- J. Michael Straczynski (JMS) and the rest of the production crew and actors/actresses for creating
such wonderful television as Babylon 5 and Crusade
- Warner Brothers for funding Babylon 5 and Crusade
- Doron Rosenberg and scifi.simplenet.com for hosting this website
- David Boyd for original javascript and miscellaneous suggestions
- Everyone else that has sent me information and images in the past, you have improved this site
immensly
Software Used When Creating This Site
- Corel Photo-Paint 7, used for editing images and creating site
graphics
- Jasc Paintshop Pro 5, also used for editing images
- Microsoft Notepad and Wordpad, used for all
HTML editing :-)
- Play Snappy Video Capture, used for capturing some screenshots from
Babylon 5 and Crusade episodes
Regarding The Accuracy Of Information Here
As much as I would like to say otherwise, there is a lot of conflicting technical information from
official sources out there. (unfortunately even a few inconsistencies between episodes) No master technical manual
with blueprints were created, and as a result many official sources just make up information to fill in the blanks,
and that information, while technically "canon" (meaning from an officially approved source), may be illogical or conflicting.
So in an attempt to make sense out of the confusion,
I have created a ranking system for information: 1. What we see and hear on the show, and usenet postings by JMS or other production staff 2. Information from the Babylon 5
Space combat simulator, and the B5
Reference CD-ROM 3. Information from the B5 Wars board/miniature game 4. Other fansites, and the rest...
Should any information from two ranks conflict, I will go for the higher ranked one. Should information within
a rank conflict, I will discard that which is unusual compared to the rest of the evidence, or choose what I
think makes most sense.
I try to mostly use information from the highest rank, though, and I also made a conscious choice with this site to
not go into too much detail on ships, since there is a lot of contradicting and unrealistic specifications to be
found that way. So when e-mailing me with new/updated/corrected information,
please provide a source.
Be warned, though, on many ships I have added some information that there is no source for, but it
seems logical or obvious. An example: Although we have never seen fighters enter or exit though the docking bay
of a Nova Dreadnought, I take it for granted that the ship has fighters on
board.
In conclusion, while I try to make this website as accurate to the shows as possible, take the information
on this site with a grain of salt. And whatever you do, never quote my information as "canon"! :-)
This all started back in early 1996. I began to learn basic HTML, and I started to toy around with the
idea of creating a website dedicated to the cool ships of Babylon 5. There were one or two ship guides
out there already, but none of them was they way I would like a ship guide to be. So I decided to make my
own website. I read up on HTML and disected HTML source from other sites until I knew enough to start.
I decided to go for a neutral background color, with a slight yellow sand-tone, which I thought was
pleasing enough to the eye. I then came up with a pretty simple layout using tables, and I resized all
images to be 250 pixels wide so they would fit in one column. (figuring that 250 pixels width was the
right tradeoff in quality, detail, and filesize for what I was trying to accomplish) That 250 pixels width
has stayed with this site ever since. :-) There was also quite a bit time spent on retouching and adjusting
pictures so they would look decent together. The Brakiri Cruiser was
the first image I created for the site, and it is actually one of the few original images I still use. :-)
And in early June 1996 (if I remember right) Hyperspace went online!
After the lauch of the first Hyperspace, I didn't do much, except for an update here and there. But after
a while I got pretty tired of the old layout, and decided to redesign the whole thing in late 1997.
I thought about using frames, but I decided not to, since 1) Many browsers at the time hade bad
frames support and 2) So many sites were misusing frames (linking to a new site inside your frames,
many still do unfortunately). Anyway, frames became very annoying to me, so I dumped that idea fast.
But I did like the idea of having a menubar on the side anyway, so I had to put in the menu HTML in
every page, which was a pain, but worth it. Then I put a starscape background behind the menu, and
changed the site logo at the top. I also changed uniform background color to a relatively unobtrusive
tiling background image (in retrospect a bad idea, not very easy to read). Finally, around New Year 1998,
Hyperspace 2 was completed.
As 1998 moved along, started thinking about switching websapce providers, and I decided to redesign the whole
site again while I was at it. This time I wanted thewhole thing to look more "computerized", so the new menu
(with javascript for fancy rollover effects) :-) was designed to look like a computer pad. I also wanted that
computer pad "look" to carry over to the actual site contentso I created some fancy gray borders around the
images using various table cell background tricks (in retrospect, another bad idea, as some browsers have problems
with that). I also added background images to the ship data headers and test (yet another really bad idea,
since I recently discovered how awful it looks on 256 color setups). But at least the whole design looked
somewhat cohesive. I also thought the time was right to try a frame layout. And so in late August 1998,
Hyperspace 3 went online.
Ever since Hyperspace 3 went up, I had nagging annoyances with that design, something
about it just seemed so "amateurish" to me. So with Babylon 5 airing its last episode and Crusade
coming up, I decided to do one final redesign of the site. (Well, time will tell if it will be the final redesign) :-)
I briefly toyed with another computer screen "look", but decided it was the wrong way to go. I wanted something
that I would be happy with for a long time. After thinking about and sketching layout prototypes on and off for
several weeks, I settled on a design I thought wouldn't be too graphic-intense, not too complex, yet pleasing.
The round curves, there to give the layout a slightly organic feel, was at one stage in the process everywhere,
there were very few straight edges. But that turned out to be too complex to accomplish with basic HTML, so I
discarded that idea, but I did end up keeping the curves at the top and bottom of the layout. The menu background
was initially created to look like polished steel, but it ended up looking more like denim. Oh well! :-)
For the actual content, decided on a "less is more" approach, and I dumped all backround images, using plain
background colors instead. I also intended to keep using frames, but I decided that I wanted the menu bullet to
show the current page location, which would have been very difficult to achieve with frames, so I switched back
to a no-frame layout. I did keep the java script though, but simplified it to only work on the bullets, thus
saving bandwidth. I also decided to finally dump the old race headers that had been used until now, and I created
new ones with an "interlaced" look. (only time will tell if in the future, I will consider the "interlaced" look
to be yet another bad idea) :-) The end result is that the Hyperspace 4 design ended up looking alot more like
Hyperspace 2 than Hyperspace 3, layout-wise. But I did spend a lot
more time developing this design, though, so I'm sure it will last longer than the previous ones.
Anyway, in the middle of July 1999, Hyperspace 4 finally went online!
Do you have any comments on the evolution of this website?
E-mail me, I'd like to hear your thoughts.
This site was created by Lars Joreteg.
Do you have a question, suggestion, or comment?
Babylon 5, Crusade, names, pictures, etc. are trademarks of Time Warner Entertainment Co., LP.
c1999 Time Warner Entertainment Co., LP. Original website graphics and content c1999 Lars Joreteg.
![[Hyperspace Version 1 - click for largerimage]](hyper1.gif)
![[Hyperspace Version 2 - click for largerimage]](hyper2.jpg)
![[Hyperspace Version 3 - click for largerimage]](hyper3.gif)
![[Hyperspace Version 4 - click for largerimage]](hyper4.gif)
