A guide to the Den

What

I feel really lazy about writing about my site, but I figured I really need to explain the Den and the things it does, like dramatically change colors at irregular long intervals.

The Den is a personal homepage. Besides representing my identity on the Web, I make it my laboratory of creativity; in web design, and in the written word.

And more recently, I'm beginning to see the Den as a means of preaching CSS for design. You know how all those personal homepages that rank high in the Webby Awards, Cool Homepages, etc. are always the ones with Flash and graphical skins? Sure they are examples of great artwork (only because they're all done by art grads), but it implies that only websites with Flash, graphics, Java apps and other "expensive" hoohaws are cool.

Give me a break. This site demonstrates that I don't need anything fancy, not even frames, to do navigation bars.

Why

Same reason as everyone else's: other people have websites too.

I had knowledge of HTML for a long time, thanks to studying sites like HTML Goodies and the Web Design Group, but I never considered making use of it until much later.

After a long, hard PMR (the lower-secondary evaluation exam) year in 1998, there seemed to be a flourish of homepages by some friends like mushrooms after a shower of rain; post-PMR students looking for something new to do. The craze caught on.

So I, a victim of homepage fever, started coding in bits and pieces, but only a year later I finally uploaded the Den the first time.

How

I put my heart and soul into the Den. I built everything, bottom-up inside-out, with a plain text-editor. I never feel in total control of my site when using webpage composers and HTML editors. It bugs me when they don't capitalize tags. It bugs me when WYSI-not-WYG. And it really bugs me when they insert <META GENERATOR=""> tags behind my back!

It pays off to use a text-editor. I'm granted all the flexibility and freedom to make the Den look the way it does.

I check all my pages with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 and Netscape 6. CSS support in older browsers are poor, which sucks, but at least content accessiblity is A-okay (you can try disabling CSS or use user-defined stylesheets, which will also suck anyway).

Best viewed with

No plug-ins, no add-ons, no nothing necessary but a HTML 4.0/CSS-fluent browser. To date, only two visual browsers support CSS well enough: Internet Explorer 5+, and if you're a devoted Netscape fan and/or totally anti-Microsoft, Netscape 6+. Both are free.

There are no restrictions for screen size, but it's coziest at a 800x600 setting or higher. A high color (16-bit) screen display is minimum. It's a good bet that yours is at least at that setting, but if not, sorry if it looks a tad bad.

Tour de Den

keeper's den  A welcome, a counter and a journal that follows my many adventures as a Webmaster.

blog on  The weblog that I update more frequently than the rest of the Den.

the denkeeper  Get to know yours truly.

for idiots  Guide to the Den. Or, the Den user manual. Or, LioneL's Den for dummies.

come get some  Some of the little freeware luxuries I found on the Net.

you were here  The guestbook.

back door  A links page, sort of a Web directory wanna-gonna-be.

Skins

Periodically you'll find the Den changed to a different color/font/style scheme. I'm doing it this way because I couldn't decide on how the Den should look ever since I started it. So I adopted this nonstatic, chameleony design, reflecting my nature of indecision and dubiousness on crucial things.

I change skins on every Den update; it may correspond to holidays and seasons, sometimes to celebrate a new movie or game, and sometimes according to the good ol' mood swing. That usually means, uh... every month?

(L]. v3.2) You can now try out different available skins by clicking on a skin's name in the keeper's log. For this to work in your browser, Javascript and cookies must be enabled. The cookies expire when your browser is closed.

Style switching code (modified) ripped off from Meyerweb.com.

Other stuff

quote of the nanosec
Favorite words of wisdom and wit, to be found in the navigation bar.