Making use of web technology

August 26, 2005

Have you ever discovered a new technique, technology, or design, that you wanted to use in your next design? Just so you can experiment with it, see how it works and maybe improve it. I know I like playing around with the latest technolgy here and there. Here at IDI, we have just launched a product for AVON using some of these new technologies.

YourAvon

The product is based on IDI’s Array technology. AVON has thousands of representatives throughout the world and it was up to IDI to create a simple website that AVON Representatives could manage their business. It has been live for about a month now and we just pushed a spanish version live today. There are over 40,000 active AVON representative websites now on our system. Here is an example site that you can check out.

Let me tell you about some of the new techniques, technology we used for these sites.

  • xHTML and CSS layouts (note: the base code validates, but an owner can add their own code, so it may not always validate)
  • We used SIFR for the headings and the owners name on the site
  • We used the hcard microformat for the personal contact information on each site.
  • It is not completely bullet-proof, but we are using ems for font-size
  • The owner can choose from four different color combinations and arrange their site a number of ways. We control all of that with CSS. There is a color stylesheet, a layout stylesheet and a base stylesheet that does the rest.

It has been a great project to push more of this new technology out on the web. Overall it makes the site easier to maintain and at the same time better for the AVON owner of the site. I don’t think it would have turned out the same if I had not known about some of these new techniques. If you develop for the web embrace the new technologies and learn them, they won’t always be the best solution, but hey, give it try and you might surprise yourself.