As part of an MSc project, I re-designed the B2B website for Applied Network Solutions, an IT company in Reading. This page contains the following sections:
The following is a screenshot of the homepage:
The following is a screenshot a page in the 'Client Area', driven by database-integration I was involved in developing:
The purpose of this project was two-fold, to begin to develop my use of correct coding practices, and to wire-up the back-end to be more database-driven.
The two screenshots above show two very different layouts. The first is the layout as finally delivered, and the latter is a layout used during the project phase. However, both of them were very different from anything I'd done before - they both used XHTML for markup, and style sheets for presentation. Although only a 'transitional' approach was used (ie. tables were used for the broad layout), my eyes were opened to the potential of the new way of coding. Seeing the beauty of this approach, such as the cleanness in creating mouse-over effects using style sheets alone, captured my enthusiasm.
Though the presentation of this website may not be the best design I've ever produced, the lessons I took away from it have been invaluable. The sheer sense of moral well-being about using the technology as it was intended, matched the vision which had captured me as a web developer in the first place.
ASP was used for the back-end programming, and central to the project was to further develop the interactive 'Client Area' of the website. This is an extranet area that allows customers to view and interact with the information on the customer database. Gupta's SQLBase was the back-end database, and I programmed extra interaction so customers could view invoicing information and alter their log in passwords. The second screenshot above shows the history of application support the customer has received.
The exercise was highly valuable, and provided excellent experience with developing and implementing a programmatic database-driven website.
This website and its content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
