A ride on the not-so-wayback machine [Spectral Lines]

Websites are about the content they feature, the technology they´re built on, and the people who make them. And all three of those elements are always changing. If you take a ride in Brewster Kahle´s Wayback Machine, as I did recently, you´ll find six distinct IEEE Spectrum websites spanning 17 years. There were three radically different designs in the last 7 years alone. It all started in 1996, with a lot of hand coding and head scratching. Richard Comerford, then a senior editor at Spectrum, and Craig Engler, electronic publishing editor, led the effort that created our first site by writing its code in HTML, line by line. A typical coding session would have Comerford or Engler at the keyboard and Mark Montgomery, now our senior art director, offering design guidance over their shoulders.