Layout

"Jester Fairy"

That's the name of the wonderful piece of art that I used for this layout.

The Jester Fairy has shaped this whole website from top to bottom. She is its soul.

Let me tell you a modern fairy tale about a girl (me) who built a website in honour of a picture.
Let's start at the beginning, shall we...

You see, I've always liked looking at beautiful websites with graphic that uses lots of brushes, textures and such.

I've always wanted to have that kind of website, but I haven't had the time or inspiration to sit down and actually go through all the trouble of making one.
Until now.

A school project: Design a website in xhtml.
Great! Now I had the perfect excuse!
Where do I start?
With an idea for a layout of course.

The thing was... I didn't have one.
None whatsoever.

I had a pretty good idea where I should begin though. With the perfect picture.
I didn't know what it would look like and I didn't know where to find it, but I did know that I would recognize it the moment I saw it.

I started looking.
I looked for two days.
The deadline started to look awfully close...

Then, out of the blue, I decided to go back to my roots. The website that first got me interested in digital art, online comics, webdesign (all at the same time): NeonDragonArt.

And there she was – the Jester Fairy.
I had seen her before and thought she was lovely, but now I saw her as something more – the perfect theme for my new website design.

Now I could move into Photoshop and start creating my design. (The part of the process I like the best.)
I wanted something that was both elegant and a bit rough around the edges.

To accomplish that effect I abused a lot of brushes.
A LOT.
(As you probably can see...)
Butterflies, sparkles, swirls, leaves – you name it.

I also made small jewel pins for the menus and when the whole design was finished, I must say I was extremely happy with the result.

After cutting up the picture into pieces I moved on to the coding of the website.
I soon realized it wouldn't be easy.

Having Internet Explorer, FireFox and Opera running side by side revealed that I wasn't in for a smooth cruise along the highway of xhtml coding.

The coding itself was the worst part of this project.
I haven't designed a lot of websites before in my life, but I've become pretty used to html's more "free" way of coding.
I had to rethink a couple of things before I got into xhtml.

Anyway, it all got better as soon as I had my CSS's up and running.
Then it all looked really nice.
Both the layout and the code. So I was happy.
For a while...

To sum up it turned out to be a long and hard process to get the infrastructure to work properly.
As soon as I had solved one problem another one turned up around the corner.

One major thing was that CSS didn't like my codes for customized scrollbars in IE, so I had to find a JavaScript that solved that problem.
(See link in the Credits section.)

(Yes, I know I didn't have to customize the scrollbars, but I have a thing for customized scrollbars.
I like them. I really do. I need my scrollbars.)

Then there was the problem with the mail form... The text forms turned yellow instead of the colour stated in the CSS file.
(Didn't look too good, no.)
The problem was the GoogleBar that I have installed.

So I (ironically enough) used the GoogleBar to find a nice little JavaScript that took care of that problem.
(Link among the Credits.)

The mail form was the last thing I coded and it was the thing that caused most problems.
It simply wouldn't work.
But I was stubborn (as usual).
I wanted that bloody mail form!

So after a lot of hours/curses/tears I managed to get a mail form script (link once again among the credits) up and running at my server and suddenly everything was fine again.
Except for one thing...

The mail form wouldn't work in xhtml.
Nope. Nix. No. Impossible.

After a moment of careful consideration I decided to code that page and that page alone in good old fashioned html.

And like magic... It worked!
(Try it if you like and tell me what you think about this place.)

Then all that was left was to type down all the information that the site was supposed to host and call it a day.
(Ehh... A week actually.)

Like I said, I'm not a particularly experienced programmer, but I learn more and more every time. This time around I've learnt more than ever before.

And now... Here it is.
My very own little website with a layout and design that I love and adore.

It was a bumpy ride and there were several times that I thought about giving up the whole idea and make something simple instead.

But how can you settle for something simple when you've have something like the Jester Fairy...?

Aww... Well... Now it's done and I'm satisfied.
Hope you like it too.

End of story...