It's been nearly four years since this site last had a redesign. I had grown rather fond of the simplistic style, of the various coloured boxes that made up the slimline, fast downloading design that's been live since early 2001.

But now, as you can see, things have moved on. The design was looking dated and, as the actress said to the bishop, packaging really is everything. No matter how good the content of this site, if the design looked out of date, some readers would assume that the content was out of date too.

So, here we are. A few weeks spent crouched over a text editor, hopping between that and Photoshop to generate the smallest and sleekest images for the navigation. Hundreds of behind-the-scenes tweaks to the content management system. And a slightly changed layout to make it easier to see what's going on. I think I'll scream if I see another 'href' tag or HTML validation error, but now it's done, with just a few minor adjustments left to make.

The new design has been tested in the three main browsers and seems to work well (let me know if it causes you any problems). There are text notes on all the important images so hopefully it'll work well for people with screen-readers too.

I've written in the past that content is king. I still believe that it is. But an aesthetically pleasing wrapping for that content is definitely queen. Please read on.