I’m a bit of a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to web design – I like simple informative web pages that just “do the job” and don’t tend to follow the latest design fashions.  So our site has not changed overall for a long time.  However, there is a specific issue that clearly needs improvement, which is accessibly for mobile devices. Our old method of having a small set of pages specifically for mobiles is simply not good enough nowadays.

I am therefore in the process of re-writing all the pages to use a ‘responsive’ design method that should adapt to all screen sizes, including smart-phones and tablets.  The pages will be replaced progressively, so for a time there will be a mixture of old and new designs (please bear with me on that!).  For the most part the actual content and site organisation will remain unchanged, so book-marked pages will generally still work.  I dare say there will be some modification along the way though!

The new design aims to be simple, clear and minimalistic.  It is based on the very popular Bootstrap Framework, version 3.  All pages are HTML5 and CSS3 which are the latest web standards.

However, all this means that old versions of browsers will not format the content correctly. This is especially an issue for MS Internet Explorer versions older than 9.  This was a decision that we had to face, because our previous website design allowed for very old browser versions. But it is time that we moved forward!