Our Design Philosophy

This web site reflects its author's bias and stubborn attitude towards web design. Three critical design criteria we implement are:

• STATIC HTML/XHML
  Static pages can be locally cache by your browser to ensure the fastest possible loading times while benefitting the community by lowering internet traffic.

  Pages with content that has not changed since you last viewed it can be re-loaded instantly from your hard disk instead of being dragged half way across the world bit by bit. Dynamic content (Databases and Server-Side-Includes) generate a new HTML page on the fly every time they are viewed, requiring the server to generate a new page for every request (slow, slow, slow). Sometimes this is appropriate, but more often than not the dynamic content is only advertising! Our News and FAQ information is stored in a database, but we use server scripts to generate static FAQ pages only when we change the content.

  It used to be fashionable to clear you cache ever time you exit windows, or store the cache in a RAM-drive that is lost when you power off. This is just plain STUPID if you tend to re-visit any of the same pages later, as now you have to download the entire content all over again even (this is one of Shane's pet peeves!)

• ACCESSIBILITY FOR ALL!
  Pages should should be readable in any browser at any resolution using whatever font sizes the end user chooses.

  We try very hard to adhere to W3C standards (test this page!). Many people in the world are stuck at 640x480, or have eyesight that requires large fonts to be comfortable. With the increasing number of "internet devices" and "set-top-boxes" its critical to allow the page to scale to multiple displays - after all thats what HTML is all about! Have you ever tried to read the text of your web page on a TV? Try this test, view any site you like, then in Netscape 4 bash around on <ctrl>-[ and <ctrl>-], in IE use the View->Text Size->Smallest-Largest. If the fonts don't scale up and down, or if the page layout goes to hell, you know the author doesn't care about the visually impaired, or "resolution challenged" visitors.

• KEEP IT LEAN
  Maximize load and render times by using standard javascript and ascii text wherever possible and optimising all graphics to the lowest possible size. We were on dialup until recently too. Who needs to wait for the JAVA engine to fire up just to animate a stupid menu? Who needs to wait, wait, wait to pre-load 230 graphic objects before the page is even rendered so that you can find out you were in the wrong place anyhow!

Pages are currently tested using Netscape 3.02!, 4.69, Mozilla 1.6, IE  4.01, 5.01sp2, 5.5, 6.01, Opera 5.12, 7.23.

Links

The World-Wide-Web Consortium (W3C)

Web Design Group - founded to promote the creation of non-browser specific, non-resolution specific, creative and informative sites that are accessible to all users worldwide.