Previous Work
Aquila Furniture
Aquila design and manufacture bespoke furniture for bars & restaurants, reception areas, offices & casinos. They specialise in high impact items influenced by the latest ideas in art and design. Their site has two main sections, the first of which is the portfolio where you can view examples of work. Organised by category, you can browse the preview images and view any that catch your eye:
Selected images appear in a lightbox style overlay. Viewers can also navigate through the image sequence while in this mode, with previous/next images pre-loading automatically to improve page response times:
Viewers can also control how many preview items appear on each page using the controls provided. Increasing or decreasing the preview count causes items to fade in/out as appropriate. The preview count selection is remembered when the viewer returns to the site:
The site is designed to work on as many browsers as possible. Tested browsers include Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Konqueror. Older or less capable browsers will simply miss out the more advanced features such as the lightbox style image display and preview count controls. There is also support for some handheld devices such as mobile phones and PDAs. Accessibility functions such as page text re-sizing and keyboard navigation are provided.
The other main section of the site is the catalogue which works in a similar way to the portfolio.
As usual, a full content management system has been provided to allow staff to run their website.
Garside Waddingham
A recent web development project was for Garside Waddingham, a residential and commercial estate agency based in the North West of England.
Public Website
The public website required a redesign to match the style of new brochures, leaflets and other promotional material. The website uses a third party property search system so this was customised as much as possible to help it fit in with the new design.
Website Admin System
Most of the development time was spent on the website admin system. This is a private system which allows the Garside Waddingham staff to manage the content of their new website.
Any changes to page content are immediately applied to the public website. Admin system users can update page titles, taglines, main content blocks, logos, background images and more. New pages can be created, and the display order of pages within a section can be changed through a simple drag-and-drop function.
Pages within the site can be linked to one another, or to external addresses. These links can be re-ordered, edited or removed at any time. A similar function allows staff to attach PDF documents to any page, making them available for download on the public site.
Staff can add news stories to the public website, setting publication and expiry dates to control how long they appear for. Images can also be added to each story.
Access to the admin system is controlled through user accounts. Each user can be given specific system rights, to limit which parts of the public website they can edit.
The admin system has been designed to work on any standards-based web browser.
Baxi UK Ltd
Baxi is part of the Baxi Group, a Europe-wide residential and commercial heating network. They employ over 5000 people and have many operating companies. I was the main web developer for the core UK companies which include:
- Baxi
- Potterton
- Potterton Commercial
- Interpart
- Main
I worked on the public websites as well as the central admin system used to manage them. This system linked to the internal product design team and had offshoots such as document management, discussion forums and issue tracking. Group divisions such as spare parts had their own public websites and admin systems too.
There have been major changes to the Baxi Group since I left so the current websites will probably be different from the images shown here. Also, the majority of the work I did for Baxi involved internal systems and confidential data, so I'm limited in what I can show. If you need more information please contact me directly.
Chris Moore Illustration
Chris Moore is an internationally acclaimed commercial illustrator. If you're in a bookshop and pick up a sci-fi or thriller, the chances are he did the cover. He also works on advertising, album covers and film concept art.
The website was designed with a limited colour palette and simple navigation so that it wouldn't distract from the artwork. Viewers can order high quality A3 prints of their favourite images.
A website admin system allows Chris to keep everything up to date.
David Mace
David Mace is a renowned writer of sci-fi and thrillers with many novels and short stories to his name. The website provides information on his writing, reviews, links to other publications and general news.
The website also allows David to experiment with online publication methods.
Vektor Ltd
Vektor Ltd (now VL Systems) is a major of developer of language training systems for business and education. My work for them covered two main areas:
- The creation of a company intranet system to manage hardware & software assets, design materials and projects.
- DHTML and Flash design for their next generation language training product.
Angela Mortimer plc
Angela Mortimer plc is a major Recruitment Consultancy group with companies in the UK, France and Germany. I created and maintained the content management system/intranet used by staff to manage their job and candidate records, and designed a series of websites used by the public to search for suitable positions. The design criteria for each site reflected the audience the client was aiming for, but the main Goldensquare.com site is a good example.
Site users could browse or search the job database, applying for suitable positions by filling out a registration form or uploading a CV. Users could also create and manage online CVs, with sections covering contact details, education history, employment history and language skills.
Higher Education
I've provided web development training throughout my career and have a particular interest in higher education teaching. Clients include: