I was originally going to use a website creation package to build this site, but on beginning the process I found that I wanted as much control over
the design and functionality as possible and that the way to achieve this was to write the HTML from scratch in a text editor. I have used CSS to help
make the design and layout of the pages consistent and a specialist graphics package to create and manipulate images for the site. All of the photographs have been
used with permission to avoid data protection or copyright issues.
I decided to use the colour scheme I have chosen in order to appeal to the site's intended audience - girls of secondary school age who might be considering
a career in IT - as it helps to make it attractive, but I have also tried to ensure that the colours are not too bright and thus difficult to look at for extended
amounts of time, do not clash and do not distract from the information on the pages. I have broken up large blocks of text into paragraphs to make it easy to read,
and have sometimes used bullet-pointed lists where this was appropriate to the information being presented.
I have also tried to make the site easy to navigate to facilitate access to information,
having the 'rollover' computer monitors on each page to enable a user to navigate to the other pages from anywhere on the site.
In creating this website I have tried to ensure that I can reach as many people as possible by minimising all those Internet annoyances such as pages
taking inordinate amounts of time to download or needing special plugins, hence the absence of Java or Flash applets and sound and video files. In an
ideal world, everybody would have all of the latest software and an infinitely fast Internet connection - but although we have come a long way since
Grace Murray Hopper
and the first computer 'bug', we're not quite there yet, so I have attempted to deal with these limitations to keep the site open to as many people as possible.
This site is best viewed full screen at a resolution of 1024x768 or higher and requires that active content be enabled to function at its best - it uses JavaScript
to provide rollovers and the scrolling news on the homepage.
It has been tested for compatibility with many of the most popular web browsers including Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 and 7.0,
Mozilla Firefox 2.0, and Netscape 8.1 and conforms to the W3C standard for HTML 4.01 Transitional.