HTML+&+CSS+-+Michael+Midgley-Biggs

=HTML & CSS Homework= Michael Midgley-Biggs

[|CMNS Clone]

[|CMNS Redesign]

Explanation of Redesign:

In my CSS-change-only redesign of the CMNS main page, I made several subtle changes, as well as a reorganization. On the original CMNS main page, link hover in the content and navigation is only distinguished by a color change from blue to red. To improve accessibility, I changed the behavior to include underlining the links, both to better serve both the colorblind and to improve view-ability in general. For easier navigation, as well as an understanding of where the user is, I pinned the navigation bar and the title bar to the window, so that they are visible no matter where one scrolls. I also moved the search box to the bottom of the navigation bar, so it is more logically grouped with other navigation functions. I removed the date display entirely, as it was superfluous and could hinder navigation using a screen reader.

I tried to make the site less window-and-resolution dependent, but wasn't able to achieve sensible behavior with the existing div structure. In constructing my XHTML file, I should have paid closer attention to preserve that sort of flexibility. I did, however, make sure that all images had sensible alt text (not all did in the original; particularly for images of text) and replaced the Flash slideshow (which can fail if either Javascript or Flash is disabled) with a fixed-sized div, so that the user's browser configuration won't inadvertently alter the website's layout. If the webmaster really wants a different image to display there from time to time, it might be better handled with server-side scripting instead. I used XHTML, rather than HTML 4, to improve machine parse-ability of the content, and excluded effectively *all* layout information from the XHTML file, other than div and paragraph structures.