As professional web site designers, we try to ensure that our work complies with all the current standards for web design, and this site is no exception.
All the pages at Out of the Trees conform to the World Wide Web Consortium's XHTML 1.1 specification for web page markup, and page presentation is controlled entirely with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Many web sites now use CSS to control the basic appearance of their sites, but continue to use tables for page layout. However, when we set out to design this site, we chose to eschew tables in favour of controlling the layout using CSS-Positioning. As a result, only CSS-capable browsers will display the correct layout, colours and fonts, but the site should remain usable for all visitors, no matter what device or browser they are using. We decided on this approach because CSS-controlled layouts bestow a number of benefits:
Unlike many web designers, we do not consider accessibility to be an optional extra! Current legal thinking suggests that the minimum level of conformance is the W3C Level-A Conformance; we have tried to ensure that every page on this site meets the most-stringent criteria: Triple A-Conformance. For more information, see our article on the importance of accessible web design.
All pages are generated by a simple PHP template system that we developed, to ensure consistency and ease of updating. Some content is stored in a MySQL database, and navigation links are dynamically generated to suit the page in question, as are meta tags and such like. The server runs Redhat Linux and Apache.
Before pages are served up, we try to detect whether the visitor's browser is standards-compliant and can understand application/xhtml+xml.
This site was coded entirely by hand, using the following software:
The font used in all the graphics is Meta, designed by Eric Spiekermann. Meta is based on the typeface comissioned by the German Post Office (Bundespost) in 1984 as an exclusive corporate font. However the face was not accepted by them and the whole project was cancelled. In 1989 its artwork was digitized and the new face was created by Just van Rossum. It was named FF Meta, after Meta Studio in which the new typeface was used exclusively. Meta has been used for the setting of ID magazine (the leading US publication for communication design, not the British style magazine!). We chose this typeface for this site because it retains all of its character even at low resolutions, such as on screen.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions regarding accessibility or techniques used, or if you cannot view this site properly, please contact us and we'll try to help.