Thank you for being a part of the Sebastinian Echo's contribution to the world wide web.
Please let us know if you encountered any problems in this website. We will greatly appreciate your comments, criticisms and suggestions. Please send your message to:
webmaster@echonews.cjb.net
Michael Poblete
Webmaster
History of Echo Online Edition
Originally conceived as a simple webpage to supplement the paper edition, the Sebastinian Echo Online Edition turned into a full-scale internet publication, complete with dynamically updating pages and interactive features.
At the start of its construction, using wysiwyg (What You See is What You Get) programs like FrontPage seem enough to generate the pages of Echo. But as the internet evolved into a more versatile medium, wysiwyg programs no longer seem to be enough and some things you want to do can only be achieved using the brute force of HTML programming.
The webmaster, then the Assistant editor of the Science section took an online course about HTML programming. After finishing the course, problems did not became any smaller.
DHTML was then the hype in the internet community and all of a sudden, those static, non-dynamic pages were considered out of tune. JavaScripts, Perl and CGI were studied next.
Exams and exhausting laboratory sessions in school almost drained the spirit to ever release the internet edition.
Problems with the printing press that delayed the release of the newspaper paved the way for taking into serious consideration the publication of an internet version of the newspaper.
The objective was to provide the contents of the newspaper where it is not usually available, like in other countries, other colleges, and even in the school.
Spare time of classes were used to code the HTML using yellow paper and pencil, then going to the computer laboratory in the afternoon to check if the codes were done correclty, and most of the time, it was not.
Somehow we managed to get the codes right. Sleepless nights and overnight sessions were the norm prior to the launch of the online edition. It was well worth it, and agreeably, our paper and pencil approach is not the easiest way. And for the latest development (just to ease some burden on our part) - we are now using notepad.
It's true.
