Web site

Web site

This web site was designed using a somewhat unusual set of requirements:

• Speed. A fast response time makes a web site much easier to use. Many people still use slow dial-up lines to connect to the Internet, the size of the pages has been kept to a minimum. This is mainly done by eliminating almost all graphics, and re-using the same graphic on many pages. All formatting information is collected in a single style sheet. Once the first page has loaded, all subsequent pages can re-use the same style sheet without loading it again. Finally, the pages are designed to allow incremental rendering so that users can start reading the page while the rest of the page is still loading.
• No code. There are many security problems associated with downloadable code, such as JavaScript, Java, and Flash. As a security company it is inappropriate to ask users to run code provided by this web site.
• No fixed width. Many web sites are designed for a specific width. People with smaller screens (e.g. on portable devices) have to scroll horizontally all the time. People who paid good money for a large high-resolution screen only get to use part of it. HTML is designed to allow the browser to decide on the layout. Forcing a particular layout makes the web site harder to use.
• Use default font. All fonts on the web site are defined relative to the browser's default font. This allows the web site to adapt to the user's preferences, and avoids the problem of unreadably small fonts if you have a high-resolution screen.
• Standards compliant. All pages follow the HTML 4.0 standard strictly. This avoids the problems of browser-specific constructions which never work well on other browsers.
• No frames. Using frames leads to various problems, mostly because it breaks the user model of one URL mapping to one page. I regularly receive URLs that do not map to the contents intended by the sender because they were looking at a page with frames and copied the URL from the address bar which only maps to the frame structure and not to the actual page they were viewing.
• Accessible. Not everybody uses a graphical browser. Plain text, braille, and speech synthesisers are all used for viewing web pages. Keeping (almost) all information in text form gives these browsers a fighting chance of presenting the information in a somewhat readable form.

Within these requirements we have tried to make the best possible web site. Feedback comments are appreciated at niels«at»macfergus«dot»com.

Copyright © 2003-2008 by MacFergus BV, last update 2008-02-11.