About eMeerkats v.4
eMeerkats is now in its fourth revision, which makes use of both PHP and heavy amounts of CSS. This was done to ease administration and maintenance, which had been rather difficult to do when eMk relied solely on static HTML pages.Enhancements under the hood
PHP functions pull in information from other pages and embed them in the HTML, all right before the server sends you the page. This makes the individual pages smaller and faster to download, as they all won't have the same whopping amount of redundant data. This streamlines bandwidth consumption and administration time, as it is only necessary to change something in one place now, instead of making the same one change across ten or fifteen separate pages.
A centralized CSS style file coordinates the look and feel of the entire site. This ensures a unified look and feel across the board, and it makes changing the look of the site as simple and instant as editing one text file.
The new look and feel
Staying true to its original design goals, the new eMk interface is simple, elegant, and easy to navigate. A navigation bar under the header image keeps the entire site at your fingertips no matter where you are, while a sidebar on the right gives you access to information that is relative to the context of the page you're on. And as always, clicking the eMeerkats logo takes you safely back to the site's main page.
eMk v.4 does not rely on graphics as heavily as its predecessor, v.3. Instead, CSS allows for more elegant styling of plain text, and the graphics that remain are lightweight and easy on the eyes. All this adds up to shorter download times, less overall bandwidth consumption, and a Web site that flows easilly and organically.