just said that, but I feel it is worth repeating.
It was a mess.
Today, it seems pretty rare to find folks editing HTML by hand. There are endless options for HTML editors (like Dreamweaver) that aid in building websites using templates and libraries of HTML code. There are also tons of content management systems like WordPress (which this site currently uses) that let folks easily set up a site based on a pre-existing theme and customize it a bit without ever touching a line of code.
And this is why so much of the internet looks bland, boring, and similar. Folks like me pick out some very common WordPress theme and look like thousands of other sites using the same theme.
Because writing a modern-looking website is hard.
However, last week I stumbled upon something that appears to let my ancient 1995 HTML skills quickly and easily create a modern-looking website with very simple HTML code.
In the next installment, I will introduce you to the w3.css. If you have ever built HTML by hand, and are unaware of w3.css, hopefully you will be as impressed as I am by what it is capable of.
Until then…
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