HTML in the Early Days of the World Wide Web

In late 1993 or early 1994 I remember reading an article about the World Wide Web (WWW) in a computer magazine. It was still relatively new and I was fascinated by the concept. Around that time I got a new computer, a Toshiba laptop and for the first time I got a modem, something I had wanted since I had my TI-99/4A and saw War Games. I found a 2400 baud modem on clearance at Office Depot and I was on the Internet! Of course it was painfully slow, it took minutes for a simple page to load, but I was on the Internet!

Making Web Pages

I'll admit that I had my time on America Online, it was simple, but soon I had direct access with an ISP and shortly after that I wanted to make my own web pages. I offered to make one for the church we were attending (this was before I became a pastor). I learned about HTML and soon had a basic page up. I doubt many people viewed it back them, but I had made a web page, I was a "web master", I thought. For fun I also made a page dedicated to SPAM, not junk e-mail, the meat. I don't think junk email was called that yet. I listed the top options Hormel had rejected before settling on Shoulder of Pork and hAM. These included SPIT, Shoulder of Pork and rabbIT, and SPUCK, Shoulder of Pork and dUCK. It also had made up quotes about SPAM from the current presidential candidates, including Ross Perot who said that, "The two meats in there just aren't getting the job done."

HTML Frames

After we started our new church, that church needed a website. This time the site I made was a little more advanced. I had learned about frames in HTML and I thought that they really enhanced the look and functionality of a site. You could have a menu to the various subpages on the side of the screen and they stayed there, ready to be clicked, no matter how far you scrolled down on the current page you were viewing on the other side of the screen. It was interesting experimenting with the frame percentages and layout.

Other Enhancements

Over time new things were being used in well known websites and while my site didn't have all the latest bells and whistles, it still looked decent and I was able to add some new features. I made and added a favicon from our logo and I added a church phone directly that only members could log in to see. This also served as a church photo directory.

Later I also learned to take my weekly sermon MP3s and serve them as a podcast. I got it added to iTunes and also had direct links on the church website for the last couple of weeks for those who wanted to listen there directly. The sermon notes were included as show notes in the podcast feed and also available as PDFs on the website.

HTML and XML

Right now I am working on a new website for the retirement services company I work for. I am mostly working with the data on the backside, scripting to grab the appropriate data and serve it up as XML. My experience with HTML was helpful for this and when we needed to embed HTML tags in the XML it was nice to already be very familiar with basic HTML. Now I just need to learn about HTML5.

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Pastor with a Pocket PC

Naturally, being the geek that I am, when I served as a pastor I used technology in some interesting ways. Of course I put my Microsoft Office skills to use with all sorts of Word documents, Excel spreadsheet and Powerpoint presentations. I also learned to do some graphics editing with Photoshop Elements.

But what was a little more unusual was that I got a Pocket PC in the early 2000s and so I had those tools and more on me at all times. Back then there was only one other person I knew who had such a mobile device that could run almost any kind of application that you could think of. Now, almost 15 years later, almost everyone is carrying around that technology in their smart phones.

What was probably the most interesting in the use of my Pocket PC was that I started delivering my sermons from it. Instead of having any kind of paper notes for my sermons, I just stood there, with no podium, with my HP Journada in one hand. At first I just had the messages as Word documents but I found that was too hard to deliver from as I am very visual and I remember where on the page notes for certain points are. That way a quick glance at a page can remind me of my points. Word documents just scrolled and things weren't even at the same part of the screen from one time to the next. That's where abcDB for Windows CE came in.

abcDB

Helped by my knowledge of Microsoft Access I learned how to make custom forms in abcDB that were ideal for me for message delivery. I would write the sermons on my desktop in Word and Access and then transfer the database file to the Pocket PC. I had space for a point and the notes that went with it on the screen, along with a big Next and a smaller Previous button to touch with my thumb. Otherwise the volume control wheel could be used to moved through the equivalent of presentation slides. abcDB was a handy and powerful little mobile database application. The user interface wasn't the friendliest but I figured it out and was able to work with it.

Eventually I went back to the low tech method of having notes on paper, but for a year or two I got a lot of comments from people in our church and other pastor friends about my use of the Pocket PC. I still have it but don't know what to do with it, as I now have a device that's smaller and does more, including occasionally receiving a phone call.

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