About OpenBooks

In September 2014, I created Chromebooks as my personal Neocities site. Soon after that, the Network Neighborhood was formed. Chromebooks was then quickly repurposed to act as a web portal, a link to the rest of Neocities. However, work on Chromebooks slowed down over the next months. Chromebooks wasn’t updated again until June 2015, when a few minor changes were made, such as a darker color scheme and space-themed backgrounds.

After Chromebooks, a few other projects were in development, such as The Network Neighborhood and VHSearch, a neocities search engine. In November, Chromebooks was taken down temporarily.

A few days later, Chromebooks 2.0 was launched as a complete reboot, and recreated many of the old Chromebooks’ features. The original Chromebooks was made using Dreamweaver, and some of the markup was in need of being rewritten. 2.0 was made entirely by hand using Visual Studio Code. Chromebooks 2.1 to 2.3 added features that were planned for the original 2.0 release, as well as minor visual changes to the sites overall 90s-esque theme. In December, Chromebooks was renamed OpenBooks, and its code was made publicly available on Github under the MIT license.

In January 2016, OpenBooks XP, also known as OpenBooks 2.5, was launched featuring a visual overall. Many 90s style elements were updated with a more 2001 feel, and drop shadows were added to the pages while still remaining compatible with older browsers.

OpenBooks currently exists as a hub, linking to other parts of Neocities while hosting its own files as well, such as articles, images, and music.

About Marin Exley

Hi! My name is Marin. I made this website.

You can contact me on AIM or by emailing me: chromebooks@aol.com

I'm currently a senior in high school, and I make websites like this in my free time. As much as I enjoy vintage technology, as you can see by this website, I also have an interest in the latest tech.

I develop this website using a 2011 MacBook Pro and Visual Studio Code.