Magic Lantern Site 'de Luikerwaal'

START HERE

How that nice homepage was created.

Soon after I started creating the first Dutch website in the field of magic lanterns, the need for a fun, recognizable, catchy and good-looking homepage arose. I already had an idea. My website should become like a book. A book in which you could find the information you were looking for, but which you could also browse through on a rainy Sunday afternoon. A reference work for collectors and scientists, but also a picture book for people who just wanted to know something about the magic lantern they found in grandpa's attic. A book that made you curious about the secrets it might contain. Well, a book.

How did I find a suitable image of such a book? Of course I searched the internet, found many pictures of books, but it was still not exactly what I was looking for.
Then a good acquaintance of mine (the woman who many years later would become my LAT relation) showed me a gif image that I immediately knew was going to be it. It was originally the book of Sinterklaas, the Dutch version of Santa Claus, but I immediately saw that this book exuded exactly the atmosphere of the website I had in mind. No flashy bells and whistles on my homepage, but a nice thick book that invited you to read it. Only... it was a small gif image that would not stand out on a large, full-screen homepage. Simply enlarging it was not an option, because that would produce an ugly, coarsely blurred image, as anyone who has ever greatly enlarged a photo knows. So I had to do it a different way.

I cut that little gif picture into many pieces and adjusted them in such a way that I could use those pieces of that small book to make a large book, which also always automatically adjusted to the required size, for example when pieces of text needed to be added or an image had to be changed.

Yes, it was a tough job, but it was worth it because this image has served as the recognizable homepage of the Luikerwaal website for about 25 years now.
Thanks to Girlfriend and Sinterklaas.

To begin with......

Welcome.
When it is the first time you visit this web site you can get acquainted with the webmaster. Why does he like a magic lantern so much ?

Manual

This page teaches you how to use the navigation buttons and icons to surf around this site. Study it once and you never have to miss anything from it.

The Help-button is available at the bottom of almost every page of this site. Click it for help.

And if you stammer now... 'er..... a magic lantern... never heard about such a thing....' then you better first have a look at

What exactly is a magic lantern?

How did this magic lantern site get its name?
Or..... tell me, what for heavens sake is a 'Luikerwaal' and how do I have to pronounce it????

The making of 'de Luikerwaal'.
What has to be done before one magic lantern slide may appear on the site?

What is a Virtual Museum?
'De Luikerwaal' currently has the status of a Virtual Museum. What does that mean?

HELP!

I make this site in two versions, Dutch and English. English is not my native language however and my knowledge of it is limited. I'm aware of the fact that there are a lot of grammatical errors on my pages and I apologize for that.
If you will be so kind to send me corrections or even could look over a complete page regularly I should be very grateful (and probably a lot of foreign visitors too).