The website for Our Lady of the Rosary is intended to be standards-compliant, using validated xhtml and CSS. If you find any pages that do not validate, it means that I have made an error when updating a page. Do feel free to let me know.

This list summarises some of the technical features:

• The boxes on the pages are divided up using <div> tags rather than frames or tables.
• The position of the <div> elements is controlled using CSS positioning.
• The "styles" on the page are controlled using CSS.
• The menu is a simple javascript / CSS menu (see below).
• The markup currently meets the standard of XHTML 1.0 Transitional

The effects of this policy are (I hope!)

• You can easily link to any individual page rather than just the homepage (as is the case if frames are used).
• Style and content are separated for those not using visual media.
• The visual styles and the menu can still be easily updated from a single file.
• We show our desire to use the potential of the Web standards to increase accessibility for all.

The menu

I hope you like the menu. The "rollover" effect is achieved without any javascript. (The javascipt file contains only a series of "document.write" functions to store the html for the menu in a single file, rather than have to paste it into each page.) The styling for the menu, with the behaviour when you hover the mouse over a link, is achieved entirely using CSS. For an excellent page on this sort of thing, see Listamatic.

Plans

The site now opts for the "fluid" side of the "fixed vs fluid" debate. I'm not dogmatic about this and may change back again!

I like some of the "minimalist" designs on some CSS design show-sites. Hence the present style of the site.

I still need to check everything and upgrade the site to xhtml 1.0 Strict.

Rather than use xml myself, I have taken the opportunity to use blogger.com for the news updates. I have tried to give the news blog the same look and feel as the main website so that it seems to be integrated. At any rate, it is easy to keep updated so that the site has some real news on it.

Fr Tim Finigan 19/05/06