Pictures don’t do this site justice. You really need to see this website in motion in order to experience the effortless navigation, groundbreaking technology, ingenious design, & the near-obsessive level of polish.
Watch a demo:
Highlights include:
- Scroll-to-navigate: You can use the side navigation like normal, but you can also just scroll the page to continue reading and have the left navigation, web address, and page title automatically update so you never loose where you left off.
- A living design: Animations are tastefully strewn throughout since the Internet is much more active than traditional static design. Even the animations are individually eased & finessed to match the exact feel/responsiveness that was desired.
- Zero page loads: The entire navigation is AJAX-based and makes use of non-obtrusive transitions to elegantly introduce the new page without having to load an entirely new page. Also, the URL updates based on where you are on the site so you can actually send a link to a specific part of a specific page and the back/forward browser buttons also work (which can’t be said for many of the AJAX/Flash navigated sites out there today)… it’s really amazing. Even sending in the contest form ends in an elegant animation thanking visitors for their participation.
- Zero plugins necessary: The site uses HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for everything it does, and doesn’t use Adobe Flash. This means it’ll work on mobile devices!
- Content Management System: The content management system was taken into account the entire time in order to keep it as effortless as possible for Mercy to make changes. It may be hard to believe due to its highly specialized content & visual style, but it is remarkably simple to make updates to.
- Graceful degradation: This website seems rather advanced & complex so you might wonder how older web browsers can run it. We didn’t place a “you must be running *insert web browser here* to access this site” message. Our goal was to make it available to anyone that wants to view it from any device, and any computer (no matter how new/old it may be). The site is still accessible even for those few with JavaScript turned off on their web browser. This site pulls that hefty goal off & doesn’t break a sweat by letting its code become bloated.
This site is a milestone in many regards: the sheer internet technology being used, a design built from the ground up for the interactive medium & enhancing the user’s experience, and is still completely accessible.
