Browser Compatibility

This website is designed to be viewed using Mozilla FireFox, a stable standards-based, open-source browser that works on multiple platforms. The reason for this is that FireFox sticks to the W3C Standards, which state how a browser should display the information sent to it from the server. Browsers have varying support for these standards, forcing website developers to work harder to make sure their website looks and acts the same on different browsers.

Of course, it is impossible to keep up with what each browser supports, especially when you consider minor layout bugs that may not be very obvious on most sites and therefore hard to track down, although cause chaos on other websites. It is for this reason that website developers tend to choose a particular browser to work with, partially supporting other browsers if they have time. This makes it important to stick to a standards-based browser to make sure that all the websites you visit look and act the way they were designed to.

JavaScript

JavaScript is code that can be executed by a visitor's browser to add extra functionality and interactivity to a page on a website. It can be very useful for developers trying add animation to their website, support AJAX (see below), increase security and to make their websites more accessible to disabled users, although it can also be used for the wrong purposes such as floating adverts which can be a nuisance.

It is possible to disable JavaScript in most browser, although some browsers don't support it at all (mobile devices are a good example of this). On the other hand, JavaScript is supported by most of the modern browsers in use and support for it is growing. It is strongly recommended that you use a standards based browser with good JavaScript support (such as Mozilla FireFox) to make sure that you are not missing out on some of the best features of a website.

You can see whether your browser supports JavaScript below:

Your browser does not support JavaScript or it is disabled!

AJAX

Put simply, AJAX is a method of sending requests from a visitor's browser to the server. What makes AJAX special is that it can do this without the user leaving the page, only downloading small sections of pages instead of the whole thing. This is very useful for Internet Applications, as it allows the page to send requests to add, edit and delete records in a database and then replace a section of the page with the server's reply, making it faster and more interactive. More information can be found by searching Google, although you should at least be aware that AJAX relies on JavaScript, so you must enable it to send AJAX requests (some browsers don't support JavaScript and some companies may disable it for various reasons).

SSL Certificates

SSL Certificates are used to create secure connections between a browser and a server (or a website). This is useful for sending personal data, including passwords, over the Internet. For a browser to create a secure connection to a website, the certificate needs to be downloaded and validated. The validation process includes confirming that the certificate belongs to the server, which is done using trusted Certificate Authorities (a third party who will confirm the identity of the server) which the browser will either trust or not trust.

Different browsers trust different Certificate Authorities (or CAs). This is important, because if the browser doesn't trust the CA (and in turn the website) the user will be shown a warning dialog giving them the option to either trust the website anyway or cancel the request, which is not only annoying but can scare visitors away.

Most browsers support the most common CAs, although some browsers will need to download unsupported CAs' certificates, which will allow the visitor to create a secure connection without a warning and with peace of mind that the website belongs to who it says it does, providing the CA can be trusted.

For installation instructions, please see the SSL Installation page.

Webmaster: Christopher Wassall