Website

Sherry is ridiculously proud to say that she handcoded this website herself. She is not, in general, a very savvy person in such matters--she is still on her very first cell phone, which doesn't take picture or play music, and she doesn't own an ipod--but she wanted creative control and all other kinds of control over her website, so she decided to give it a try.

Between the second and third rewrites of Delicious, she surfed around these internets and, with a simple google search for "html tutorials," found the marvelous site that is HTMLSource. While following the tutorials, she came across an ardent recommendation for a CSS book named HTML Utopia: Designing without Tables USing CSS. CSS, short for cascading style sheet, is a clean, efficient way to write HTML code that separate the content from the presentation. she checked out a four-chapter preview of the book, and the latent geek in her found it extremely interesting reading.

Then her editor called, much work was still needed on Delicious. So she went back to revisions, but not before she had contacted the enormously talented Frauke Spanuth of CrocoDesigns, who had designed her promotional bookmarks, to come up with the look of the website. Being entirely ignorant, she didn't realize that what she wanted was a web template, so she asked for graphics instead. Frauke did the graphics and very kindly put up a mock-up for Sherry to see.

Sherry was instantly thrilled. The mock-up was so beautiful, it was exactly what she wanted. So when she handed in her third rewrite, she immediately dove into building the website--and found she'd landed herself in the deep end of the pool. The graphics came in separate files, and without a proper graphic editor program, it took her a longtime to assemble the graphics so that they wouldn't end up all over the screen. But the CSS book, which she purchased as a pdf file, turned out to be a godsend. Following its directions on building a simple website, and with an occasional trip to HTMLSource to refresh her knowledge of the basics of HTML, she managed, after a great deal of trial-and-error, to come up with a template of her own.

Special thanks must be given to Frauke, for her saintly patience, for when Sherry would e-mail her in panic and ask for the Hex codes of background colors because she couldn't match them herself, and to Michelle McGinnis, for explaining exactly what FTP is and reassembling the masthead graphics for Sherry when her attempts at their assembly in MS Paint resulted in an opaque canvas that wouldn't show the beautiful lotus-vase background behind.

And then Sherry discovered graphic elements to be had for a few dollars on istockphoto.com and canstockphoto.com. She browsed through thousands of images with the glee and greed of a young man given his own harem. In the end she only purchased a set of scroll dividers and a page of small accents. And with an incredibly old Fireworks 3 graphic editor that she'd acquired, she managed to edit them and use them to add bits of visual interest to the website.

All in all, it has been a terrific experience. She loved learning CSS and figuring out how to do things in HTML and Fireworks. Who knows? Maybe she'll invest in Photoshop next. Or maybe she'll give in to her mother's entreaties and finally get a new phone instead.

Edited to add: The site works fine in IE6 and IE7. There are some slight quirks and oddities that Sherry has yet to work out with Firefox. And although she'd never heard of Safari or Opera before she started studying CSS, she's determined that this website will look and work great in every browser. Someday.

Copyright

This is where Sherry gives a friendly warning that everything on this website belongs to her. Please do not use the words that are her blood, sweat, and tears in ways you shouldn't. And for graphic content, please either contact Frauke for a fabulous and fabulously economical design or go hog wild at a fine royalty-free stock image site. Edited to add: Frauke doesn't seem to be taking on new clients in 2008. Try again in 2009. She is so worth having in your corner.