RIP GeoCities

blog@gridlined.com (Jake Kronika, Owner, Gridline Design) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:03:00 +0000

Originally posted as a comment in response to the related blog by Arthur Kay -- another Chicago Web developer and former colleague at Imaginary Landscape, LLC – the following is in memory of the long-running and ubiquitous GeoCities, recently discontinued by owner Yahoo!, Inc.

Art,
Yours is not the only story to begin like this. My first encounters with the Internet followed a very similar grain – AOL chatrooms, slow-loading images, and GeoCities Web sites. In my case, the transformation from a kid fascinated with dinosaurs to an entrepreneur building Web sites came even earlier – at age 10.
My best friend had stumbled, much as you had, onto GeoCities one day while surfing the net, and when he told me about having the ability to build our own Web sites, we were so excited we didn't know what to do first. The immediate step was to just put something out there. Within a week we had a very crude Atlanta Braves fan site up.
The main thing I found was that GeoCities' interface was just not quite what I wanted. A year or so after our first attempts I moved on to AngelFire, the next in the line of big “do it yourself” Web site creators. By the time I was 11 I had read an 800-page book about HTML 4, Java 1.2, and XML from front to back and struck out on the path of becoming a Web developer.
The first “job” I took was in 1997 (age 14), when I put together the first incarnation of an online gallery of my sister's artwork. Several iterations later (and in the process of a major overhaul), it lives on at www.flyngypsyarts.com, and now is a PHP/MySQL database-driven application, complete with administration editors for the pieces.
As you so aptly have mentioned, GeoCities has &ndashp; at least for us Web nerds – been a major driving force in the development of our lives and careers. No doubt you are correct also in asserting that the Internet’s growth and identity owe themselves partially to the influences of such amazing tools as it was.
RIP GeoCities, indeed.

A Word about Standards

blog@gridlined.com (Jake Kronika, Owner, Gridline Design) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 03:26:00 +0000

Anyone working in the Web development arena today should know the power of Web standards. If they don't already, it is time to learn. Though standards were long seen as a dream that could not be fulfilled, or a joke that just wasn't funny, now the technologies are finally available to make these tools a staple in everyday implementations.

Thanks to a number of recent upgrades for browsers of all types, it has become possible to use completely valid XHTML and CSS to build cross-browser compatible Web sites. It is even possible to, at the same time, make those sites usable and accessible to people of every walk of life. Whether you use Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari, Windows or Macintosh or Linux... Regardless of whether you are colorblind, have poor vision, or are completely blind... Anyone can see anything from anywhere...

If the developers take the time, and make the effort.

Going even farther than that, a Web programming language that was long thought of as the biggest "no-no" a person could use on their sites is now moving ahead to the forefront of every major innovation in Web technologies -- JavaScript (also known, in terms of Web standards, as ECMAScript). Long held as the destroyer of the common Web, JS is gaining wide acceptance as the language of choice for improved user interaction. Using frameworks such as jQuery, extJS, Prototype, and many others, developers can quickly write unobtrusive code that improves the experience for those who can use it, but does nothing to interrupt the experiences of those who cannot.

Even more amazing has been the rise of AJAX in recent years. Applications of all kinds, many of which are professional enough to seem like full-fledged desktop programs rather than Web-based scripts, are forging ahead. Google Calendar, GMail, and Google Maps are three of these that are both highly visible, and greatly loved.

Those same three examples help to disprove an idea that has often been used as an excuse for avoiding standards compliance: lack of aesthetics. Web standards often are made into a scapegoat for unexciting, even terribly boring, design. The primary cause for this concern is that the sites that most often discuss standards usage are intended to be informational rather than entertaining.

To help reverse that mode of thinking, and to provide a "pretty" discussion of standards, keep in mind that this site is entirely Web-standards compliant, written with thoroughly valid XHTML and CSS, enhanced by unobtrusive JavaScript, and it looks and works perfectly in every browser I have had ever tested it in.

Regardless of how many people read this, or how many change their mind about Web standards because of it, I know that I have been thoroughly impressed with everything I have ever built that put into practice the tenets of standards-compliant design. As we move further into the ever-shifting future and Web development continues to evolve, my eye will always be on what the next standard is, so as to ingest it, learn from it, and adopt it. The use of Web standards can do nothing but improve output, usability, accessibility, stability, and ultimately, satisfaction across the board.

The Grid Line

RIP GeoCities

A Word about Standards