What's meant by 'flexible' websites?

When we say that one of the advantages of an Artemis Computing designed website is that it will be 'flexible', we mean a number of different things.

Visual Flexibility - means web surfers with wide monitors and small monitors will appreciate Artemis Computing's sites just as much like surfers with more 'normal' monitors. The web pages adjust themselves to the size of your monitor. For example, if you were to view this page, or almost any other page created by Artemis Computing on more than one monitor (of different sizes) at the same time, you'd see that this light colored area and the text inside it expands or contracts to fill the screen, down to a certain minimum size, which is rather narrow. You can achieve this same effect by making your browser window something other than full screen, grasping the right side of it with with your mouse and make this window size wider and narrower.

The advantage of visual flexibility is an improved user experience. People can control their viewing area. There are no annoying scroll bars for smaller monitors or trying to look at more than one page side by side, and there are no wasted blank areas off to the sides when someone is using a newer, wider monitor and is trying to look at as much of the information simultaneously as possible.

Style Flexibility - this is also visual but not a design philosophy like above. Websites created with templates and style sheets are relatively easy to redecorate by changing the colors or images or type style or rearranging some things.

Browser Flexibility - means no single browser is required for someone to use sites created by Artemis Computing. Internet Explorer™ 6 may have most of the traffic as of this writing, but lots of people are also using older versions and also Firefox™, Opera™, Netscape™, Safari™, and other browsers. Plus people aren't all running these browsers on the same operating system, nor with the same options enabled, all of which makes web pages behave differently. Pages that are inflexible aren't usable anything other than the most recent most popular browsers. It's not possible to guarantee 100% compatibility with every computer used to access the internet but it's usually possible to be compatible with well over 90% without sacrificing usability for design, and without creating multiple versions of a site.

Flexible Experience - this is more than just another way of restating browser flexibility. Different users can have different experiences with the same site. Sites created by Artemis Computing have features which appeal to users of newer browsers plus they have more traditional and alternative ways of getting around for those who don't.

Flexible Growth - sites are designed with maintenance and evolution in mind, and thus can grow (or contract) fairly easily because of the way the pages are organized.