The year is 2000. The internet, born in 1983 and arrived in France a few years earlier, is beginning to reach people's homes.

I had been working in computing for a long time, and I was convinced of one thing: the machine is there to serve people and save them time. When I decided to build my own site, I looked for a way to do it on my own — without depending on a developer.

I knew the programs that had made my working life: Photoshop, Pagemaker, Freehand. In 1996 Macromedia — the maker of Freehand — released Flash, a tool that could produce animation and interactivity you could publish on the web. Training was out of the question: too expensive. I taught myself, leaning on my programming habits and my English.

Broadband arrived with ADSL (512 kb/s). Animation, video and games became possible in a browser at last. With ActionScript, the language of Flash, we pulled off real technical feats. The internet turned into a playground — and a workplace — with a fine future ahead of it.

But I am a horseman, and the time I spent with my horses was shrinking dangerously. So I made a decision: to carry onto the internet what desktop publishing allowed on the desk. To build my sites from home, with the Macromedia tools — soon Adobe — that I already knew.

That is how W.A.O. was born — le Web Assisté par Ordinateur, computer-assisted web. A specialist in images, photography and desktop publishing, I had a hunch that the same thing could be done in the internet, with the internet.

The first version appeared in 2000. It was never sold, but one of my trainees presented it at the Nîmes computing institute for his end-of-year defence. The panel gave him their congratulations, and an excellent mark.