Welcome back, my dear web site.
I’m happy and proud to introduce the new version of my website.
It was sorely needed.
My old web site went online in 2009. That’s two years after the introduction of the original iPhone, but mobile browsing hadn’t come to my attention at the time. Not only was it unusable on mobile phones, but when I created it, I failed to implement a proper easy-to-use backend (the editing part that the visitor never gets to see). Instead, its structure was file-based based, with the backend interface being my FTP app. While that saved me time developing, it turned out way too complicated to use on a regular basis. Subsequently, I haven’t really updated my web site in the last few years.
Today I have developed my own web framework entirely from scratch. It’s written in Python and served through mod_wsgi. And it’s pretty easy to use, so expect more updates here than ever before.
For showing type samples I rely on SVG graphics. All modern browsers can display them. A typical image weighs in at less than 10KB and is infinitely scalable — perfect for vector-based type showings.
Photos on the other hand are served through my self-developed image server code that serves the images in just the right size necessary for display. This includes the consideration for high density displays and varying display sizes. They are uploaded in very high resolution and then down-sampled server-side in 5% steps. Then they are displayed as background images to div
tags in their (then) real physical size (one photo pixel corresponds with one device pixel). This means cutting off up to 2.5% on either edge, a trade-off for server storage space.
I’ve been dreaming of this code for years and have first implemented it for a client about a year ago. It will serve the smallest possible photo in the largest necessary size for any device with any pixel density. This is infinitely more flexible than the typical @2x
approach which only serves an option for one more pixel density and can’t even address floating image sizes in adaptive layouts.
Too bad I didn’t find the time yet to integrate my online shop into the main site. Although its code serves as the base for this here framework, it is too old (two years now) to be a drop-in insertion. It will remain a separate page for now and I’ll look into incorporating it later.
Finally, the web font that you are (hopefully) reading right now is my creation too and I hope to turn it into a publishable typeface in the foreseeable future.