Free Webmaster Resources Site www.elated.com Relaunched

(Brighton, UK) Elated Communications Ltd recently launched the next generation of their free webmaster resources site, www.elated.com. Over a year in the making, the new-look site offers many significant improvements over the previous version.

"We decided our site was due for a major overhaul towards the end of last year, so we set to work on rebuilding it from the ground up," says Matt Doyle, webmaster of www.elated.com. "A year later, we're very happy with the results. The new site is so much more usable and accessible and has some great new features, such as site-wide search and easy access to article topics."

Simon Meek, Creative Director of ELATED said: "Since our last site relaunch in March 2001, the Web's moved on but our old site was starting to look a bit dated 5 years down the line! It's such a huge site - hundreds of pages - that I was frankly terrified of rebuilding it, but I'm so glad we did. The end result is wonderful to see and so much easier on the eye!"

The new design emphasises ELATED's commitment to producing a friendly, welcoming site; a place where webmasters of all ages and ability levels can ask for help and advice.

"We decided we needed a relaxed, open look to the site, so we went for a fluid layout with plenty of room to breathe," said Simon. "I love the bears too - they're so cute! We commissioned a designer to create these for us - they're actually made from dough, then photographed and retouched in Photoshop. They really add an air of fun and originality to the site."

Usability and accessibility came high on the list when doing the rebuild. "We wanted a site that worked well across all screen sizes from 800x600 up, and that would even make sense on text-only browsers and phones," said Matt. "To that end we went for a CSS-positioned layout and XHTML markup. This was a challenge to get working on all browsers, but we have it working great on all the newest browsers, including IE7, with graceful degradation on the older ones. I'm particularly pleased with the way the bigger article images scale as the browser window changes size - that was a nice touch!"

More changes are in the pipeline, and the guys at ELATED reckon the new site serves as a great starting-point for adding even more useful content and features. The new-look www.elated.com is now live.

About ELATED.com

ELATED.com is run by two dedicated Web professionals based in the UK and Australia. The site offers a unique combination of high-quality graphics, templates, tutorials, forums and other free resources, all served up with a down-to-earth, friendly attitude and a sense of humour. All the content available for download is created by ELATED themselves. The site is updated several times a month.

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Editors, please direct reader enquiries about ELATED.com to www.elated.com/contact/.