Web Enthusiast?

(let’s find out)

First-person Miriam holding the internal motionworks of a mechanical clock — Brian Colonna’s 1920’s Mauthe Wall Clock

A cad drawing with labeled clock parts, a wind wheel, center wheel, and escape wheel

The Purity of Math
vs.
The Realities of Friction

Can you talk about your websites?

— Buntport

Websites Are My Day Job

Big Tech Has Eaten The Web

Screenshot — The Web is barely usable

Tech billionaires Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk

Screenshot

I’m Not Enjoying This

⚒️ Raise An Army ⚒️ Of Modern Luddites

Screenshot

But Maybe… This Anger is
Masking Enthusiasm?

Why Am I Here?

Tim Berners-Lee showing off the first website — 1989 - Sir Tim and his WorldWideWeb Project

7 year old Miriam with her hands on her knees — I was not paying attention

Hand-made book called The Sward — Experimental approach to spelling

Hand-made choose-your-own-adventure book called
The Mystery of the Missing Art Box

[Degree Not Pictured*]

* someone forgot to graduate…

2006 New World Arts website
on the wayback machine — New World Arts, Goshen IN

An Art Form That Adapts to Context

Jane/Eyre Script — Script from Jane/Eyre

Spoken Lines Considered Essential

Stage Directions Considered Optional

A Playwright’s Hints & Suggestions

Two women in bed — Photo from Jane/Eyre

Not Just Artists But Audience

Anne Bogart

It takes craft to set up the circumstances that are simple and yet contain the ambiguities…

— Anne Bogart

…in which there is room for the audience to move around, imagine, and make associations.

— Anne Bogart

Tim Berners-Lee showing off the first website — Sir Tim and his WorldWideWeb Project

The first world wide website & graphic browser — 1989 - WWW HyperMedia Browser & Editor

Old IBM desktop

The second browser, a text-only terminal — Line Mode Browser, developed by Nicola Pellow

Web for all. Web on everything.

— W3C Mission Statement

Old IBM desktop

Modern desktops

A zillion different devices of all sizes (original)

Lineup of smart watches

Google Home, Amazon Echo, and Apple HomePod

“““ Smart ”””

Braille keyboard and headphones

The Web Must Adapt to Context

(this talk is a website)

A Radical Shift

Gutenberg Press — What’s the mission of the printing press? (~1440)

InDesign book-cover layout
for Riding SideSaddle,
my novel in a box

Final novel-in-a-box,
Riding SideSaddle

Same photo,
but with a badly overlaid cursor pointer
and three big scribbled red question marks

Final novel-in-a-box,
Riding SideSaddle

The fact we can control a paper page is really a limitation of that medium.

— John Allsopp, 2000

Web for all. Web on everything.

— W3C Mission Statement

Have To Give Up Control

Screenshot — info.cern.ch

…This implies no device-specific markup, or anything which requires control over fonts or colors.

— WWW Project

Web “Design” Will Never Happen

But that sucks… Design is Fun

Screenshot — 1994 - Cascading ~~HTML~~ style sheets by Håkon Lie

CSS

Provide hints that the browser may or may not use.

— Håkon Lie

…Allow the author to attach style hints.

— [object Object]

Styles are suggestions or hints about behavior, not rules…

— Robert Raisch

A set of HINTS or SUGGESTIONS to the renderer which might be used…

— Robert Raisch

This proposal tries to soften the tension between the author and the reader.

— Håkon Lie

If conflicts arise the user should have the last word.

— Håkon Lie

Ascii art of slider controls
allowing the user of a website
to control how their styles interact
with the author-provided styles

Screenshot — Dave Shea’s CSS Zen Garden

I didn’t know Any of That… Until

2006 New World Arts website
on the wayback machine

20 years later…

Screenshot — Grapefruit Lab

Screenshot — OddBird

Screenshot — CSS Specification

The web (to me) Is a Weird Art Project

The web is for Weird Art Projects

A few along the way… The Post-Obsolete Book