From the Web Designers

Joe Gaczewski, the web designer of Open Window, completed the initial version of this web site for English 382: Advanced Literary Web Publishing taught by Dr. Randy Brooks, director of the writing major at Millikin University. The web site is an exclusive on-line publication of Michael Dylan Welch’s haiku and photography for Brooks Books. The final version has gone through extensive re-design to better fit with other Brooks Books online publications and in consultation with the author. All rights are reserved. The photographs and haiku are copyright protected. Do not borrow or use these except for review purposes. Please contact the author and publisher for permissions.

Joe writes: This web site went through several modifications: initially, I chose to do multiple frames to give the images a bordered effect. But after trying a few, I saw that the images were either cut off or required scrollbars on small screens, which I tried to avoid. I had to dump the extra frames to save room.

I also tried a horizontal thumbnail navigation index which appeared on every page in frames, but again the scroll bars appeared on smaller screens distracting from the photographs and haiku. Dr. Brooks and I also toyed with the idea of mouseOvers and other JavaScript bonuses to reveal the haiku one image at a time, but we decided to keep things as simple as possible. We feel that we were able to create a fun, clean-looking, effective page for each of Michael Dylan Welch’s works.

I also experimented with the use of color and a variety of typefaces overlapping the photographs, but Dr. Brooks and the author decided to go with a more consistent use of one typeface. Here is a sample of one of the experiments with colored type. And here is another sample of the haiku overlapping the photograph. [Both examples shown on this page.]

I started creating web pages as a hobby two and a half years ago as a freshman at Millikin. Since then, I’ve re-created my personal site a handful of times and I have served as webmaster for Innovative Training Solutions, Dickey Staffing Solutions and The Assessment Group.

To cultivate ideas for the design of this site, I looked at many pages; some of my favorite web site designs can be found at:

• • Stereolab: a band, and

  • Captivated: which uses scrolling thumbnails for a photographic index.

—Joe Gaczewski, Millikin University, February 12, 2000