This section showcases the websites I have had a hand in making, whether it be design or code. Like my Applications you can see a marked improvement in code quality in my newer sites. This is because I have taught myself HTML/CSS from scratch and my skills and code practices have improved over time.
You may notice that all my websites work on the three main browsers, Opera, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. Apple's Safari does not work on some of my websites, but since I don't own a Mac, I can't test and fix easily. Plus I can't be stuffed, since it's a Mac program. They can just use Opera for Mac. Or get a PC. Yes, I am not fond of Macs but I can understand their uses, so don't email me abuse about it.
DigitallyCreated
Programmed by: Daniel Chambers
Design by: Patrick Marabeas (mostly) & Daniel Chambers
Latest Version: v3.0
Date: November 2005
Website: You are looking at it. :)
DigitallyCreated was originally supposed to be both my website and Patrick's from which we'd post interesting news, write tutorial and reviews etc. We soon realised that a daily news post was a real pain in the arse and writing reviews and tutorials was time-consuming and we dumped the idea. However, I hung on to the website and now I use it (with a structure redesign and two complete recodes) as a personal website where I showcase my programs and other things.
DigitallyCreated's design and first version was made over one week where Patrick and I just sat down and worked. DigitallyCreated's design hasn't changed much from its first version, but its code significantly has. The first version incorporated some CSS, but only enough to colour fonts and tables. The second version ripped out the main table layout and used <div>s and more CSS, and the third version (this one) has full CSS layout with not a table in sight. This also means that I can 'reskin' the website for printing, which I have done.
I tested DigitallyCreated on Opera (the best browser in my opinion), Firefox, and Internet Explorer 6 and it works identically and perfectly. Apple's Safari browser (which I hate with a vengeance since it never displays pages like the other browsers) displays it perfectly except for mangling the pop-out navigation menus a bit.
DigitallyCreated is also the first site where I have coded in an RSS feed.
Huntingtower School
Programmed by: Daniel Chambers
Design by: Patrick Marabeas
Other Credits: Here
Latest Version: v7.0
Date: October 2005
Website: Here
This is the official website of my ex-school Huntingtower. Huntingtower is a private school in Victoria, Australia. A couple of my friends and I agreed to update the school's website in exchange for getting out of sport (yes I am a anti-sport geek). Little did we know how big a project it was going to be. It took us almost all of 2005 working on it for 2-4 periods a week (around 1.4-2.8 hours). The old site (v6.0) was really quite horrid and we promised to make a nice modern 'fun-looking' website. Once the design was finalised, I started the code and once that was done we were all free to start on the mountains and mountains of content. We literally started from scratch and got new content for almost everything.
The code of the HT website, I'll admit is not my best. Part of that is because I wrote it back before I knew all the stuff I know now (like nice CSS layout), but the main reason is because I could not used 'standards-mode' to make it work identically on all browsers. Let me explain. Browsers generally read HTML in two ways, standards way, or quirks way. Because of the menu software I used to generate the menus, I was forced to use quirks mode which displays differently on every browser. Hence, I needed little Javascript hacks that changed the page slightly depending on the browser used. I tore my hair out for weeks (here is a picture that I was told described me) and finally made it work on Opera, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. Apple's Safari, being the crappy browser it is, refuses to work.
I came back later in the year and recoded it with some more CSS layout styling. Not much, because that would have required me to change a lot of those Javascript hacks, but enough to enable the site to print properly in all browsers except Opera, in which I believe a program bug mangles it to hell.
Pro-One Recording
Programmed by: Daniel Chambers
Design by: Patrick Marabeas
Latest Version: v1.0 (Content unfinished)
Date: September 2005
Website: Here
Pro-One is the website of the company 'Pro-One Recording' which is owned by two of my friends. Their business is going around filming productions and producing DVD (and VHS) video copies of them. Currently, the website is in testing and doesn't yet contain its final content. When it is finished it will probably move from its current address to another one, so if the links here don't work, email me and I will update them.
Patrick designed this site for Pro-One and called me in to code it. At this point I was fresh off the coding mill from Ranathon Digital, and implemented the same coding structure and style that I did in Ranathon: full CSS layout and no tables. The website uses a print stylesheet so it prints nicely.
One nice feature of this website is the 'Customer Quote' on the left of the content area, which randomises every time one of the pages is loaded. I used the same code I wrote for the PAD Industries website here.
Ranathon Digital
Programmed by: Daniel Chambers
Design by: Ryan Gaylard
Latest Version: v2.0
Date: August 2005
Website: Here
Ranathon Digital is Ryan's website where he showcases all his design and media work.
Ranathon Digital's design was entirely done by Ryan and he even coded the first version himself. However, he ran into browser incompatability troubles, and hence I ended up coding the second version of his website.
I am very proud of Ranathon Digital's code, as it was the first robust website that used complete CSS layout. There are no tables in Ranathon Digital's code (except where Ryan may have put them in the content areas of the page) and the code itself has been designed so that it can use a different stylesheet to print out properly. However, I haven't got around to writing this printing stylesheet yet.
PAD Industries
Programmed by: Daniel Chambers
Design by: Daniel Chambers
Latest Version: v1.0
Date: February 2005
Website: Here
PAD Industries is the website of the corporation of the same name. This corporation isn't a real world corp, but a corp in the game world EVE Online.
PAD Industries is the first website that I wrote using a lot of CSS, although the CSS layout is cheap (relying entirely on position:absolute; to lay out things). It also makes use of transparent PNGs, which are not very well supported in browsers. Hence the Launchpad front page checks to make sure the viewer's browser can use transparent PNGs before letting them enter the website.
Another feature of PAD's website which I am proud of is the randomly changing backgrounds. Whatever page you load, a randomly picked, different background taken from the game EVE is used.