Hey, What's With The New Design?

written Sept 10, 2002

The rationale behind the redesign is three-fold. First, I wanted to give the site a new look and feel, with cleaner navigation (not that the old site's navigation was all that unclean). The new navigation scheme is not radically different from the old scheme, but is somewhat "flatter". You will probably not have to drill as deeply to get to the content you're looking for. Secondly, I wanted to use CSS (cascading style sheets) and much more standards compliant HTML. I implemented CSS using a set of style sheets incorporating elements gleaned from half a dozen sites as well as ideas of my own. Lastly, I just wanted to clean up my dead links and add some new ones I've been storing in my burgeoning bookmark library.

K.I.S.S.

My design philosophy goes something like this: "If a 4-year-old can't find something, then its WAY TOO COMPLICATED." So I also included testing by a 4-year-old. After 5 seconds of testing ("find VeggieTales for me"), Cameron said, "I did it!" Case closed.

Geek Stuff

Techies will notice that I have implemented a fair amount of Javascript, but no Java. The primary reason behind that decision is that Java tends to break more easily in browsers and has greater security concerns for users. Many people have turned off Java in their browser(s) but still allow Javascript.

Another technical change is that I have entirely dropped frame support. They really didn't add much to the site and looked somewhat less professional than the same content when presented via the stylesheet methodology. Perhaps a little less compelling reason for not using frames is that they break text-only browsers like Lynx. Then again, if I was a visually impaired web surfer, that reason would be a whole lot more compelling...

As always, let me know how you like the new pages, especially let me know if things don't look right or don't work like you think it should. I tested the new pages in Netscape 4.78, Mozilla 1.1 and Internet Explorer 6.0, but I can't possibly test my pages in every known browser!