[Bypass navigation bar] Warning! You are using an old web browser that does not support modern web standards so I'm afraid that you will not see any formatting on this site. I strongly recommend that you read my guide to upgrading your browser and making your PC secure. Not only will websites look 'right' with a modern browser, but you will be far less vulnerable to viruses and other nasties.

Compatibility and technical details of this site

This site was built by Alastair Ainslie - please get in touch if you need a new website, or have an existing one that needs revamping or extending.

Compatibility

Valid XHTML 1.0!

This site has been designed to be compatible with as many browsers as possible. To that end most pages have been validated as XHTML v1.0 Strict, the main exceptions being those pages generated automatically and a few old pages which are waiting to be converted. Particular care has been taken to make sure that pages degrade gracefully in browsers that don't support CSS, Javascript or have images turned off. For instance the navigation bar uses no Javascript to change states, it's all done in CSS/HTML (and I'm quite proud of it :-) ). I can't test every browser in existence though and would welcome comments from users of browsers that have problems with this site. By the time you read this, the site should have been tested in IE 5 (Win98), the latest IE 6SP2 (WinXP), Netscape 6 (Win98), Netscape 7 (WinXP), Opera 7.23 (WinXP), Mozilla 1.6b (WinXP) and a couple of browsers on Mandrake Linux and Macs.

Technical details

This site is hosted on Penguin Internet servers at Pulsant data centre in Maidenhead. I wrote the HTML using Editplus and I created the graphics in Macromedia Fireworks MX and JASC Paintshop Pro. I have access to other programs such as Dreamweaver MX and Flash MX, but I'm a strong believer in keeping the glitzy bits to a minimum. This medium is all about conveying information to the widest audience, as efficiently as possible. Tools like Flash can help that process of communication, but usually it gets in the way. The fact that it took until late 2004 for my phone exchange to be xDSL-enabled was a good incentive to keep pages lightweight!