Category Archives: Web Design

Geograph Redesign, Take Two

I played around with an idea for new geograph design last year, but as the Ordnance Survey would like a revised design for schools use, I’ve dusted it off and worked on it some more…(click for bigness)

New design

I wanted to get all the important stuff above the fold, so we have the coverage map / entry point, a featured image, and the one-liner mission statement with an image count and call-to-action.

I’ve also dropped the use of Georgia as a body text font – while I think it gives the site a distinctive look, it does look poor at smaller point sizes, and it has caused the odd complaint.

Once that lot has tempted you to explore, the site guide gives you all the main entry points to get you started. As before, we feature recent news but give it a little more prominence centre stage. Finally, it’s time we highlighted the vibrance of the forums by linking to popular threads from the front page (at the same time we’ll most likely drop the need to register to view them – only to post).

Comments are more than welcome…

Stop Hacking CSS

David Shea (the CSS Zen Gardener) urges web designers to stop CSS hacking or be stopped. Nice article from the fledgling Vitamin website.

CSS Zen Garden inspired me to try and do a better job of CSS and semantic markup, I’m hoping to find enough time to make Geograph a whole lot better in that area too. One thing David’s article mentions is the difficulty of testing, but I find the BrowserCam service invaluable. Not only can it take screen captures of a page on many different OS/browser combinations, you can also remotely access some systems via VNC to play with your site for real. Easier than maintaining your own virtual machines or real test kit!

Web designer position in Huddersfield anyone?

A long shot, but my 8-month-pregnant friend Clare Quartermaine runs QT Creative, web design and marketing company in Huddersfield, and one of her HTML/Flash designers is leaving in 4 weeks.

If you read this, and know someone in the Huddersfield area with HTML, CSS, Flash skills, and maybe a smattering of basic PHP and Javascript, starting salary around the £18K+ mark depending on experience, then do get in touch (info at qtdm.co.uk)