About this web site

A brief history of my web site, from HTML to XML to Text

This web site started out in 1995, and has changed style and host several times since.  Initially this site was designed to work with Netscape and lynx because these two browsers were all that I used.  Upon getting a new computer I had to re-work the site slightly to display properly in Netpositive (a web browser for BeOS).  I eventually ventured into the world of CSS and re-designed my site using standard HTML and CSS.

After all of the re-designs I decided that it was time to move from coding HTML by hand to using a templating system.  I decided to try XSLT for templates, which meant that my content needed to be written up as XML.  It took some coding and messing around before this system worked, but I still found it hard work to maintain content.

After writing my weblog software using SimpleTAL I had become used to writing for the web using ordinary text with the odd HTML tag thrown in for links, images, bold, etc.  I had a few stabs at trying to extend the weblog software to incorporate enough functionality for managing my whole site, but it's dull work writing GUI code, and so I didn't get very far.

I have now written a simpler system based on plain text files and TAL templates.  This allows me to write content in a text editor or word processor, and then generate full HTML pages using the template and a small script.  The system has become capable enough that I've now released it under the name PubTal.

The most recent evolution is to base the design on the excellent Bootstrap which allows automatic adjustment of the layout to adapt to mobile and tablet screens.  The weblog is now hosted in Wordpress, but the rest of the site remains built with PubTal.

I test all my pages primarily in Gecko powered browsers such as Mozilla and Galeon, with occasional testing in IE.  If you favourite browser doesn't work, please let me know!