Blog :: Web design and Actinic resources

Actinic templates with Dynamic design system

Peblaco is proud to be the first Actinic developer to design, build and release a unique dynamic design system for Actinic software. Peblaco is very excited about this new development and the potential possibilities that this kind of system holds for the future of Actinic template design.

Released by Peblaco in August 2007 the system makes it possible to dynamically change the core structure of an Actinic design using a menu so you can now make layout changes without having to do any code editing.

See the Actinic templates using the Dynamic design system.

Actinic web developer Louise writes:

"I intially had the idea for writing such a system in early 2007.

The reasons for writing it was two fold. Firstly, many clients kept asking me how they could make changes to their site such as change the site from fixed width to percentage width or add a sidebar. Normally to do this it would have involved getting the site layouts from the client and making changes to the layouts or even creating a whole second layout for use where the sidebar was needed, additionally making changes to the CSS stylesheet all of which takes time for the Developer and cost for the client.

Secondly, I had a client who requested that certain pages of their site that I was about to build had no sidebars on the product pages to allow a wider area for the product information to be displayed. I thought there must be an easier way to do that than to a) create a separate template without sidebars for the client to select and b) have more than one template that I would have to keep updated in future.

Since Actinic 8 offered more dynamic coding than Actinic 7 with the inclusion of block statements and PHP, it opened up a whole new area for design development.

I spent a few months in early 2007 researching best code practices, layouts, SEO and browser compatibility. I built the system into Actinic by hand and after in depth browser testing and finalising the package it was released onto the Peblaco site in the summer of 2007."

The Peblaco Dynamic Design system offers the following features:

Customisable - The system is completely customisable as much as possible. The client can easily change the layout colours, images, logo, font and links as with standard Actinic sites.

Flexible - The client can choose whether their layout has 1, 2 or no sidebars, change the width of the site, the width of the sidebars and the site alignment within a browser.

Reposition - The client can reposition the logo, search, menus and links. So if needed the logo can be moved from the top to the left or right sidebar and so on, elements can be moved on the page, shown or hidden as needed. This gives clients great flexibility over laying out their design and hiding certain areas when needed.

Search engine friendly - The layout has been constructed from the most search engine friendly CSS layout available. The main content of the site comes before the sidebars no matter which combination of sidebars and options the client chooses. This is of major importance to search engines who index and give importance to the content that is highest in the source code of a page.

Accessibility - The main layout source code has been written to the WAI Accessibility and tested to Level A. The layouts include skip links for screen readers, navigation links are clearly separated using styled lists and the main layout built with an external CSS stylesheet.

Browser tested - The layouts have been extensively browser tested for cross compatibility. The layouts work in the main browser Internet Explorer 6 / 7 and Firefox 2 and also work in many other popular web browsers.

Quick to install - The code has been written with quick installation in mind. They code can be imported and installed into Actinic easily following an instruction guide and is easy enough for anyone to do without having to do any code editing.

See the Actinic templates using the Dynamic design system.

Some of the clients already using this system:

Ballantynes of Walkerburn - Client has made use of the sidebar show/hide options to hide the sidebars on the product pages, allowing them to display more information there.

Tranquil PC Shop - Client has used this system to customise the header and footer of their site and reposition the shopping cart position on the layout.

The system is now being upgraded to version 9 and redeveloped to add more functionality.

See the Actinic templates using the Dynamic design system.