Having first dabbled with a bit of HTML for a web site in 1997, I decided in 2004 to build a site to share a few photos for family and friends. This was long before the likes of Flickr, Facebook and MySpace had become widely popular.
That site in it's original format can still be viewed here: GarnerWeb Archive, as well as the one from '97, Chelsea Stats
Having revived my interest in Web development, building that site in 2004 inspired me to take an interest in Standards based XHTML and CSS design.
Well there's no doubt I could have done (as my Wife has often told me) but I say; where's the creativity, the personality, the sense of achievement............and more importantly where's the code?
But perhaps the thing that sways it the most is the Facebook Terms of Use, which if you've ever posted any photos or in fact anything to Facebook you really should read. But as you probably can't be bothered with all of that you could just read my Blog post on them.
Having previously not updated my site with new photos anywhere near as much as I would have liked a quicker and easier method had to be found. I was also keen to give my site a more 2008 feel (well at least 2006!).
So in early 2008 I looked around at other methods of building online Photo Galleries and having considered Flickr, Jalbum and Picasa Web Albums I finally decided that the 'Export as HTML' facility from Picasa itself best suited my needs and skills.
This uses a not very well documented but very flexible Template system to create Web Albums, generating all the Pictures, Thumbnails and HTML required. I 'hacked' adapted one of the included Templates to make the output valid XHTML 1.0 and to get the results that can be viewed in one of the GarnerWeb galleries.
I also wanted to incorporate a Blog into the redesign, not you understand because I think I have anything particularly interesting or enlightening to say, but just because I felt I needed to be part of the Blogosphere
Having looked at a few alternatives I decided upon Blogger. As with the Photo Gallery this was because at the time it best suited my needs and skills. Again, I adapted one of the included Templates to get the results I wanted to fit in with the rest of the site.
Currently it is hosted on Blogger, with a Custom Domain, although some time in the future I would like to host my own, giving me far greater control.
The blog can be viewed here: GarnerWeblog, please feel free to leave a comment!
The XHTML & CSS in this site all (should) meet the XHTML 1.0 & latest CSS standards from the W3C (with the exception of the blog). You can test this by using the [XHTML 1.0] & [CSS] links in the footer of each page.
During development the site is primarily tested in Firefox 2. It has also been fully tested in IE 7, Opera 9.27 and Safari 3.1 on the windows platform with (eventually) no major problems and no browser specific hacks. With the help of browsershots.org various pages have also been "viewed" in IE6, Sea Monkey as well as Firefox and Safari on the MAC OS. By the time you read this I hope to have tested in both Firefox 3 and IE8, both currently in Beta.
Apart from a far greater utilisation of CSS the only real technical innovation used in the 2008 incarnation is that of Server Side Includes (SSI) for the main navigation, ads and footers.....why or why didn't anyone tell me about these before!
For further information please see the Credits page.
For notes on the Navigation conventions used on this site please see this page.
You may also like to look at the Sitemap and Updates page.
And if all of that really doesn't give you the information you need or on the off chance you want to use one of my photo's then please feel free to email me here.
