An Interview With

Richard Hallas

 
Martin Hansen
 

Earlier this summer, I searched the internet to look for a classical music CD to buy for a friend's birthday. I explored various websites including one called "Orchestral Concert CDs". The music on the opening page by Jan Novak was lovely and inspired me to explore the rest of the site. I noticed that it was designed by Richard Hallas. Yes, 'the' Richard Hallas.
 
For the benefit of newcomers, I ought to explain that Richard is well known to all RISC OS enthusiasts. He designed the icon set for the Iyonix, much praised for its modern look and tasteful pastal shades. Much of R-Comp's product packaging carries the credit, "Artwork by Richard Hallas". And for five years he was editor of RISC User magazine, a publication with a depth and technical precision that has yet to be matched elsewhere.
 
I bought a CD from the Orchestral Concert CDs website as this seemed like the best way of introducing myself with a view to asking Richard how this musical enterprise had come about.
 
"Yes, I designed the website and its logo. Although paid work, it was fun to do because it's my first attempt at using Cascading Style Sheets. I read a book on CSS and then created this site immediately afterwards. I left RISC OS out of the equation when creating the site as I wanted to bring my skills up to date by using mainstream software. The graphics were all done in Illustrator and Photoshop."
 
To me, this was quite a surprising admission from a man who once worked full time for RISC OS and is highly skilled at using software such as ArtWorks and Ovation Pro. He continued, "The real revelation to me in designing the Orchestral Concert CDs site was how bad RISC OS browsers are at coping with valid XHTML and CSS. NetSurf is the only native RISC OS browser that can even make an attempt at rendering the site, but it gets the CSS badly wrong."
 
Sadly, I told Richard that his experiences mirrored my own. The construction of the RISCOScode site revolves around getting it to render well in NetSurf. The site statistics show that the vast majority of users view RISCOScode using that browser. I also take care that even older RISC OS browsers, such as Oregano 2, can render it without difficulty.
 
Richard's drift away from RISC OS seems set to continue, although in a positive way; he's about to launch into mastering JavaScript to further strengthen his skill set, and the challenge of this clearly excited him. However, he still finds time for RISC OS. Two recent issues of Qercus featured an eight page article on the Virtual Acorn software along with a Hallas designed front cover. As for so many of us now, RISC  OS can be a hobby, but not a way of earning a living.

*SPECIAL OFFER

 
To coincide with this issue of RISCOScode, Richard's updated the Orchestral Concert CDs website to include a high quality 'sampler' CD which is FREE to download, or £3 via the post. Click on the image below for further details.