Luzform Design

Web Site

2001, 2005
http://www.luzform.com

The original LuzForm site lasted just over three years; the new version represents a complete rebuilding, taking into account developments in web browsers, design and construction trends, and a huge body of new work.

{ Designed by Stacey Noyes, implementation by James Baker }

Details

In the redesign of this site, two goals were paramount: the site should be more easily updatable, and expandible beyond the older site’s limit of ten projects. Some additional goals were more on the technical side: dump the frameset, allow for moderate text zooming, rely on CSS for all presentation, and implement whatever hacks were necessary to ensure proper behaviour in a wide range of modern (and some not-so-modern) browsers.

The site uses PHP to access an XML file of project data, to keep it easy to update and move project around; we also built in a dynamically-generated list of all projects, more or less a site map, to give the big picture of the portfolio; because the site map is generated from the same data as the navigation, a change to one is a change to both.

Using an XML file for project data and a PHP script to parse it for the screen a) keeps the whole site nice and light (four files: an index, and one each for CSS, JavaScript, and project data, totaling 65kb for the whole site), and b) makes the site very easy to modify (the XML is quite readable to non-programmers).

The site validates as XHTML 1.1, except on MSIE/Mac, which presented some difficulties. (It was thought that many of the viewers of the site would still be using IE/Mac/OS9, so the site had to work in a four-year old web browser, and three-year-old operating system. Getting the CSS and JavaScript to account for positioning differences was, shall we say, a swell way to spend the holidays.) Because the centered box effect, based on the old Hicks Design site, doesn’t render properly on IE/Mac, I resorted to using tables for that browser only (one advantage of using all-PHP for the site), but as the ol’ “<table height="100%">” isn’t legal, it prevents the site from validating, but just for that one browser. I also had to send IE/Mac a slightly different DOCTYPE, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference.

Sadly, my original contributor’s note—“James Baker designs and builds interactive projects, and, being from the prairies, is paralyzingly—some would say sensibly—afraid of colossal squid”—was rejected in favour of something more, oh, in keeping with the rest of the notes.