gallery of matthew john consultancy limited contracts
Hager's Marketing department had commissioned a graphic design company to develop their web site which they did back in April 2001. At the same time the parent company, based in Germany, had developed a Corporate Digital Design (CDD) to keep a standard look and feel across all the european web sites. The UK web site had not been designed to this CDD. Rather than send the web site back to the graphic design company, I suggested to Hager that we could use the redesign of the web site as a training exercise for one of their employees. They accepted this and that's how I started working on the Hager web site.
I don't personally agree with the CDD, with my main gripes being the use of frames and restricting the width of the web page to 760 pixels. To restrict the width of the web site, the main frameset is enclosed within another frameset. It's an ugly and confusing way to do things, but it was the only thing we could do as support for version 4 browsers is needed.
As I still know that Hager wish to support version 4 browsers, I have not shown them the new Hager web site I have created using CSS for layout. If the site had been designed like this originally by the graphic design company then it would have taken a fraction of the time to change the entire site design. I must admit though at the time there were far too many people using version 4 browsers for the graphic design company to use CSS for layout.