New version of theSnowSite published
A new version of theSnowSite has been posted.
theSnowSite is being developed by MMISoftware as a ‘one-stop-shop’ for skiing and snow-boarding information.
Version 0.3 was developed about a month ago and included a lot of new features, however, there were some technical/interface problems. Basically, there was too much information on the page and it was found that there was really no easy way of showing all the data. The site ended up using multiple sub-menus within the pages and this was rather ‘clunky’ and cumbersome. The site didn’t ‘flow’ and was ‘navigationally’ intensive; the user had very little control and testing showed it was not particularly user-friendly.
A possible solution was found, and it initially working well. In fact, it worked great with Safari, Camino and Firefox on the Mac, and with Firefox, Opera and Netscape on Windows. However, guess what? It didn’t work with Internet Explorer….. Many hours of work did not solve the problem so it was back to the drawing board!
Finally, the problems were solved… and the new site has been posted!
So, what is new with the version? In terms of content, nothing! The site is displaying the same information as in version 0.2, however, what is new is the layout and the way the information is displayed.
The new layout consists of a series of windows that the user can position anywhere they want in the browser window. Some of the windows can also be resized, as needed, and all the windows can be collapsed/rolled-up/minimised by clicking on the ‘minimise’ button, or double-clicking the window title bar. Essentially this can be viewed as an ‘operating system’ within a browser.
After this version has been tested, and left in the wild, for a few weeks new features which were in an earlier ‘build’ of 0.3 will be added…
The site is still driven by ‘AJAX’ (i.e. asynchronous Javascript and XML) and uses php and MySQL at the ‘backend’.
Version 0.3 works great with Safari, Camino and Firefox (slight problem with scroll bars not hiding when a window is collapsed) on the Mac, and it works with Internet Explorer, Firefox (oddly scroll bars do hide correctly) and Netscape on Windows. This version does not work with Opera…
Anyway, check out the new version at: http://www.thesnowsite.com.
The theSnowSite domain and website is hosted at UK2.net
