Well, the title pretty much says it all. Most if not all of my pages will consist of a plain-Jane background with text on top formatted only as much as necessary to convey the meaning I want.
That's partially a result of my history as a computer geek in general - I was bouncing around the Web when Lynx was still hot stuff. I've watched as web pages degenerated from mostly-text, quickly-loading pages of information to incredibly slow, gigantic behemoths of animated .GIFs and useless imagemaps with little redeeming content. I'm not pleased with that.
It's also partially a result of my background in user support. I was a part of the team that built IU's Knowledge Base (which is insanely cool, by the way). We always strove to keep the content easy to get to, easy to read and follow, and as easy to deal with on a modem connection as possible. We had to scour other places' so-called "support" sites to make the KB complete, and most of them stank like yesterday's diapers. I decided then and there that nothing I created would needlessly emphasize glitz over function.
As a result of those experiences, I refuse to contribute to the mess that a lot of the WWW has become. In some cases, I do plan to add graphics and other froo-froo to my pages, but only as appropriate, and rest assured they will be small and unobtrusive. I truly believe that pages that load quickly no matter how little bandwidth you have and that present what they have to say in a straightforward manner are vastly superior to ones that over-complicate the process of communication.
Having said that, I do believe that web pages can be visually interesting and still meet my criteria. They can indeed serve as a creative outlet for people whose talent lies in creating interesting graphics, etc. I've seen some sites that knocked my socks off for elegance of design and such. But even in those cases, the content (ie. the thing they wanted to present to you) was clearly presented - be it artwork, poetry, programming code, whatever. It wasn't hidden behind a whole slew of the newest web-toys or something whose sole purpose was to prove that the page creator could do something "neato!"
For my own pages, I intend to focus strictly on informational content. You know, that stuff you're forced to read instead of watch. Admittedly a lot of the sites I link to are abominations of HTML, but for the purposes of this site (helping support the Mac folks at MCCSC) I have to send them where the relevant info is, regardless of the site's aesthetic design (or lack thereof.)
So, sorry if my pages strike you as boring, but I figure it's just as strong a creative choice to go stark as it would be to go hyper-gorgeous and complicated. And they're my pages, so if you don't like them, go away. Nyaa.
Rick Schmelz