Steve Mueller's Digital ScrapbookAs this site matured, I became interested in the concept of a website as a "digital scrapbook" — a high-tech replacement for traditional scrapbooks, photo albums, and travel journals. After nearly two decades of lugging a slide projector and screen around to show my travel photos, I was eager to exploit the universal access promised by internet technology. Now, when someone says "I'd love to see your pictures of Paris," they had better be sincere, since those photos are only a few mouse clicks away. There is, of course, one significant difference between a digital scrapbook and more traditional forms of documenting our lives and preserving our memories. A complete stranger cannot rummage through our scrapbooks, photo albums and journals. Public access, however, has its benefits. My website has been an effective catalyst for establishing new acquaintances, as well as renewing a few old friendships. I have received cordial e-mails from strangers that have discovered my travel images or dog stories while browsing the internet. In a few cases, these have led to friendly exchanges about topics of mutual interest, such as living in Japan or Boston Terriers. A few years ago, someone living in California tried entering his own name (plus a .com extension) into his internet browser and found my website. As a result, I am now acquainted with Steve Mueller from San Diego. Most importantly, a number of "long lost friends" have been able to contact me after finding my website following an internet search. This website has also allowed me to maintain, and even expand, my development skills in critical, and constantly evolving, website technologies. In addition to constructing the basic website content using Java applets, PHP scripts, JavaScript, HTML, and cascading style sheets, I have become very adept at using Adobe Photoshop for image enhancement and the creation of the banner montages that appear throughout this website. On a more technical note, stevemueller.com is not optimized for all combinations of browsers and operating systems. I have only verified that it works on the most recent versions of Netscape and MS Internet Explorer. It has not been tested on the older versions of these browsers, on less commonly used browsers such as Mozilla and Konqueror, or on less commonly used operating systems such as Apple O/S. Steve Mueller Broomfield, Colorado May 2003 The Code Behind www.stevemueller.com Main Cascading Style Sheet miscImage.php travelImage.php ImageMapRollover.java ThumbnailRollover.java |