Site design

This site is designed in a way which I hope will make its content accessible to wide range of devices.

No tables (more or less)

Older versions of the site relied on tables for its layout. The current version only uses tables for data which naturally suits a tabular format (such as the moon times) and, at the moment, for pictures with captions (each picture is a separate table with one cell).

This makes the HTML very much simpler. The documents are simply made up of headings, paragraphs, lists and so on. This is the way in which HTML is supposed to be used. The presentation is defined separately in files called Style Sheets which use the CSS language to define where on the page the different sections should go.

The downside

There’s a downside to this. When used with desktop browsers which don’t support style sheets the older layout used to work fine (usually anyway). The new site style won’t. What should happen with these browsers is that the site will look as if it were designed to run on very old browsers almost from the dawn of the Web. Well, not quite since really really old browsers don’t support tables and there will still be some of those around.

The upside

The site should still work with browsers which don’t support style sheets. Almost certainly. It simply won’t look good. It should though be backwards compatible, for the most part, right back to very early browsers. In fact, it should work for the most part in browsers which just displayed the old version as a jumbled mess. That’s the upside.

How the site used to look

If you’d like to know what the site used to look like you’ll find it at the WayBack Machine which has pages dating back to February 2001.

Even earlier incarnations, when it was called www.beard.demon.co.uk, are also available there dating back to the end of December 1996.

Your browser defaults

The site does not define the basic font size it uses. Although it defines the type of font it uses it does not define its size. The main content is always at the same size as you have set in your browser preferences. Other font sizes used are defined in relation to this. So, if you have your browser set to use 24pt text (perhaps because that’s what your eyesight needs) then that’s what the site will use as its basic font size. At really large font sizes slightly odd things may happen in some places but the site should remain usable.

The site also does not define whether links are underlined or not. If you have you browser set to use underlined links then that’s what it will do (except in the case of the main menu).

Problems?

If your browser has real problems with the site then I’d like to know so please mail me about it.

I’d particularly like to know of cases where the site cannot be used but I’d also like to know if your browser seems to be attempting to use the style sheets but gets it wildly wrong.

I’m still learning how to use this new (to me) way of doing things. I just hope that I’m heading in the right direction.

8 April 2004