This site will look much better in a browser that supports current web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.
Yes, this is a skinnable website. A skinnable site allows me the freedom to indulge my redesign habit without annoying or frustrating the regular visitors to this site.
Part of the redesign means that this site now works fully only with a minimum of IE 5, Opera 5, Konqueror 2 or Netscape/Mozilla 6, or later. It *should* work with any fully compliant CSS-1 browser. If you're using an older browser (Netscape 4.7 for example), you're probably getting the big warning message at the top telling you to upgrade. About time, methinks... I'll be building a suitable skin for lynx and other text browsers later. If you encounter any oddities, please let me know by email or in the forum.
I'd already decided on a CSS only redesign, but I decided to go the whole hog and make it fully skinnable. Since I've got rid of frames for site layout, it gives me a huge amount of flexibility with regards to design and layout changes - and makes additions and maintanance a lot easier too! The two main sources of inspiration were BlueRobot and Domesticat. Without their tutorials and guides, this would have been a lot harder! A list Apart and the Webstandards Project deserve an honourable mention as well, as they convinced me to dump frames/table layouts on several web sites I run, including this one.
Anyhoo. You can take advantage of the skins setup by selecting a link below. Note, this works by placing a cookie (a small information file) on your machine. If you have cookies turned off, or your corporation sysadmin has blocked them, I'm afraid you're stuck with the default skin. The choice, as usual, is yours...
Click the thumbnails to see larger versions of each picture.
"classic"
Orange and white. The original look, and still my favourite. Quite icon heavy.
Browsers: IE5, NS6, KDE2, Opera 6
Weight: ~67K
Added: Jan 1, 2002.
Make this one my skin.
"clean"
Grey, white and blue. My first new design. Few graphics.
Browsers: IE5, NS6, KDE2, Opera 6
Weight: ~9K
Added: Jan 1, 2002.
Make this one my skin.
"blue grey curves"
Toolbar embedded in the border, but the curves break in IE 5.x and Opera.
Browsers: IE6, NS6, KDE2 only.
Weight: ~17K
Updated: Jan 26, 2002.
Make this one my skin.
© 2000-2002 James Gater - last changed on February 26 2003, 21:33 pm
