Folio: Actsmart

Type:

Website

Date:

Sept - Dec 2007

Agency:

Nixon McInnes

Skills:

Page design, Front-end build (XHTML & CSS)

Link:

www.actsmart.biz

Working freelance for Nixon McInnes once again, I developed over 20 unique page templates in what was probably the largest front-end build I’ve completed to date.

The overall design was created by Joshua and I was tasked with creating all the lower page designs to match the site’s style. A large portion of the site was based around complex forms and these took a long time to create in PhotoShop.

After design sign-off, I created the XHTML templates for all the pages. The site utilised the Nixon McInnes in-house CMS – this makes it great to develop for as it can use any XHTML and is not constrained to a particular format unlike some CMSs.

The forms were the most complex part of this site: getting them to look consistent across all browsers was tricky due to the custom rounded corners on form elements. In the end some compromises had to be made, such as drop down boxes remaining squared off.

One of the nice things I developed was customised CSS for the ’sectors’ on the site: each sector has its own colour scheme and this is easy to implement using CSS to override certain colours on particular elements.

A complex and time-consuming build that was very satisfying to complete.