Changing Standards on the Web

If you visited our web site over the last few months, you may have noticed a change in the newer pages. I am moving the site slowly over to c2007 XHTML and CSS standards using Adobe Dreamweaver. The combination of CSS and templates will make it easy to do site wide changes. Most of the site was written over the past decade using old methods. As a result, to update the look of the site and meet the new W3C standards, the 100+ pages on the site must be individually rewritten - a lengthy task.

This week I did a complete rewrite of our index/home page - often the first page a visitor sees. The new design gives links on the left side bar to all exchange and institutional members of the PHSC. The body of the page has been segmented with current news "above the fold" and older news at the bottom of the page. Sandwiched in between are sections on our Journal, Photographic Canadiana, our E-mail Newsletter, Membership, and Events. You can jump to the sections using icons just below the header and navigation bar.

And, the navigation bar now has a link to this blog (far right) but you already know that :-)

To keep the pages more interesting, I added some faded out images as a background to the header. The old cameras, brochures, and photographs in the background are all items that were photographed by the PHSC when they passed through our hands on the way to new owners.

The other major rewrite was the combined Programs and Past Programs pages, now all on one Programs page. This page has an index linking to all individual program pages on the site, plus information on our Toronto meeting dates, times, and location.