SmartMovez

SmartMovez - homepage

Website: smartmovez.org.nz (site has since been redesigned) - view screenshots

Size: 13 template pages

Government status: Crown Entity

My professional status: employee at Shift

Website client: NZ Transport Agency

Dates: July - September 2007

Categories: Front-end developer, Govt web standards tester, CSS-based layout, e-govt/WCAG compliance, Squiz/MySource Matrix, Government websites, Medium sites

Brief: to build a set of template pages for the SmartMovez website, which acts as a one-stop-shop for partners and organisations that work with the NZ Transport Agency. The design was fun and friendly, and the site was information-rich. The programming and integration of the templates was done by Squiz.

My responsibilities included:

  • Development of the site in CSS and HTML 4.01 Transitional, which would then be integrated into the MySource Matrix CMS by Squiz
  • Close liaison with the Squiz team in order to ensure that they could easily integrate my templates into MySource Matrix
  • Hand-coding in HTML 4.01 Transitional to a very high level of accessibility, and following NZ e-government Guidelines
  • Inclusion of all possible accessibility elements, including skip links, access keys, alt tags, titles, summaries, captions and full accessibility coding for forms, with e-govt testing of all pages (level 1 mandatory, level 2 as many as possible, level 3 wherever practical)
  • Extensive testing of the site at all stages of the development process, ensuring complete consistency across the following browsers and platforms:
    • PC: Internet Explorer 5.01, IE5.5, IE6, IE7; Firefox
    • Mac: Firefox, Netscape, Opera, Safari
  • Ensuring that every page and stylesheet had been validated using the W3C Markup Validation Service and that it conformed to HTML 4.01 Transitional requirements
  • Development of print stylesheets sitewide.

This was a fun design to work on, with a few tricky bits of CSS to achieve, which is always fun. As this is a government website, accessibility and e-government compliance were a top priority. The templates were to be integrated into the MySource Matrix CMS by Squiz, so it was important to maintain close communications with the Squiz team, both to ensure that my templates could be integrated easily into the CMS, and also to ensure they had sufficient information to create a pixel-perfect rendition of my original templates within the CMS.