The Food Safety Bureau was setup after recent changes in European law regarding food hygiene. AstonishMe was given the task of producing a website that had a clean business layout which was simple for the user to navigate. At some point in the near future the website will be expanded to incorporate a members newsletter using the b₂evolution blog engine, and an online store for products relating to HACCP (read the site, it'll tell you what it means ;)).

The website has been coded to pass all the World Wide Web Consortium's standards for XHTML and Css. It has also been designed to pass the WAI / WCAG standards, which are specifications providing guidance on accessibility of web sites for people with disabilities. It also has a fixed header and footer (lol, try explaining that concept to Interdebt Exploiter), which means that the menu is always visible to the user, making navigation a cinch.

Geeky Detail: Whilst it's great that you can crowbar a fixed header/footer layout into Interdebt Exploiter, it's a crying shame that it means that you can't position ANY other elements (including relative) without it seeing them as "fixed" as well ...... ahhh well there's always IE 8 to look forward to :| ¥

We came up with the plain boxy look to move the emphasis onto the content of the website and to ensure that the header didn't take up to much of the shop window, as it was always our intention to go for a fixed header/footer. To overcome the lack of the normal graphics in the header we decided to splash some striking colours onto the page, and scatter a select few images over the pages. These help to ovecome the otherwise plain layout.