About MSEnet v2.0

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MSEnet v2.0 features a highly-customizable user interface. It predated DHTML by a year and CSS by more, but both have made the "advanced" features rather out of date.

The idea behind MSEnet v2.0 was to create a series of utility pages -- that is, pages that users could visit and utilize in some meaningful manner. For example, the crowning feature of the design was a color chooser (shamelessly borrowed from my first -- come to think of it, my only -- JavaScript reference book).

Other utilities allowed users to customize the look and arrangement of MSEnet itself. This was accomplished through the use of cookies set through an interfaced heavily based on the color chooser. The drawback to this arrangement was the dual requirements of cookies being stored on the user's machine, and the use of somewhere upwards of ten cookies to do it. Of course, the cool stuff was that it would "remember" your settings between sessions. Nowadays that kind of functionality is taken for granted, but trust me, it didn't exist when I was working on this site.

Two "sub-sites" coexisted with MSEnet v2.0. The first was Mike.net, a little tribute to Mikes everywhere. I think I had about a dozen "members" before I moved on and killed the project. The other sub-site was Shadow.Net, a semi-private site based on the Shadowrun role-playing game by FASA Corporation. Though I put a lot of work into Shadow.Net, it eventually collapsed under its own size -- not to mention higher-quality competition in the form of Shadowland.

Even before I was remotely done (note: done does not mean completed) with MSEnet v2.0, I was already planning my moves for what was originally called MSEnet v3.0.