By: Jackie Chiang
Sometimes I wonder about the future and history of Sailormoon webpages, and
I ask myself what happened. I look back and I see that I miss the old
days.
Many pages taking advantage of the latest innovations and trends in the
world of HTML and SHTML, using Frontpage support and the newest versions of
Adobe products, notably Photoshop. One of the most obvious significant
'ins' that I can recall is the table format; you split the page into two
cells, one thinner than the other and running down the left side of the
page, usually distingushed from its sister by its differently colored
background picture. This set-up became extremely popular; it offered
faster loading, neater methods of organization, and slews of other advantages
for the Sailormoon webpage master. Now, many pages have moved beyond this
stage and into the newer trend of using border graphics- having parts of
pictures around the top and left perimeter of the page. Since I myself
don't use this format, the only positive advantage over the prior style
that I can see is that the border graphics creates a prettier page, and it
is pretty easy to do for your own site. Other things that are now faddy-
using the curled page edges and using colored table cells to create effects
that add distinctive little touches that impresses all visitors except for,
of course, those still stuck in the dark age with Netscape 2.0 or who prefer
Lynx.
Trends haven't only stopped at the layouts of the page. Webpages have also
done stunning things with graphics, namely thanks to life-saving PhotoShop,
should you be lucky enough to have the income to purchase this program; if
not, you must accept your fate with your trial period Paint Shop Pro, the
'lesser' of the two graphics programs. When faced with the graphics that
can be churned out of expensive editors, it's hard to resist being drawn
in by eye-candy, by the beautiful images that appeal to your aesthetic self.
Better yet are the uniquely crafted icons that many pages boast- the
buttons, the special lines, the detailed banners, even the images themselves.
You can spend literally hours simply looking at the graphics pages present
to you without even reading a single sentence typed out. With regards to
graphics, the thing to do is to help the unfortunate souls who are unable
to make images quite like you do; you offer to assist them should they need
your help, you make separate icons for free use [provided they link to you]
and you over all try to make the Sailormoon community a better place.
Right?
Not quite.
There are some things that bother me about all these things. One question
is clearest in my mind right now- have Sailormoon pages become so swept up
in the desire to look good that they no longer care about the actual
content?
I've noted several people saying they liked this page better than that one
because this page had a better format, it looked prettier, even if this page
had more contentwise than the second. So even if we have good content, we
won't be recognized, not unless we have an outstanding layout complete all
the signals that you're a part of this movement to be graphically enept and
"in"? Perhaps the only page that doesn't suffer from this fate is Hitoshi
Doi's page- he has the plainest, simplest format of all the Sailormoon
pages. Our double standard maybe. Well, since his page is the one that
everyone goes to for information, his is the one that is the first SM page
ever, his is the definite resources, just because he doesn't have as good
a setup as most other pages, we'll let him slide by. But everyone else?
Since your page wasn't the first, since your page isn't the pinnacle at
which to aspire information wise, you have to have a perfect set-up. That's
as good a double standard as I have seen... And yet... Yet even this has
come into question as of late, as I'll mention on later.
Graphics. Apparently everyone wants them. People will steal them, take
them without credit, link directly to them from other sites. Everyone
wants to be unique, yet everyone has to have the same graphics everyone else
has. That doesn't make that much sense, really, but I've digressed. I
have visitors from time to time emailing me saying, "Nice page, but maybe
you should add more graphics." What? Maybe it's just me when I see the
"but maybe you should add more graphics" stick out as a signal that someone
thinks my page is somehow deficient because I don't have images littering
each html and every HTML file. Are graphics that important? Is more eye
candy better as opposed to more and better information? Have page visitors
been so spoiled by the graphically intense, beautifully set up sites that
they have seen that they expect everyone else to do the same? I'm extremely
possessive of my graphics, but they are definitely not number one in my
book of priorities when it comes to a page. Content first, images second.
Some people will try to deny this- no, content is better than images. Others
like NeptuneSS, now member of Pretty Soldiers Dynamite which distinctly says
that they offer the most in multimedia and graphics with "some" info, claim
that graphics are always better than information. Maybe Pretty Soldiers is
on the ball, as much as it pains me to say that. Maybe we should all
concentrate on graphics, not info. Who reads info when we're all experts,
after all...?
Something Sailor Yohko wrote struck me hard- when listing the "gods" of
Sailormoon webpages, she listed several well known names: "Millenium,
Pluto Planet power, the Kraiders, Apatt, Lunar Dragon, Grub, Evolution, SM
Absolute." I've heard of most of these, and yes, they are good pages, but...
Is the obvious flaw here apparent? Well, let's see... I don't see
Hitoshi Doi's
page anywhere and I reread the list several times over. Quite frankly, I
think
it's a bit astounding not to have Hitoshi Doi's page as one of the best
resources,
almost an insult to any decent Sailormoon fan. If you take a look at the
list
cited, what are these pages all known for best? To be fair, several of the
sites have good content, yes, but that's not what everyone raves about. If
these pages had the same content with plainer designs, you most certainly
would not hear about them. There it is- everyone admires these pages'
designs
and layouts best. Everyone likes the graphics, everyone likes the icons,
everyone likes how beautiful the pages are, everyone likes the nifty little
things
they can download. Yet Doi, for all his character profiles, items listings,
milestones, synopsi, and seiyuu information, is left out of this list. Is
this
the double standard steadily declining? Have we finally reached the point
where some people will discard any and all pages that don't look as
graphically
appealing as the ones listed? (The second flaw with the list, btw, is
that all
of the people mentioned are friends and work together on group projects
and frequently thank each other on various pages, etc., and having a whole
bunch of names as the "gods" is scarcely fair when of course all of them
would be beautifully set up due to similar and shared interests.)
Some fads now-a-days are positive. People actually care about how their
page looks, which is good. I'm not trying to criticize progress in using
make-up to make yourself look more beautiful. After all, if every page
had huge H tags, blinking JAVA scripts, a million big pics loaded on a
single html file, then we'd have a problem. However, we should also
remember that make-up can be used in two ways- as an enhancer or
as a cover-upper. Putting the surface appearances of webpages as your
top priority is a fallacy, content is still far more important- true
beauty is
skin deep.
Comments on this article can be sent to:
Jackie Chiang.
