Back in August 1998, Middlesbrough Mencap decided to go 'on the Web', having signed up with ISP PIPEX a few months earlier for email. We had free webspace and decided to use it.
That first page was hand coded HTML, edited in Notepad, carefully copying the tags from a book.
As more information was added, I kept to a single page. I believed, in those days of pay-per-second access, that downloading everything at once, then going off-line to read it, was prefereable to lots of little pages, needing to keep clicking links to read a bit more.
I tried to be browser neutral, avoiding fancy effects that some browsers can not handle. I tried to make the page look good, or at least be readable, in any screen resolution.
When the Happy Talk Penpals Club was launched, they got their own web-page. I added another to show off some of the pictures we were taking with our digital camera. Then we decided to put our newsletters on the web as well, each in 1 or more pages. The pages were increasing rapidly, and the main page getting too long to navigate easily..
In May 2001, I got an evaluation version of Dreamweaver on a cover disk, and some 'free' time over the late spring break, and decided to rearrange the site. This is the result.
Over the years, little bits of Javascript, and HTML 4 have crept in, to make the visit better for those with browsers capable of using them, the vast majority of our visitors.
If your browser has problems with this site, or if you have any suggestions, or comments about the site, please feel free to contact us. There is a response form on the contacts page.
Thank you for visiting
John Chilvers