New Site Design

From the end-user point-of-view, this website's new look is purely cosmetic: Different typefaces used, changes in colors, menus moved around, etc. In reality, the changes to the site are more than skin deep...

More CSS

This version of the website makes better use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the web standard that separates a site's content (text and images) from its look-and-feel (fonts, colors, layout). This provides a number of benefits:

Smaller webpages that download even faster than before.
Tables that were used only for layout are gone, making the site "friendlier" for screen-readers and non-graphical browsers (eg Lynx).
Even with older browsers (eg IE/Netscape 4.x) the site should still be readable.
Easier maintenance: To alter the appearance of the entire site only a single file needs to updated.

Older Browsers Need Not Apply

The single biggest problem with implementing a standards-compliant website is that the different web browsers implement those standards to different degrees of completeness and correctness: A site that looks wonderful in Opera 7.51 and Mozilla 1.7 might look awful in Netscape 4.8 or Internet Explorer 5.0.

While backwards compatability is generally a good thing, at some point you need to raise the minimum requirements to make progress. With a website, that means dropping support for effectively obsolete web browsers like Netscape 4.x. Will this be a problem for users? In practice, it shouldn't be: Regardless of your operating system, there is at least one web browser available (probably free) that supports current standards.

If you're still using Netscape 4.x or Internet Explorer 5.0, now is an excellent time to upgrade to a top-quality standards-compliant browser such as Mozilla, FireFox, or Opera.

Browser Compatability

This website has been tested with Mozilla 1.6/1.7, Opera 7.51, and Internet Explorer 6.0; it should work correctly with any equivalent browser.

If you encounter a problem with the website or just have comments about it, please let us know.