This is a demonstration website and the first website I've worked on in more than thirty years. Thirty years ago things were much simpler: there was a simple collection of HTML tags and not much else. CSS was in its infancy and JavaScript was an unrealized idea. There were no phones and no tablets, so only one size viewing screen: the 640- x 480-pixel computer monitor. Things were simple. You could learn HTML and create your first web page in an hour or two. But web page design was also primitive and frustrating. Control over fonts, positioning and layout was crude. The visual language of graphic design so central to printed communication was essentially unavailable. When I first saw the complexity of contemporary web development, I was amazed. Not only was there HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, they were joined by other schemes to help tame the complexity and extend the utility: Bootstrap, Flask, Ajax, Jinja, React, Django, PHP, and many others.

At first glance, it seemed as if Rube Goldberg had a nightmare and unleashed it on the internet. However, as I've worked with it, I've come to appreciate the work that's gone into enabling visual design, accommodating different screen sizes, and making sites more interactive and useful. It seems certain that matters will get only more complex as we venture into three-dimensional representations. At some point, I suspect that a simplifying technology (perhaps AI driven) will emerge that tames the complexity and offers a simpler way to publish on the internet, but clearly we are not there yet. In any case, this site is an attempt to explore some of the current complexity, remembering that the essential power of the web browser still lies in the humble <a href="..."> tag and the ability to interlink computers.