ASAP Utilities has a new website and a logo

ASAP Utilities has a new website and a logo. The previous website has been used from 2001 until august 2006. We are really enthusiastic about the new website. And we hope you are as excited about the new look of the ASAP Utilities website as we are.

About new logo

After thinking for a long time we have created a logo for ASAP Utilities. It had to be:

simple and clear
multilangual
unique and easy to recognize
easy to be displayed on screen and print
represent what ASAP Utilities stands for: Easy to use time-saving tools.
not similar to all the current spreadsheet-a-like logos

After a long time we came with the thumbs-up logo in orange. In the Netherlands thumbs-up means okay, good (Wikipedia definition of thumbs-up). Orange is the national color of the Netherlands. Together we think it looks great.
The sub-phrase "the essential add-in for excel users" might sound a bit cocky but it is not ment that way. PC Magazine called ASAP Utilities 'the one essential add-in for all Excel users' in it's 2005 Ultimate Utility Guide. However we do believe that everybody that works more or less regular with Excel will benefit from the tools ASAP Utilities has to offer.

About the new website

We have been playing with the idea for a new website since a few years. In the past five years we have built numerous websites for our clients and invented some neat techniques for presentation and content-management.

This year I finally could make time free to update my personal favorite utility. We have spent much time on improving ASAP Utilities (see the blog) and we have written a detailed User Guide. Now there is also the new logo and website.

The most important reasons for the new ASAP Utilities website:

more focus on ASAP Utilities itself instead of Excel
more detailed information about ASAP Utilities; what it is and how it works
present the information better
printer-friendly pages
drop the use of frames which makes linking to certain pages easier
works in all browsers
better accessibility, for example larger and resizable fonts, and working better on all screens (in 2006 the most used screensizes on our website are 1024x768 56%, 1280x1024 18%, 800x600 9%)
better use of today's site-building techniques
a website that is easier to maintain for us