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...or Ian blowing his own trumpet :-)
I'd been promising to do the website for about a year, so eventually got off my arse and did something about it, sounds lazy but it's true. My only defence, I'm a UNIX System Administrator and after spending all day in front of a computer the last thing I want to do is spend all evening in front of one. This website is a labour of love!
I had a few of criteria in mind whilst designing the TADSAC website:-
...usable by virtually all browsers. I'm fed up of websites that only work with MS Internet Explorer, as if no other browsers exist! I've nothing against Microsoft, it's just that over 90% of the nasties out there that attack via your browser are designed to attack IE. Being lazy and not wanting to rebuild my home PC all the time I don't use IE unless it can possibly be helped. Hence having to change browsers all the time, for want of better words, annoys me!!! My ranting aside, it widens the audience to MAC, Playstation and Linux users etc.
...good basic html... In other words no Java, JavaScript, .net, ActiveX, JScript, flash animation or frames as these would seriously limit the browsers able to view the site. Any fancy or flashy bits will have to be done with graphics and the way their used. Help!!!
...unique and eye catching. Bit of an obvious one, but actually the one thing I found the hardest to achieve. Did I achieved it, maybe?
...navigation should be easy and intuitive. If a site isn't easy to use, will people bother? The menu structure is all important here, needing to strike a balance between simplicity and usability.
Not an easy task!...but to maintain a consistent look and feel I was going to use a single sitewide stylesheet. Next up was to find a decent html editor to make the job easier. Dreamweaver seemed about the best suited to the task but produced horrendous html, perhaps due to my inexperience with it. So it was back to hand cranked html using a simple text editor like "notepad" to produce the site...whoever invented cut and paste, THANK YOU!!!
Now to make it unique and eye catching...I'd seen a CSS template that had page tabs at the top of the main area, this not only looked good but was unusual...I was sold! I needed some graphics that said diving but weren't the usual bubbles, fish etc. It took weeks to come up with the beach and cylinder you currently see, in fact it happened almost by accident. I was playing about with gradient fills in Paint Shop Pro hoping to get some inspiration for the background when there in front of me was a sandy beach complete with a blue sky and sea in the distance. It looked so good I knew that was it! To make the graphics more eye catching I tried a couple of divers stood on the beach, diving equipment, an A flag and many other diving related things..but then I hit upon the idea of an Aluminium diving cylinder with a menu on it. The page seemed a bit bare so a few sailing boats in the distance were added, these just got in the way of the page text. Even a few seabirds seemed to distract from the text, so the bare look stayed. A few more hours with Paint Shop Pro and I had the basic look for the website. I must say its grown on me, simpler than I'd like but it seems to work well. It was a struggle getting the graphics and CSS template working seamlessly together. IMHO I did quite well on the unusual and eye catching criteria :-)) I still think the design lacks something around the "Torfaen & District S.A.C." at the top of every page...but everything I try seems to spoil the elegant simplicity of the design.
After studying many diving websites, the menu structure was decided as it seemed to group pages into logical categories and made the site easy to use. All that was need now was content!! I had to do most of this myself but the time spent studying other diving websites helped no end. At last the site was ready to go public and after getting a few of the dive club to check over it....the TADSAC website was born. I can assure you no animals were hurt during the making of this website...but vast fields of coffee plants were massacred to keep me going in the wee small hours.
A big thank you!!! goes to my wife Maria for her patience and understanding. I'd also like to thank my daughter Rian who drew the Tadpole logo. Hope you enjoy the site, I'm sure it can be improved and any suggestions, that don't involve parts of my anatomy, will be treated with an open mind.