Greg Merriman Web Development

About Greg Merriman

Greg is a Web Developer based in South Wales. He graduated from the University of Wales, Swansea with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science. Cutting his teeth with the exciting Fresh Ties project (and their marvellous team), he thought it was about time to exhibit some of his own individual talents and set about the task of creating this site you are now reading (and enjoying, hopefully)!

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About This Web Site

Greg has attempted to create this site with both accessibility and design in mind. It incorporates an 'elastic' design that fits into the browser window whether you shrink it or enlarge it (but with a maximum container width of around 800 pixels to stop things getting too spread out! If this were to happen it would compromise on the design somewhat!). Also, you can change the size of you browser text without it adversely affecting the general design. The initial text size has been set on the basis of most browsers having a default text size of around 16-pixels, if you find the text size too small, you may have adjusted your default text size in your browser to something smaller than 16-pixels. In most modern web broswers you can adjust the size of the displayed text in the 'View' menu (try this and see what happens to the overall design of the site... It should shrink or expand depending upon the text size you choose). All this is achievable through the use of CSS.

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About Web Standards

You wouldn't build a house without adhering to construction industry standards would you? Well, why should it be any different in the construction of web sites? It makes good business-sense to ensure your web site conforms to Web Standards. By delivering solutions that are built on a foundation of such standards ensures speed and flexibility (amongst other things). To list, some of the benefits of incorporating Web Standards are:

• Reduced Mark-up

  Less code means that pages are faster to load and less server space is required. Each having a positive effect on bandwidth and server costs.

• Improved Accessibility

  Using standards compliant code means the site can reach many more users across a number of browsers, operating systems and devices (including users who maybe using software or technology aids).

• Separation of meaningful content and presentation

  By controlling the site's design in one place away from the mark-up means updates and redesigns become easier. Changes to the look-and-feel of the site can be made quicker with the use of style sheets. Also, users who wish to see un-styled content (maybe for accessibility reasons) can do so, seeing meaningful content and not possibly restrictive designs.

• Compatibility and Flexibility

  The site is future proof as standards compliant code will still be readable by browsers of the future.

• Search Engine Optimisation

  This is the big one! Properly 'marked-up' code with meaningful and semantic tags makes it easier for search engines to index the site's pages, and ultimately, for people to find them! Valid, well-structured and meaningful XHTML increases the likelihood of someone finding your site based on its content alone... Now there's a thought!

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About PHP Web Development

PHP is what is known as a server-side scripting language (PHP is a recursive acronym for: "PHP Hypertext Preprocessor"), it is especially suited to Web Development as it can be used to create dynamic and interactive Web Sites. It is used to pre-process data before outputting resultant (and in Greg's case, standards-compliant) HTML for the Web Browser to display. And that is all the browser sees, no other code except for HTML, which if compliant with Web Standards will make it a win-win situation as far as speed, flexibility and accessibility goes!

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About XML and RSS

XML and RSS are one of the same really. Put simply, RSS is just an XML document that is applied in a specific way. An RSS feed is a structured document that describes, for example, what is contained in a set of news stories or a set of blog posts (these are just two of the many uses of RSS). This site employs RSS feeds to construct the content in both the News and Portfolio pages. By using the orange RSS icon in the footer area you can access (and if you are so inclined, subscribe to) the RSS news feed for this site.

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