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Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Web Workin'

The fact that my wife has built a very nice website more recently than I have has elicited quite a bit of genial mockery from my friends and coworkers. The truth is that web layout and design has never really pushed my buttons the way programming does. My last website was created in hand-coded HTML (written in VI, no less!) in 1994 and maintained more or less unchanged until circa 2001. I've worked on and maintained several sites since then, but none were personal sites.

In the interest of establishing a more robust web presence than just a blog, though, I've started planning a new personal website. Working on that as a project has certain other attractions, too. When programming, for instance, it isn't uncommon to write code for several days with no appreciable results beyond an increased line count. Not much instant gratification there, unlike a website. Also, well-written code is also not something that is easily appreciated by non-programmers, but everybody likes a pretty website!

Since my home computing has becoming increasingly Mac-centric, I've been looking at web authoring programs for OS X. Rapidweaver is pretty attractive, and seems like a good, affordable solution, although I haven't tried their demo yet. Right now I'm playing with a beta for Sandvox, and I'm really liking it so far. I also feel really bad for the developers behind it, since Apple's newly-announced iWeb is threatening Sandvox before .

My preliminary test site is published under a new subdirectory at my domain, RedBoar.net. It's not meant to be much, just a connection/upload test for right now. If you want to try out Sandvox, the beta is available for download. Disclaimer: I can get a discount on the final release based on beta downloads from that link. Since I haven't decided if I even want to buy it yet, I'm really far more interested in helping Karelia publicize a really nice product.

I've got some more Smalltalk observations percolating, but I feel like I need to accumulate more firsthand experience so that my opinions will be a little better-informed. The Art and Science of Smalltalk has been a life-saver thus far.

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