Early years
Looking back, my first experience of working in publishing was using Pagemaker to layout various promotional collateral for Nortel's Marketing Department back in 1994. It was not until 1998 I decided to go out and buy myself a Mac with a view to learning everything there was to know about the internet and also teach myself how to create or design, develop and implement a website.
After setting up my own website I was soon asked to set up a website for a new business startup after which I worked on a few other projects including another buiness website.
This was an exciting time for the internet with more and more people slowly getting online and accessing the intenet for the first time. For many businesses the prospect of being on the internet opened up the door to a world of opportunities. Perhaps it was inevitable then that not every business with a website was guaranteed success.
Depending on the nature of the business, a website would very likely form an important part of a businesses marketing stategy. For retailers, the birth of ecommerce provided an opportunity to cut out the shop and potentially offer a saving by delivering direct to peoples homes. This was great for those wanting to save on fairly standard items like books and cd's as well as electrical goods. Finance companies allowed their customers to manage their finances from the comfort of their home. Ironically, one of the success' of the dot net boom saw the birth of ebay, started by auctioning of the latest equipment from failed new startups. For the airlines and others, the internet allowed them to market diirectly to the public and changed the way that most people plan and book there holidays forever.
Gaining experience in these areas gave me the confidence to expand my skills as a Web Designer and Developer and by 2001 I had familarised myself with more professional tools such as Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks and had won my first contract working as a Dreamweaver Operator, implementing designs into actual working html and javascript. I became proficient using image slicing techniques to produce outstanding looking websites based on a supplied design.
Macromedia Flash was also a very exciting technology that enabled designers and devleopers to push the envelope. At the time most people in the UK were still accessing the internet on their dialup connection at home so the ability to create streaming media that was optimised for quick download gave it an edge over fairly static html.