Recently we have been working on a few projects that have required some rather complicated CSS scripting. For those who don’t know (or don’t care to know) CSS is a file that changes the way a website displays, and tells the web browser how to render the content of the site. CSS has been around for many years and is now the basis of any website that is being created, it allows the site to be better designed and allows modern browsers to load the site much faster.

The operative word in this last sentence was ‘modern’. Over the years website design standards have changed for the better, creating standards for web design and site rendering has meant that sites can be created faster as they usually look the same on each browser on each operating system. Nine years ago this wasn’t the case, this is when Internet Explorer 6 came out, a massive upgrade from its predecessor, it quickly became the most used browser in the world. It rendered pages fast, was easy to use and looked pretty good (for a Microsoft program!). But the main problem with it was that the Internet was changing too fast, and it soon became outdated. This is now a massive problem, as people are still using IE 6, a 9 year out of data piece of software that has no place in our new modern Internet. Keeping all of our sites viewable in IE 6 is a massive job, and requires a lot of extra work that could be a lot better spent on other things.

For example, to get our Standards Compliant website to look correct on IE 6 we have to load a completely new CSS file, which has had to be written just so that IE 6 works. In other sites, we have had to do the same, and in some more advanced sites, javascript has to be used just to get pages looking nice. We have decided that this shouldn’t be the case any more and have pledged to the Bring Down IE6 Cause. IE 6 has massive security flaws, the government of Germany and France have both publicly warned against using IE6 as it has so many problems and can put you at risk of identity theft. Microsoft have said they will support Windows 2000 (which only allows IE6 and below to run) until this year, so maybe its time to update your OS is your running 2000 still. (or get a Mac!)

All it takes is for people who are using IE to go to Microsoft’s website and download a newer version, IE8 is currently the newest one. You might  even get an automatic update about upgrading quite a bit which you just choose to ignore, don’t ignore it this time. And as you are doing this, we actually recommend you use a different browser totally, Safari, Firefox and Opera are all a lot better and much faster.

This blog will have told you if you need to update your browser, so if you saw the message, follow the links and get yourself upgraded, it will take 10 minutes maximum!

We want to make it clear that we are NOT stopping developing and coding for IE6 at this time, unlike a few companies, but we hope that one day we can.

That’s all for now.

J

We are pleased to announce the launch of the X-Fire Design Labs. The labs is the area of our site that we have set aside for current developments and work in progress. Many of our clients have been asking for this for a while, and we have finally found a great way of implementing it. It allows us to showcase our current experiments, and creates an easy place for all our clients to find their projects that we are currently working on.

The Labs can be accessed by visiting labs.x-fire.co.uk or using the link on the main website. Each client will have a folder with their current work in, which can be password protected if you would like. All of the artwork we create, and pages we code, will be put into these files so that you can download anything you need right from our website. When a new website is being coded it will be uploaded here for testing and proofing before uploaded to the final server, this gives us chance to make sure that everything is working great before we go live.

In the coming months you will see this area of the site quickly fill up, as more and more projects come in. We will also be experimenting with a few projects of our own, which will appear at some time so keep a look out!

Thats all for now, I would also like to take the chance to wish you all (a little late) happy New Year, 2010 is going to be great!

J

Manchester Cathedral is one of the most interesting Cathedrals in the country, after surviving the IRA bomb and acquiring one of the oldest buildings in the city it was decided to be the first Cathedral in the country to have a Visitor Centre. The Centre was designed to have a full multimedia exhibition, conference facilities, a shop and a restaurant in the basement which was to house the only medieval scheduled monument in Manchester, the Hanging Bridge.

Work started on the centre in 2001 with completion in the summer of 2002, when it was opened by The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh. The Centre has been running since then, attracting lots of visitors, as well as a lot of conference trade in it’s four conference rooms.

The Centre, along with the Cathedral, had a website built just after opening, but due to time and costs the site wasn’t updated with new information and news. The Cathedral decided to commission a new website for themselves, leaving the Visitor Centre without an up to date site to advertise themselves. We were approached to design a site for that purpose, with a good brief from the Managing Director we got to work on a site which suited the brief. The main aim of the site is to get more people through the door, wither it be visitors of the shop, exhibition or restaurant. But also to help the conference trade continue to grow.

Some of the interesting features discussed where some way of putting up late availability for the conference rooms, on-line booking and on-line shopping. The client also needed to be able to update some areas of the site, for example: prices and menus, quite regually. We decided to use Adobe Contribute for this, which allows the client to edit areas of the site using a user friendly and easy to use program, with no technical experience of HTML or any other website languages – just English!

After initial designs the client gave the go ahead to produce the full site. In early September the website became live, with over 40 pages of information and images. After a month of monitoring traffic and feedback from visitors we brainstormed some new ideas for the site, which was currently mainly static pages. Work was started on an online booking form which allowed conference bookers to fill in data online and have a booking form (a word document) sent to the Centre, as well as an option to send a copy to themselves. This became a great success and more and more people are choosing to use this option when booking at the Centre. One of the main advantages of this is that the Centre gets the required information easily, and also the person booking the conference is required to declare that they have understood and agreed with the terms and conditions of booking, which has been a problem in the past for the Centre.

In late October, we were asked to design and produce a system for late availability of the conference rooms, the brief was to create a system that would allow the staff to enter free dates into the site to be displayed and emailed to prospective clients. The system is fully automatic and only requires input twice a month from the Centre, to update the available rooms, this has become very popular for many of the bigger companies that use the Centre, bringing in many new bookings.

We continue to manage the website and update it periodically, more advancements on the site will be posted later.

You can visit the site at www.mcvc.info