February, 13, 1995
It's time for a change.
That thought brought us together in a small conference room at Silicon Graphics' Mountain View, California headquarters about three months ago. The wave that launched Silicon Surf in April of 1994 had run its course. It was time to come up with something fresh.
That's not to say that the original hadn't served us well--its popularity had exceeded our greatest expectations. Not only did it help establish Silicon Graphics' identity on the Web, it also reinforced our conviction that billion dollar computer companies don't have to be boring.
But the time was right for something new, and it wasn't long before the ideas were flying furiously in that Mountain View conference room. Soon, a few common thoughts about "Silicon Surf: The Next Generation" surfaced:
Simply put, it would be different from anything else on the Web.
It's easy to create a wish list; the trick is to make those wishes come true.
So we set out to make the new Silicon Surf a reality. The good news was that we had some incredible tools and materials to work with:
The Silicon Surfer image seen on the home page was created using PowerAnimator from Alias Research, Inc. The spacy background is an actual photograph taken from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The image map on the globe comes to us courtesy of Tom VanSant of the Geosphere Project (the same map was used on some of our icons.)
We used PhotoShop 2.5.2 and Illustrator 3.5 for Silicon Graphics from Adobe Systems Incorporated to create the rich 3D button interface and second-level page banners and icons.
Silicon Graphics' own Showcase presentation software served as an additional illustration tool, enabling us to design colorful images, backgrounds, and 3D objects.
Much of the image preparation, including scaling, cropping and conversion, was done with Silicon Graphics' new version of ImageWorks, which offers a powerful set of features for Web production environments.
Our browser of choice is Netscape Navigator from Netscape Communications Corporation. Much of the layout and presentation of Silicon Surf was created with this product in mind. Naturally, we strongly recommend that you view Silicon Surf using Netscape Navigator.
Several of the pages in Silicon Surf--including this one--were authored using WebMagic Author, also from Silicon Graphics. The development of WebMagic paralleled that of Silicon Surf, so our two groups will no doubt share many interesting "war stories" in the weeks to come.
Of course, all of the main production work was performed on Silicon Graphics systems--Indy and Indigo workstations, to be precise. (The Indigo2 systems have since arrived!) In instances where we needed to share files created on other platforms, we were able to do so seamlessly by using networking products from Xinet, Inc.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Tackling a huge project like the Silicon Surf makeover can be likened to giving birth to a baby. (OK, we know it's not nearly as painful, emotional, traumatic, etc., but please indulge us with this metaphor for a moment). Just like childbirth, we've endured an arduous pregnancy stage, we went through a painful labor period, and then we finally delivered. And that's just the beginning. Because, just like a newborn child, this creation needs to be fed and nurtured. It needs constant attention if it is to grow and mature properly. In other words, it's always a work in progress.
That's the beauty of the Web--it's always growing, always improving, always changing.
We hope that you'll help us keep Silicon Surf fresh by sending us your comments, suggestions and creative ideas. They have been the guiding force behind this entire effort.
Have fun Surfing!