FAQ

Max, since you're a friend/enemy/colleague/dude, I want to present a gift; wha' you wan' mon?

Check out my Amazon Wishlist

I like that you respect web-standards, design for accessability and usability, can program in all major web scripting languages and have experience with database driven site architectures. Will you make my website?

Yes, if it's an interesting project, and definately if you'll pay me :) You may be interested to hear that I work harder when I'm paid too. Family trait I'm told.

Are you easily blackmailed?

Yes I accept all blackmail requests when sent in a stamped, addressed envelope accompanied with a cheque for 1 million pounds made out to Max Howell and sons Ltd. (sons yet to be produced).

Steph's really fit isn't she.

Yes, yes she is.

About the Site

Some History

I created a site for me when I had turned 18 and was doing my gap year. I was being decidedly anti-social having had a rather lousy year. At first some of my friends hadn't gone to university so I had some people to talk to, but I had a girlfriend who I spent all my time with so eventually I ignored them all. Then she left me and I discovered all my friends were away travelling. So I ended up dedicating myself to computers, writing some software in c++ and making a website. Eventually I went travelling too.

Since then I have expanded and been through 5 different looks (although I really can't remember the second one and the wayback portal only has my third one cached). Now I write because I have learned that having a web-presence and being able to write things I never have a chance to say is just what I like.

Some History

The site is HTML 4.01 Strict and I'm really quite pleased with this version as it uses CSS for the layout and only uses tables for things that need to be tabulated (like data) thus it should work well in text-only browsers and on mobile devices, although I haven't checked yet.

Incidently, if the site looks jumbled then you really should upgrade your browser - if you can. If you can't it should be ok because I've designed the site so all the content should still be legible. Most well known browsers except Internet Explorer are fully compatable, I recommend a Gecko client like Mozilla or Phoenix.

I've tried to work around MSIE's dated standards support, but it's hard. MSIE doesn't fully support fixed position block elements, proper transparency in PNG images, overflowing text management or CSS positioning, to name the main problem areas. Also, it is my humble opinion that MSIE v7 won't support all these standards either, at least not unless browser share returns to some kind of normality in the near future.