pretty girl demo

This pretty girl is here partly to make this page more interesting but also to show what can be achieved with modern web browsers.

The first, easiest thing to do is scroll the page vertically. Notice if the hyperlinks on the left side of the page slide over the background seamlessly, as should the main content area (this brown-backed box right here). The visual effect should be that the hyperlinks and the main content area have translucent backgrounds, but opaque foregrounds that overlap exactly. They don't, in fact, but that's what it should look like.

Try changing the text size and notice how the compositing effect remains consistent. Then make your browser window really narrow and scroll horizontally. Again, everything should remain seamless and consistent. Try hovering over the left-hand links and you should see the background change. Scroll the page so it's not at its default, change the size of the text, and hover again. The "compositing" is still seamless as ever.

If you do not see this you are probably using Internet Explorer 6 (the background image is presented seperately and repeated down the page)or earlier or an old version of another.(See Browser Problems below)

Tony Hart Music

This was my first website that I wrote in 2001. It has had a few changes and additions over the years and is a mixture of static and dynamic pages.It originally used frames design but due to varied browser support I changed it to css a couple of years ago.
I have scaled down my activities in the music business lately so do not have so many products for sale but still offer support for local bands and musicians.
The vinyl section is scheduled for expansion soon but I am still working on the database of 5000 plus entries

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Dereks Domestics

This started as an idea for my brother to sell vacuum cleaner bags online and ended up as a totally dynamic e-commerce type website.
It includes stock control and invoicing systems and all the major categories are driven from the stock database so as long as the invoicing is up to date anything on display is available for sale.
This went online in early February 2008 and generated sales via Google in the first month.

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Kings Arms Hotel Holsworthy

This was written for Shane and Collette at the Kings Arms Hotel Holsworthy who asked me in mid January if I would get a website online quickly. This went went online at the beginning of February 2008.
It includes an easy to use administration section to enable them to enter and update forthcoming events.

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Holsworthy Business Guide

This is currently an ongoing work in progress as I looked at the current websites covering this and found they were not very comprehensive or easy to navigate and decided to do one of my own.

It has a fairly comprehensive list of Business and Professional services in the area, which is constantly being added to.
Also community services, both voluntary and otherwise are listed.

The object is to make it the place to find out anything about Holsworthy you need to know. Realistically not possible I know, but I'll give it a good try.
At present I am adding local events and items of interest when I get the time.

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Other Projects

I have various other projects underway but they are all database driven and it takes time to correlate the information and appropriate images etc.
Watch this space.
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Browser Problems

Getting web pages to display as intended on different Internet browsers can be a real problem.
There has been an agreed set of rules for several years but unfortunately a lot of browsers interpret them differently or get some completely wrong. In my experience Internet Explorer has been the worst offender for this. This posed a real problem as more people use IE than any other browser and a lot of time has been spent fooling IE into displaying pages as intended.
Microsoft seem to have eventually got it almost right with IE7, it still gets some of this page wrong, but earlier versions are very unpredictable. Mozilla Firefox and Opera are both free and very good browsers so if you are using a version of IE earlier than 7 it would pay to upgrade to one of these.
Download Firefox here.
Download Opera here.
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Development and Testing

I usually develop new programs in Firefox and then check them in Opera 9,IE7,IE6 and IE5 to catch any of these problems.
You would be surprised how many designers don't check this!!
I also use Lynx (a text browser) to catch any bad links I may have which could confuse the web crawlers, after all no spiders No Google ratings.

You may have seen these logos displayed on some websites. In case you were wondering they indicate that the pages validate for the W3C standard they are written to. HTML (Hyper text markup language) being the language of web pages and CSS (Cascading style sheets) the standards devised to make browsers display pages as they were intended by the designer.
If you would like to find out more about W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)there is a link here.
If you would like to validate a web page they do an online service, click HTML Validate or CSS Validate
I find this service invaluable, On a dynamic web page it is possible to generate 100's of errors from just 1 mistake in a line of code.

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Credits

• The idea and inspiration for this page: Eric Meyer

Image credits

• Girl: unknown (unfortunately); downloaded from Internet
• Zig Logos: artwork by Tony Hart

Tony Hart,Belle Vue,Holsworthy,Devon. EX22 6EF Tel - 01409 253799 e-mail - I get so much spam I don't check every day. Please Phone.