Mystify Soccer - Site style updated

Site style updated

This hopefully means very little to most of you - some may not even notice!

However, I've 'cleaned up' the layout of the web site this week in order to give more room on all pages and give a slight performance boost by removing some excess code.

The extra room has been gained by losing the right hand panel. It's something I have wanted to do for a while as the data on there was mainly pointless - it wasn't even on every page anyway. The data that was on there can still be found on the site and hopefully in places it is needed. I'm not quite sure what I originally wanted the right panel for now but that's irrelevant now.

You'll notice the 'quick links' that used to be on the right hand side near the bottom (and thus probably never used) is now a little more prominent and only on the screen after signing in and they are now more relevant to your team, so it will take you to your league results rather than just the English league as it previously did.

Also, I've tried to give similar functions/layout within the site the same look and feel now. There were a few that I'd developed over differing periods and forgotten to match up so you may find buttons have been moved around to accommodate this. You should still find everything easily though - it's not like I've actually moved controls to different pages!

The biggest change you may notice is the tabs within sections. Previously there were some options at the top and some at the bottom, depending on the page you were looking at. Part of my standardisation has been to clean all this up so that they all look the same and tabs will now separate sections from now on.

Having the tabs means I can add more features over the next few years without worrying about where to put links or extending the left hand menu. I can possibly even remove some of the current left hand option and merge them into others should I feel the need. At least then the navigation is either menu or tabs - nice and simple for everyone!

The extra space will obviously assist in giving me greater scope for displaying details. I haven't changed any pages too dramatically as yet - I've just made sure they look OK given the wider area. However, when I sporadically re-visit pages from now on, I have options to work with. I've previously found myself squashing things together or removing the right hand panel anyway. You may find a right hand panel appearing on some pages in the future but it will be for information related to that page only and not a global one.

I've probably forgotten most of the amendments I have made but, as usual, let me know if you find anything that looks strange - I've tested it all in most browsers but not every one - there are far too many these days! Although you can ignore that last sentence if you are still using Internet Explorer 6 as I've decided it isn't worth the extra code required to support it. Previously I've tried to make it work in that but, as everyone, including me, has wanted it killed off for years due to its buggy rendering, I've now given up supporting it. If you use that or even IE7, then I suggest you upgrade. IE8 isn't perfect but it's a lot better than the previous ones.

I know some of you access the site on your phones as well - I've not yet got round to doing a full blown mobile site as that would be a big job but I'm certainly a step nearer to being able to now I have lost the right panel. I am hoping I'll never have to though and screens just get bigger and bigger!

Finally, the eagle eyed will spot a new feature I'm attempting to implement for next season.... and I won't be explaining how it calculates.