Homesick? BirdGuides' new-look home page

We're delighted to unveil our new-look home page, conceived in collaboration with Dublin-based graphic designer David Suttle (www.suttledesign.com). Although we hope you'll appreciate its clean lines and coherent layout, the changes are far from just cosmetic. The new collapsible menu in the left-hand margin (click the plus symbols for more options) should make it quicker and easier to reach the information you want in our ever-expanding website. Now we're relieved of the need to provide quite so many links to various important and not-so-important pages across the site, we're able to devote more of the page to highlighting new and popular features — but you should still find all the links you're used to (and more) either in the menu or in the "See also..." section at the bottom of the page. You can also jump quickly to a selection of our most popular pages using the "Jump to" drop-down at the top right.

Another new feature is the "Latest..." panel, below the date near the top right of the screen, highlighting the most recent content and illustrating just how often new material is added to our site.

Internally, we've introduced a content management system which will make it much easier for us to update the home page regularly, keeping you up-to-date with the latest developments at BirdGuides. Technically, the page uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) which make it more maintainable and should improve performance on modern browsers, as well as ensuring it is "future-proof" as web technologies develop.

We're already getting nostalgic about the old look:

and its, er, individual choice of background colour (known internally as "Nykris green" after the company that produced the design, but vividly described by one customer as "snot green"). Those with really long memories may even remember the very first BirdGuides home page. Here it is, in all its primitive glory:

We've come a long way since 1996...