css

NB This is all rather out of date because shortly after I started redeveloping the site, I got an illness that meant I couldn't use a computer for a year. So expect this all to be swept away somewhen.

When I started redeveloping this site in March 2004, I decided on some criteria I wanted to follow, based on the recommendations of the W3C :-

  • Use only the latest web standards, in particular CSS, and be strict about compliance.
  • Don't do any "hacks" to try and make the layout work in browsers which don't comply with those standards.
  • Aim for Accessibility and Portability. For example, using only percent- or em-based sizes and positioning, ensures that the user can control the text size and everything stays in proportion, and also avoids making assumptions about the screen size (something I've suddenly become concerned about since getting a Treo 600).
  • Use Content Negotiation etc to come up with implementation-neutral URLs which don't need to change. This is work in progress.

Apart from that, the purpose of the exercise was to help me learn more about CSS, and try to come up with a neat design to boot.

The point of CSS is to separate content (with semantic markup) from style (with presentational information). The content should be visible, and the website usable, in any browser. But certain browsers such as Internet Explorer may get the layout wrong. If this seems to be happening in your browser, I urge you to upgrade to a standards-compliant browser such as Firefox.


Menu

Version 1 of the side menu.

Broken Links

These links are for testing purposes. Non-existent page | Exists with pointless query string | Non-existent on-page anchor