Design History

Nepthys One, 1997 - 2001

The old Station One name finally had to go when I decided to get my own personal domain name. In the height of the growth of the 'Web, it was hard to find an untaken domain. Nepthys is the Greek name for the ancient Egyptian goddess of the East, sister of Isis; hers is the house of the rising sun.

The design of Nepthys One, the old www.nepthys.com, was well ahead of its time and would probably be considered innovative to this day. It featured DHTML-like elements with 3.0 browser-friendly code. Up to 23 pixel-precise JavaScript-generated frames were used in the main layout, with further sub-frames being loaded or generated on the fly. A 3D rendered "NaviPad" allowed users to scroll up & down any main content page and navigate forward & back via the simplest possible navigational element. Mouseover context-sensitive help was available in many areas.

Even before the official public unveiling of Nepthys.com, one small, highly advanced section went live. An experimental DHTML news delivery module was recorded by Netscape as one of the first 100 Netscape Netcaster(TM) channels, demonstrating browser-connected server-"push" technology that Microsoft would later emulate to create the Active Desktop system. The Nepthys Netcaster channel pushed DHTML to its infant limits and beyond, exposing several flaws in Netscape Communicator 4.0, then in beta, including the aggravating "script" string bug that would never be fixed.

A working, archived early pre-beta of the original Nepthys One site can be viewed here. Scroll don the page and click "enter." What follows is what was, to my knowledge, the Web's first quantified, visual, dynamic image preloading page, and then the main site. Feel free to browse around, but note that not all functions were operative in this development version.

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	The Nepthys One main "lobby" with 3D rendered navigational elements and self-scrolling news frame.
	A sample content page featuring another embedded frameset that gave an "IFRAME" effect that worked even in Netscape 3.0.
	Another content page with an embedded frameset. Here you can also see a dynamic extension to the main navigation, here adding an alphabetical sub-nav.
	A 3D rendered self-portrait.