New Site Design

I learned CSS and updated my HMTL skills back in August. I decided to put my new skills to use on my own website. The new design will go up on January 1. Because of the size of the site the archives and some other parts of the site will be incomplete but I wanted to launch the new design anyway because waiting for completion would delay things unnecessarily. I will continue to transition material to the new design throughout the year.

It's not just a new design but a different way of building and updating my pages. I will stop using MicroSoft FrontPage except to use the auto thumbnail function for my clip art. So far the code is cleaner, conforms to standards and the site functions real well on my machine. We'll see what happens when it goes live.

Because of CSS, next time things will be easier when I get a whim to change my site design. Or at least in theory things will be easier.

As a result of all this transition work, I've had the opportunity to look at all my past cartoons and writing. I've kept almost everything intact despite some regrets about some of the things I wrote and drew. I did alter spelling and grammatical errors but chose not to rewrite to reflect my current sensibilities. It was very tempting but decided that it needed to remain if for no other reason to demonstrate to me my own evolution. Some of the gags and jokes made me cringe and wonder how I could have found that funny. A few instances I replaced some things with something funnier or worded it differently to make it funnier. This happened in the Sears Catalog section and Betty Crocker section. I cannot edit a cartoon very easily. I have not and will not remove any cartoons despite what I feel when I look at them now.

I've been working on this transition since August but around this time of year the process has taken on extra significance. A mundane task becomes a form of reflection.