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The Mueller Quadrant was created in 1994 as David and Daniel Mueller's Web Site, as a source for their shareware programs. To this day, this remains the primary purpose of The Mueller Quadrant. The Mueller Quadrant has been divided into five Sectors: The Aviation Sector, the Software Sector, the Bookstore Sector, the Favorite Sites Sector, and the Information Sector. These Sectors are further divided into various areas, which feature the content of The Mueller Quadrant.

The Mueller Quadrant was originally hosted by GeoPages, the original name of GeoCities. When the creators changed their Internet Service Provider to America Online, they found that they could not access the FTP server to upload their site, and moved it to America Online. For this reason, a static, un-updated site remained on the GeoCities server. When the creators again changed ISPs, they moved the site back to the original GeoCities directory, where it remains to this day.

When first creating The Mueller Quadrant, the creators were influenced by the only web browser available to them, Lynx. Because of this, the original site had no images. A short time later, small icons were added to accent the site. A background image came next. Early in 1997, a Java applet was added, the GeoGuide. When the Airliner Photo Gallery was being designed, the creators decided that the best way to handle it was by using frames, making it inaccessible to users with early browsers, such as Mosaic, Lynx, and the 1.x versions of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

When version 4 of The Mueller Quadrant, which was released in December, 1997, embraced frames throughout the site, an animated entry logo, and a JavaScript menu as the primary means of navigation. The GeoGuide Java applet has been replaced with the newer GIF-based GeoGuide. The creators decided it was time to redesign The Mueller Quadrant, and the decision was made to take advantage of newer web browser features.

Version 4.5 of The Mueller Quadrant actually takes a bit of a step backwards in compatibility, and is compatible with more web browsers than version 4. GeoCities instigated the GeoPop program, which displayed banner advertisements in a pop-up window. Because The Mueller Quadrant participates in the GeoGuide program, these were not supposed to appear on the site. Due to problems with the frames-based design, version 4.5 has abandoned frames completely. The JavaScript menu was retained, and a text-navigation bar was added to the bottom of each page in order to support non-JavaScript web browsers. The overall look of The Mueller Quadrant from version 4 was retained, and enhanced. The goal of this redesign was to provide a simple, but visually appealing design for those that could see it, but still make the content viewable to as may web browsers as possible. The animated MQ introductory logo was removed.

As time has passed, some portions of The Mueller Quadrant have been removed. Version 4 saw the retirement of the Star Trek in Los Angeles page. It was felt that this part was too regional in focus, and it was sometimes difficult to keep up to date. It was felt that Paramount's Star Trek Continuum site does an excellent job of covering this information. Star Trek can be seen in Los Angeles on KCOP, Channel 13, which is affiliated with the United Paramount Network. With version 4.5, the SearchCenter has been removed. This portion of the site became unwieldy, and it was felt that there were better alternatives. For MacOS 8.5/8.6/9.0 users, try Apple's Sherlock program. For web-based searches, The Mueller Quadrant recommends MetaCrawler, which submits your query to several search engines simultaneously, and combines the results into a single set of results. There is an extensive list of other search engines at Yahoo!

The Airliner Photo Gallery, Long Beach Municipal Airport, and Microsoft Flight Simulator for Macintosh pages have not been removed in version 4.5. They were simply grouped into the Aviation Sector. The Favorite Sites Sector was also reduced in version 4.5, with many outdated links removed.

The Airliner Photo Gallery has since been spun off into its own site, Mid Pacific Images, hosted on a different server. This change was made to provide additional space for other features of The Mueller Quadrant.

In November 1999, the main page received a facelift, although other pages remained the same. Version numbering and the last updated date were removed, replaced with an updates page. Other pages were not changed, although some pages sport the redesigned heading bar.

The Mueller Quadrant is currently maintained on an Apple Power Macintosh G3/300 computer running MacOS 8.6, using AOLpress 2.0. The pages are hosted by GeoCities. The images were created with ColorIt! 2.3 and 3.0.9. The Mueller Quadrant title and other graphic text elements are the font New Berloina. Although the body text of The Mueller Quadrant does not specify a particular font, Verdana is used in some areas, so that font is recommended as well, but is not required. It is available from Microsoft in both Macintosh and Windows TrueType format.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about The Mueller Quadrant, you can contact us using our online form or email us at [email protected].

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