Back in the early 90's, when most people hadn't even heard of the web, I was browsing with five different browsers on three different platforms.

Busy, busy, busy.

I was using three browsers on the Amiga computer, the first Netscape browser for the PC using emulation, and ditto the first Netscape browser for the Mac using emulation.

And, of course, designing sites.  I hung out my shingle and did it professionally for nine years.

And, being a creative little imp in the right place at the right time, it's not surprising that I have a few web 'firsts' to my credit:

• First "twinkling star backdrop".  While a few sites were using 'starfield' backdrops, I added tiny 1-pixel blinking stars to mine.  And what was cool (read: mean and nasty) was that I had a bunch of stars, and really long time delays between their blinks, like, 50 seconds.  So you'd see a blink out of the corner of your eye, dart your eyes up there...wait...wait for it to blink again...and it doesn't!...and then suddenly another star would blink nearby, so you eyes would dart over there... and the whole cycle would start all over again.

 
• A lot of sites these days use tabs across the top, and now browsers are doing it.  To the best of my knowledge, the following prototype was the first.  It was never developed, but I wanted to play around with the idea of making a Web site emulate Windows 98.

   
• First combination of music & soundfile in the background.  This was really pushing the envelope at the time.  For starters, there wasn't any such thing as 'compressed' formats, like MP3 and streaming media, only great big huge WAV files for sound tracks, so nobody used them.  Regular WAV files are in a format called PCM, but in blundering around I came across a rarely-used format called ACM which was half the file size and the browsers played it just fine.  I did a site for a motel by the sea and combined a sound track of the ocean breaking in the background with the Beatles' "Octopus's Garden".  To hear both at the same time, back in those days, was simply amazing.

  
• To keep all of this in perspective, we're talking 14.4 modems here.  That's like 1/10,000th the speed you're currently getting.  So the combined size of the files making up the home page was perhaps the most important factor when putting together a web site, and especially a commercial site.  If the files were too big, the site would take too long to load and the potential customer would be reaching for the 'Back' button after about 30 seconds.

  
As such, that meant that large pictures acting as backdrops were a big no-no.  You could optimize the hell out of them to reduce the file size, but then they'd be blurry and too crappy to use. 
  
So there I was, playing with a picture of the cute seaside motel I was doing the site for, when I tried out some new Photoshop special effects I'd picked up called 'Eye Candy'.  I turned the pic into this really cool 'weave' pattern.  It kind of made the whole picture a tad blurry, because of the effect, but it didn't matter because of the cool pattern. 
  
Actually, it did matter.  It mattered a lot. 
  
I suddenly realized that if the pic was already blurry...it wouldn't matter if you optimized the hell out of it! 
  
Which I promptly did, which reduced the file size down to manageable.  I slapped it on the web site, put in the two audio files playing simultaneously, and here it is. 
  
• My video how-to site was probably the first — and last — of its kind.  It wasn't a "web site" by strict definition, it was a Usenet web site.  That is, it was mainly for my group on Usenet.  When a new video tool came along, I'd tear it apart and write a review on it, then others would try the program and add their input.  Then I'd write a guide for it, a number of people would try it out and offer feedback, usually making some small step clearer, and then I'd dutifully update the guide.  It was a community effort is the best sense of the word.  That massive site — 650 pages, a thousand pictures to go along with the guides — is now the 'Video Help' link on the nav bar.

   

One amusing thing about the web is that when it first arrived, we honestly didn't think it was going to go anywhere.  For starters, a name like "World Wide Web" just seemed too corny to be taken seriously.  (Little did we dream that eventually two of the most popular sites in town would be named "Monster" and "Google".)  Moreover, we didn't see any need for it.  We were already FTP'ing and Gopher'ing and Telnet'ing and BBS'ing all over the place, the IRC was in full gear, the newsgroups were popping, and there simply didn't seem to be any need for another 'file storage area' like this "WWW" thing.

And now we're putting this on the dang thing.

What a ride it's been.