Web site improvements

Some months back, our e-commerce hosting service, BigCommerce, did an upgrade that irreversibly broke the functionality of our old site. We literally had to switch to a new off-the shelf "theme" with zero notice, but luckily we had things functional again in about an hour or two, just not to our level or look and feel that we wanted.

We're happy to announce that we've been pursuing both interface tweaks and some functionality upgrades to make your user experience that much better. Some of these include:

1. Revamped master navigation menu. The default theme floated up a big white window with a confusion layout of subcategories, but now the menu is much tighter, with subcategories opening near the top of the main nav bar without requiring the mousing skills of surgeon to keep the accordian menu from collapsing. We also made those main category menus scrollable so you don't have to scroll the screen just to get to the end of a menu.
2. Revamped image display. We restored our old functionality wehre if you mouse over thumbnail product images, they automatically display as the current image. They no longer "bounce" and pan/move if the image is bigger than the default display size and if we have an even bigger version of it, you can click on it and display it in a popup gallery (and use left/right arrows to go through it). These changes also keep large images from overwhelming the product page and keep the system from trying to blow up small product images to a large pixellated size.
3. Better security against bots that test stolen card numbers with fake low-value purchases.
4. We removed a step removed from the checkout and now our checkout displays a detailed message about rush shipping logistics when you select that option. Not all products can ship "same day".
5. A new and improved experience on our International Sales page. We have a slick new map that can be explored, a toggle that will display the names of all 120 countries and territories we have shipped to, and a new collapsible pane to assist our International customers with finding a freight forwarder or consolidator.
6. Improved mobile site behavior, particularly with the navigation menus.

And there is more to come, with a redesigned logo and more.