Books

FPnotebook.com

A New Look for the FPNotebook

Advertisement

Why the change?

Current best practices in website design suggest separating content from style, and eliminating the use of tables for page layout.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are a preferred method to direct all the layout and style for web-pages. CSS allows the same content to be displayed in multiple ways depending on output medium (screen vs Print), screen size (desktop vs handheld) or whim (professional or fantastical). This is demonstrated extraordinarily well at CSS Zen Garden.

The Process

Redesign of the site required a complete re-write of the underlying database software (homegrown, written in vb.net). This software stores the site content in discrete fields and allows for meta-tagging categories and articles with the standardized nomenclature from the UMLS. It also allows data output to any format, including the XML or XHTML used in web-sites.

The second part of re-design involved creating the CSS to convert the XHTML to a fully functional web-site. This was time consuming. Months were spent attempting a redesign of the site look and feel. Ultimately, the original colors and design were kept and re-worked in CSS. Creating solid CSS with consistent output across browsers was painstaking and not intuitive.

New Features

  • Page content displays well regardless of screen width, operating system or web browser
  • Text can be re-sized (e.g. large print) without adversely affecting the page layout
  • Pages are layed out efficiently without tables (except for 1), and hence they load more quickly
  • The style for every page on the site can be completely modified by changing a single file.
  • All 5600 pages on the site are divided into a directory tree (e.g. fpnotebook.com/CV/CAD/ houses files about coronary disease.) You can navigate the site by typing a URL such as fpnotebook.com/der/acne - which opens the acne chapter.

Examples of the new page design

  • Use the book directory at left to navigate within the new book
  • The search at the top left - searches the new pages

Known Problems and Further Feedback

  • The login page is not yet working
  • Please send an Email to let us know how the new site looks in your internet browser.