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A blogging platform that marked the beginning of my journey into web design and development. Teenage layouts, early CSS, and the accidental detour from ethical hacking that turned into a design career.
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A campaign for the personal web · 2003 — 2012
On the platform
I started with the wrong three letters. Junior year, I was curious about XSS — ethical hacking sounded thrilling. Somewhere between forum posts I noticed people kept writing CSS, and the two looked close enough that I wandered over to see what the fuss was.
Tabulas was the doorway. A blogging platform you could re-skin top to bottom: backgrounds, fonts, the way a post looked on a Tuesday. I taught myself by saving Notepad files at midnight and refreshing until something looked right.
These are the layouts that survived. Some were earnest, some were experiments, all of them mine. Read this as a campaign pamphlet for the kid who picked the wrong three letters and ended up with a career.
— Flora May
On the ticket
Working layouts captured between high school and the early twenties. Most are gone now. These are what survived the wipe.
I
nine layouts
First serious skin. View-source, copy, learn, break, try again.
Flora '06
Picked palettes the way you pick a profile song.
Flora '07
A blog post is a small front page. Treat it like one.
Flora '08
Templates are starting lines, not finish lines.
Flora '08
CSS as self-portrait. Margins included.
Flora '09
The internet was a town square and we all printed posters.
Flora '09
Pixels chosen, not approved by a committee.
Flora '10
How a generation learned to make websites.
Flora '11
Last one I kept. The platform faded; the habit stayed.
Flora '12
Endorsements
“A rare candidate who knows her selectors.”
The Friendster Times2008
““Background-color” is a value, not a personality.”
The Multiply Tribune2009
“Pro-personalization. Anti-pop-ups.”
Y!M Press2010
“Saved at 2am, shipped at 2:05.”
The Notepad Gazette2011
Endorsements imagined for effect. Layouts are real.
Paid for by the Committee for Better Layouts. Originally hosted on tabulas.com; archived here. No actual office was sought; only an opinion about what the personal web should feel like.