New Site Design

The Tanzarine web site has been redesigned to incorporate the company's new branding and logo. The change was made smoother thanks to the use of XML and XSLT to separate the layout information from the content information.

Previous releases of the web site had made the transition from HTML pages generated using HTML templates and content information assembled by a perl utility, to HTML pages generated using a single XSLT template and XML content information, assembled using the XBuild tool (written in Java) to manage the transforms and web site hierarchy.

XBuild is also responsible for producing the navigation which appears on every page, and also the home page "feature articles". As it processes the XML documents containing articles for the site, it adds details about any which are marked as "indexable" to a master index. At the end of its processing, XBuild uses this index to produce the "feature articles" and also an RSS document reflecting a summary of the articles available on the site.

Basic navigation around the site is achieved using the navigation area to the left hand side of the screen, which shows the various sections available at the current level. The current level is marked by a purple pointer.

Within any one section, there may be several subsections, and these are also indicated in the navigation area. This is most evident on the home page, which is the top level of the web site. The available subsections are marked by a blue pointer, pointing downwards.

Finally, within a subsection, upwards navigation is available, to give an indication of where the page currently being viewed exists in relation to the site as a whole. This may not be important if the page has been reached by navigation, but is vital if the page has been reached by a direct link, such as from the home page "feature articles". The sections above the current one are marked by a blue pointer, pointing upwards.