High Polymer Research Group update
The High Polymer Research Group (HPRG) has been running polymer science and technology conferences annually since 1960. Over this time polymer science has changed dramatically, from Flory’s Nobel address to the group in 1972 on polymer conformation, to functional materials and nanoparticles in this year’s conference.
We had the pleasure of re-designing the High Polymer Research Group website in 2007, and have subsequently managed the site for the trustees. A lot has happened in the WWW since 2007, with the development of CSS3 and HTML5, and the increasing stability of Javascript as a client side scripting language. The adoption of these web technologies has been driven by the move from desktop to mobile browser platforms, necessitating the adoption of ‘adaptive website design’ – web designs that allow the same content to be displayed across a wide range of display types and sizes (see, for example Websites for smart phones take centre stage (2013)).
The High Polymer conference site has a simple advertising role to members, it needs to be robust, and good for a few years service! We therefore looked at organic styling changes to the existing site, rather than following the latest design trends (which will likely look quite passe this time next year) while working in mobile-device compatibility.
Navigation designed with the user in mind
From the array of site enhancements now available, we selecting simple features that would assist the visitor in getting about on the page, and navigating the site as a whole. The fixed top banner provides context sensitive links to the top of the page and the home page, and opens the full screen width menu for mobile devices, if it detects a narrow screen device.
Flexibility – adapting the site to each year’s theme
The new site banner is designed to be replaced to match each year’s theme, while permitting old program listings to retain this identity. Banners based on the conference location were added to old conferences on the site (which did not have individual banners). This will allow the site to change a little each year, and help avoid it becoming ‘stale’.
Crisper graphics
The final change was to re-master logos and line art in SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format. This has been around for a few years now, and all current browsers can now support it (we offer PNG’s as fall backs if you are still running IE7 or 8!). The SVG format, being a vector file, rather than a pixelating bitmap, adds crispness to each graphic. Its use ensures that visitors with newer ‘retina’ or similar high resolution displays see cleanly defined logos with no blur or distortion. SVG has been a long time coming, but looks set now to displace Adobe’s ‘Flash’ platform where high resolution coupled to a small file size is required.
