atlantic.edu upgrades

Below is a summary of some of the upgrades to atlantic.edu that were released on Friday.  

1. Main navigation - the main navigation found in the header of the site is now larger and easier to read. Sub-menus are now displayed via a horizontal drop down versus the previous display. 
2. Reduced HTTP requests - the overall number of HTTP requests being requested per page load have been reduced on the majority of pages. Reducing the number of requests greatly improves page load time.
3. Minified JS and CSS files - the majority of Javascript and CSS files have been minified. This again reduces page load time a great deal.
4. Increased use of white space - the increased use of white space between elements on most pages, gives the site a cleaner easier to read appearance.
5. Increased font size and spacing - increasing the font size and spacing in the content region again makes reading the pages content easier on the eyes, resulting in a better web experience.
6. Separation between regions - the different regions of the pages through use of lightweight background images and CSS better define the different areas on the web site. The header, footer, sidebar, and main content area are now better defined.
7. CSS sprites - are used throughout the site now to reduce the amount of images loaded onto the page, resulting in a faster web experience.
8. Use of PNG vs GIF - switching many of the GIF images on the site to PNG reduced filesize a great deal. In some cases a 60% savings was had! Less filesize to download the faster a page loads.

While there's a ton of further improvements being worked, I hope you find these recent upgrades lead to a better web experience. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to share.