Behind the Curtain

This page will give you some brief details about the design philosophy and technology behind The Magic Portal.

Philosophy

I started studying the Internet back in 1995 when it was still in its infancy and the idea of using the communication medium for anything other than educational purposes was unheard of and thought to be radical. Browsers were still character-based, and Mosaic was the wonder child product of the year. We've come a long way, baby.

While I enjoy sparkling graphics and colorful fonts as much as the next guy, my market research has demonstrated that people want to get the information they are searching for quickly and easily. If a page takes too long to load due to an abundance of large graphical elements, the penchant is to hit "Stop" and move on to another site. Likewise, if finding information or navigating the web site is confusing, no one stays very long or comes back.

Yes, as part of my consulting work, I do design some fairly complex graphical treatments for others, but I'm a minimalist by nature and want to satisfy my visitors' quest for good content above their desire to see pretty pages. The current design of M-A-G-I-C reflects this philosophy I have adopted, and I hope you appreciate my restraint.

I'm also not a great believer in frames or DHTML. Until all browsers support all common features, and until everyone gets 56K or above dial-up modem connections, the intelligent thing to do is to design a non-commercial web site for the lowest common denominator browser (Internet Explorer 3.0 and Netscape 2.2).

Our goal is to provide content first, ease of navigation second, without forsaking a pleasant but simple look and feel. Dig it.