Fonts
The font used for the majority of the text is Tahoma (size 8.5, if you're deathly curious), purely because it's easy to read, and fairly pretty at a small size. Most new computers (or, at least, Office packages) come with it as standard these days, but if you don't have it, Google it and you can probably download it from somewhere. I doubt I'll use any other fonts, for the moment, anyway; possibly when I've moved all the Time Machine bits over here, I'll list the fonts used on there. For now, however, it'll just be Tahoma.

The images use predominantly two fonts: Parisian BT for the base, and ParisMetro for the rollovers. The first of these, again, is found within most of the latest Office software, or can be easily downloaded. The second, I downloaded for free from Font Freak.Com, where there are many more wonderful things just like it. (The links rollovers also use Tahoma as the third font, just for continuity's sake.) You notice, of course, the Parisian theme I have going here with the fonts...

Though it's not strictly a font, yes, those are my eyes used for the logo...

For the Fiction section, I've used Slyfaen (with Perpetua and Garamond as alternatives) as the main text (which is an XP-compatible font), with Bickley Script for the rollovers, heading, and background image. (The background text, incidentally, is various snippets from Virginia Woolf's diary whilst writing The Waves, as is the page title...)

Software, etc.
For the pages themselves, nothing but good ol' Notepad. (Windows '98, if you want to be specific. I'm a non-XP luddite, but I do have 56GB of hard-drive. I now have XP thanks to Win '98 inheriting a virus, and I wasn't happy about it. :) It's growing on me. I've still got the 56GB HD, but 7 of it is taken up by MP3s because of insane CD-ripping...) None of this FrontPage nonsense, thank you very much.

The images were, are, and will be all created with Photoshop 7.0. Just to up the technology a notch...

All digital photographs (including the base for the logo) were taken using an Olympus D-380 camera (Camedia-friendly) and anything scanned will probably have been taken with my old APS or various random disposables from Boots. The scanner itself is a Packard Bell Diamond 1200 Plus, when it feels like working...

Everything is uploaded using CuteFTP Pro, which, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, actually connects over the University firewall...

Other stuff
The layout used here is actually fairly close to the original idea I had. I knew I wanted to use the 'Who', 'How', etc. headings to link to sections of the site, and I have a constant chorus in my head of the opening credits of the Johnny Ball show that used to be on when I was little. (And if you know what I'm talking about, you're a bigger nostalgia-geek than I am...) But anyway. The original idea, for some reason, was in shades of turquoise, and had a border... but because I suck at tables, the border went kaputt. Which is just as well, because I think it looks better without, on reflection.

The purpleness came about because of the logo; somewhere in there you'll find both of the colours used.

This is my first foray into CSS, and I'm very glad I did. The entirety of The Zircona was done without it, and involved much copy-pasting, as well as invoking feelings of dread at the thought of any re-designing process... All the rollovers are done in CSS (check the source if you don't believe me) and the code for that was found on Guide, the rather defunct LiveJournal community/journal. CSS in general was learnt from the very helpful HTML Goodies.Com (after several months of procrastinating about it.) I also learnt frames from there, too. And I-frames. And tables. And pretty much everything I know about HTML beyond basic formatting tags that I didn't learn off Naomi... (which... isn't much...)

There were originally going to be complicated animations on the links, but that was taking me too long, and would have been Hell to actually do, so I gave up. That'll have to wait until I learn JavaScript or something. Nevertheless, I'm inordinantly proud of the rollovers, even if they do take a while to load...

I think that's everything, other than to say that while the design will remain consistent throughout the body of the site, the actual real content (the writing) will be different... but that's still a while coming. For now, it's consistent and purple.