GBHXonline.com: Version 3
The version two (V2) site was roughly 60% JavaScript (JS) — no, I’m not even exaggerating. I used arrays on that site to call small snatches of content as requested by the visitor, not a bad idea in itself as there was a lot of content yet I didn’t want to overwhelm (I wanted to save that for the extensive use of JS-trickery and images). It worked out well. The trouble is is that most of the site’s content wasn’t searchable. So hidden it was, in fact, that if you called up a content section and viewed the source code, you wouldn’t even see the content you called up. What you would see was the content of the loaded page only, not anything called thereafter, even though it was clearly presented to the visitor on-page. It was almost creepy as you would expect to see the text in the code.
On the version three (V3) site, I put everything on-page, overwhelming or not, made the pages and content dynamic — meaning they can be altered; enlargeable, expandable, et. al. I made the site very accessible, following the W3C’s Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.
To make the site function well and be interoperable, I used no JavaScript at all, replying on a server-side language call PHP — or PHP Hypertext Preprocessor — I wrote it to a Strict specification, used a decently written CSS for styles and positioning, and I accounted for various agents of access by using semantic mark-up (a first for me).
Anyway, I think it’s a big improvement. And I didn’t even have to mention the old version was a table-built site did I? What can I say? I’ve improved. I could have foregone some of the access features and not concerned myself with download times and combined the best of both sites, but I think I did okay going in the direction I did. After all, those requiring that access may be among those to use the hosting services offered, or at least they can be now.
Jonathan Brown responds:
Posted: October 31st, 2005 at 4:30 pm →
Very interesting. keep the good work!