Why my website has glitter and a taskbar
I wanted a personal website with glitter, glassy windows, and a little too much pink. So this one has a taskbar. And Clippy. And Minesweeper.
The phone version needed less furniture
The desktop was fun on a big screen. On a phone, the shortcuts, window buttons, and taskbar crowded out the page. Reading a biography inside a tiny pretend browser meant giving up space to two sets of browser controls.
Now the phone version goes straight to the page. The pink header and tabs are still there, and you can read everything with normal scrolling. On a computer, the button in the corner lets you switch between that layout and the full desktop. It remembers your choice.
I still want the glitter. I just want people to be able to read the site, too.
Gray serves the pages
This website runs on Gray, the language and runtime I created. Each URL returns a complete HTML page. If you open a link to an article or the biography, the text is already in the response.
JavaScript handles the little convenience of changing pages without restarting the whole desktop. It fetches the next page, swaps the content, and updates the URL. Back works. If JavaScript is off, the links load normally.
That also means I can link someone to a heading halfway down an article. They don’t have to open the homepage and work out which tab I meant.
Room to write
The articles section gives me somewhere to explain the work outside a formal paper. The research records have their own place; here, there’s room for an introduction, an example, or a note about something I changed.
These pages use the same theme as the rest of the site. A new article gets its own URL and appears in the directory, so I don’t have to make another little website every time I want to publish something.
You can stay for a game
There’s a tiny arcade on the homepage if you need a break from compilers. If you came here for the work, the papers and projects are a couple of clicks away. And if something on the site is getting in your way, tell me. The phone layout already improved because of exactly that.
