The whole idea of this site was to provide links to places on the web no matter where I might be on its vast, intricately interconnected network. I wanted to be able to tie myself to those places that were useful to me, to be anchored to them, as it were. A recent visit to a maritime museum where some extraordinary seaman's knots were on display probably influenced my thinking. But is there any representation of the knot more beautiful than the stunningly intricate graphic design of Celtic knots? Discovering Karen Nichols' Celtic Web Art site made the design decision complete.

I chose relatively simple knot designs to keep the graphics readable on a variety of screen sizes and resolutions. The one departure from this pattern is located at the bottom of the navigation bar, where I could not resist anchoring the page with an exquisite celtic creature: part animal, part kelp, anchored, yet afloat in an intricate sea web of blue lines (cat 5 cable?).

I did not like the harsh look of standard black text on the soft background; once the choice of brown for text had been made it influenced (if not dictated) the rest of the color decisions. The blue used for both the text in the validation section at the extreme bottom of the page, and for the link hover (and active link for Netscape 4), is based on the blue found in the anchoring creature. For the visited link color I chose a grey to make the link recede into the background.

Page size was determined by compromise. As I didn't want to spend my life scrolling, I truly wanted more than one column of links. Three columns would have required 1024 x 768 pixel screen resolution and a full size window, thus two columns was deemed more practical, and fit comfortably in a 800 x 600 pixel resolution. I did not want to design for the lowest common denominator 640 x 480 resolution. To minimize horizontal scrolling at lower resolutions (or smaller windows), where practical I put my most frequently referenced links in the leftmost column.


Finally, this being a personal site, not intended for public use, I felt a certain freedom that designing for general use might not have allowed. In a site of links, links, nothing but links, who needs to have them all highlighted? It would yield a page of nothing but highlights. Thus, the text links are neither underlined nor differentiated by color (except as provided in hover/active/visited). Astute visitors will notice the change in pointer shape. The navigation bar's links to the primary pages are images, not text. And yes, the knot colors do have meaning for me that relates them to the subject area. I considered the "alt=" feature to be an adequate guide for any other visitors.