Adaptive Path Launches a Forward-Thinking, Standards-Compliant Web Site

For Immediate Release

San Francisco, CA, July 15, 2003 – Adaptive Path, the industry’s leading user-experience consultancy, announces a completely standards-compliant redesign of its site. Nearly every page of the new site validates without error as XHTML 1.0 Strict.

As the Web Standards Project (http://www.webstandards.org/) notes, standards make it cheaper and easier to develop a site, and greatly increase its lifespan. Though the benefits of standardization are obvious, very few businesses take the time to align their sites.

“As a user-focused, best-practices company, Adaptive Path realizes that lean, clean, structural markup and CSS-based design are essential ingredients of usability and a best practice of today’s Web. I’d expect nothing less from this company,” says Jeffrey Zeldman, author of the bestselling book Designing With Web Standards.

The new design was developed by Douglas Bowman of Stopdesign, who also recently redesigned Wired News, using an XHTML and CSS combination to create tableless layouts. “With the redesign, Adaptive Path is practicing what they evangelize to their clients,” Bowman says. “Their content is unobscured—on the surface throughout the visual interface, and behind the scenes in the markup.”

Quick highlights include:

• File size of the home page HTML dropped by 56 percent (down from 20.9 KB to 9.2 KB).
• JavaScript rollover effects in navigation eliminated and replaced by CSS hover states for simplified tab- and subtab-like navigation.
• Pages can be toggled between several variants of two- and three-column layouts simply by changing the body class.
• All non-critical, decorative images (including large header images) are rendered exclusively with CSS background images.
• And finally, the team photos on the home page and team page provide double-rollover effects solely with the use of CSS hover states and absolute positioning.

“The new site is incredibly easy to update and maintain,” says Adaptive Path partner Lane Becker. “We’ve been preaching standardization, and now, we’ve put our money where our mouth is.”

About Adaptive Path

Headquartered in San Francisco, Adaptive Path is a user experience consulting, research and training firm that has provided custom services to a range of clients, including Fortune 50 corporations, pure-Web startups, and established not-for-profit organizations.

Contact

Bryan R. Mason
bryan@adaptivepath.com
Adaptive Path
363 Brannan St.
San Francisco, CA 94107
Phone: 1-415-495-8270