Case Studies

Overview

A valued customer and highly successful Lancashire top 19 company, Panaz Limited is a global manufacturer of flame retardant fabric. Delivering excellence in all areas of activity and achieving innovation, the main focus is to produce end results which demonstrate the companies double Queens' Award winning status.

The main goal was to improve upon the existing web presence and offer a means of viewing the extensive range of product online. Prior to developing the Web site, a number of items were produced on behalf of Panaz Limited including business cards and letterheads. The first stage of the process was to fill in a Specification form and arrange a meeting to discuss the forms contents.

Various imagery was provided in order for the design to be authored, as seen below.

Four Web site themes were created, one for the general company areas such as news and distribution with separate designs for the individual, company divisions; Hospitality, Healthcare and Education.

Specification

The Web site specification was provided in two different formats; the initial brief which was sent out to several companies and more specific information was provided in this Specification form. Various meetings were held at the Panaz Head Offices and at the Youds Media office in Clitheroe.

Services offered by the Web site include:

• Product Portfolio
• Fabric Sampling
• Latest News
• Global Distribution
• Project References
• eBook Literature

Internationalisation

The Web site supports internationalisation, the entire copy-content of the Web site can be transformed into other languages, using an internet technology called gettext. This effectively binds the alternative language text into the HTTP server upon startup, providing the content with a negligible overhead on page loading times.

This service is further enhanced with intelligent country selection, automatically detecting where the user is visiting from and selecting the most appropriate country or region based on that information. Therefore if you visit from the USA, you will automatically be greeted with the Panaz USA Web site.

Web 2.0

The most notable difference on this Web site to others is the use of a browser technology called JavaScript, now standard in all A-Grade Browsers. This is best used on the Global Distribution and the View Portfolio pages. By offering content in this way, it is much easier to capitalise on the area of the page most likely to be studied, as seen on the View Portfolio page.

Flash

In order to fully accentuate the vast archive of imagery available on the Web site, Flash was used to create moving imagery rendering various camera-like motions, an action not possible in all A-Grade Browsers without the aid of a plugin. These files are displayed in the header of the inner Web site pages, except for the Global Distribution page. Different files are used throughout the Web site, with multiple files available for selection at each page load.

Design Concepts

The most important decision to make when undergoing a new Web site project is whether to make the layout fixed or fluid. While a fixed layout offers more design control, fluid layouts tend not to leave large expanses of unfilled areas on the page. In this case a fixed width was chosen and as you can see with some clever background repeats the entire area of the screen contributes to the overall look and feel of the Web site, see below.

The Web site renders the Web site content at the same width at any size of screen, however the background repeats cause the design of the Web site to be fluid, a happy medium.

Data Entry

The design of the forms is done in keeping with the rest of the Web site theme. See below.

Register Form

This is the Register Form for the Panaz Web site. It asks the user for basic information that is stored in a database and used for Sampling requests. Once this information is entered in, it is retrieved whenever is required.

Contact Form

Essential part of any Web site, this form submits information directly through to the Panaz Team. It displays information inside a standard email template.

Content Management System

The majority of the content found on the Web site is controlled through the Youds Media Content Management System. Maintained in-house by Youds Media, this Web Application was developed with user interactivity in mind and builds upon the best available internet Web 2.0 technologies available, with intuitive features and controls as standard.

Content Management System screenshot overview; navigation is on the left. Displaying page which shows a grid of information containing multiple pages and a preview area to view the content of the selected row

This is a typical form, each field is controlled through validation and where typing is required the minimum and maximum character counts are available at the bottom, along with the current character count. Note the tabs at the top of the form, where other information can be entered and images or files uploaded

This is a typical grid of information, with the rows arranged in groups. Groups can be opened and closed and the grouped column can be changed

A typical upload panel, accepts multiple files.

Search facility with results returned as you type; without having to open another tab or dialog window