Web Task Force (WTF)
2/26/2002 Meeting Notes
(These are not comprehensive notes.)
Review Proposal #1
Paraphrased from Lisa and others: Reviewing the 6 sites listed in the 2/12/2002 Agenda as "homework" after the first meeting was interesting and helpful. It was good to see how other colleges are implementing standards on their site: some are much stricter than others, even down to which font style and size to use or a restriction from using the logo colors.
Change "Official" to "Core" in the proposal because other pages aren't "unofficial" since they are a part of the site.
Re Audience Overview:
- Mark: Get input from ASOC - what would they want to see on the site?
- Mark?: Maybe talk with Mara van de Ven re high schools students
- Board of Trustees opinion
- Staff opinion through Classified Senate (trying to restart it)
Re Levels of Ohlone College website:
- David Bertaina (sp?) should have most recent organization chart
- Committees are similar to Departments
- Public Organizations in Instruction are similar to Departments
- Bob: Concerned about maintenance of committee sites: who? what about outdated info? what about those who don't want to maintain? Mark: suggested including a link to the email address for the Committee's Chair
Re Policies & Procedures:
- Standards for Other Pages: Bob: There may be problems with requiring use of standard font styles and colors
Missing "Opt Out" section:
- Example: Philosophy and Psychology
- Possibly provide mini-template with default/standard information for departments not wanting to maintain their own site
Appendix A: List of Official and Miscellaneous Pages:
- Lisa will review and markup re Student Services-related pages
- Shirley and Cheryl will organize the list
Appendix D: List of Public Organizations in Instruction:
- Library should be linked to from the home page, as is done on a number of sites, including UCSD
Back-End Technologies Update
From Tj's update:
- Possible future Datatel connectivity (a later phase of the website project):
- Ohlone works with a programmer in Canada: Jamie Brannon
- Datatel can feed a database from which the website can pull data (this is how WebAdvisor works)
- Need to figure out what information we need to populate from Datatel to the website (not information that is available through WebAdvisor); examples:
- Faculty info: name, phone number, URL, office location, office hours
- Programs? Courses in a program?
- Certificates? Courses for a certificate?
- Replacement for Business Card script:
- Same programmer
- Process according to A&R(?): Ohlone employee completes online HTML form re change/add information; CGI script sends data in an email message to Admissions & Records; A&R modifies the information in Datatel
- Lookup script will pull information from a database fed on a regular basis (weekly?) from Datatel for display on the web
- Zope provides:
- unlimited undo
- versioning
- roles/permissions
- user account management
- checkout pages to work on them
- staging for review before publish
- publish to live site
- review of site
Demonstration of Websites Designed Using Valid CSS
Cheryl displayed and discussed the appearance of and coding for a number of websites using a variety of browsers. The goal was to demonstrate that sites using the latest technologies are still "readable" in older browsers but may be stylistically different since older browsers may not understand all features of the latest XHTML and CSS technologies.
The browsers demonstrated were:
- Internet Explorer 5.5
- Netscape 6.21
- Netscape 4.75
- Opera 6.01
- Lynx (text browser)
The websites visited were:
- http://www.ohlone.cc.ca.us/people/clambert
Designed using valid XHTML and valid CSS for positioning. No layout tables are used. - http://www.ohlone.cc.ca.us
Designed using unvalidated HTML. CSS is not used for a majority of the site. Tables are used for layout throughout. - http://www.alistapart.com
Designed using valid XHTML and valid CSS for positioning. No layout tables are used. - http://www.cheryllambert.com
Designed using valid XHTML and valid CSS for positioning. No layout tables are used. - http://homepage.mac.com/iblog/nn4_3col_header.html
This is a 3-column CSS-P layout with a header and a footer that works in Netscape 4.7x (rare to find). Designed using valid HTML and valid CSS for positioning. No layout tables are used. -
http://staging.noao.edu/newnso/nso_kp/nso-kp.html
This is a site designed using the Netscape 4.7x-compatible CSS-P layout.
Because it is important for Ohlone to present an attractive website design to users of all browsers (including Netscape 4.7x which does not display pages coded using CSS positioning in the same manner as newer browsers), we will continue to use tables for layout and use recommended accessibility features to aid navigation.
CSS will be used to control colors, font types, font sizes, and alignment. CSS positioning will not be used for layout. Use of the <font> tag will be strongly discouraged as it is a deprecated element in XHTML and won't be valid in the next version of XHTML. Use of the "align" and "valign" attributes will be discourages since they are also deprecated elements.
Review of the UCSD Site
The UC San Diego (http://www.ucsd.edu) website is very nicely organized by type of information in one navigation bar and type of audience in another navigation bar. These navigation areas display portal pages from which the site visitor move further into the site. The home page and portal pages use the same design, with the graphic on the home page slightly larger.
A few divisions/departments/programs at UCSD have adopted the look and feel of the home and portal pages. Many others have not. The pages that have not adopted the standard design have the UCSD logo which usually links to the UCSD home page. Those pages may also contain a standard footer.
Many of the pages using the standard design include an image in the header that changes. This can be implemented on the Ohlone site to change every day, instead of every time the page is loaded to cut back on the download time of the page.
Discussion About Lynx
The Lynx text browser is a great tool to use to check accessibility of web pages. The URL used for the demonstration is: http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html. The Lynx browser is also available for free download.
Generally, if a page is properly coded, it will display in an organized and readable fashion in a text browser. Pages that are incorrectly coded may not display at all using a text browser.
A text browser displays a page similar to how a screen reader program "reads" a page. Images without an alternative ("alt") text attribute will display as "[INLINE]" instead of having a description of the image (this is an accessibility issue). Images that have no content value on a page (such as a spacer image or a horizontal bar image) should include the "alt" attribute coded with no description between the double quotes (for example: <img src="spacer.gif" alt="" width="100" height="2">). This allows the screen reader to ignore the graphic.
Quick Review of Official Ohlone Colors and Possible Color Palettes for the website
Karen Masters provided the PMS color numbers for the official Ohlone green and gold to Cheryl. These colors are teal and a dark gold. They are not web-safe colors.
Cheryl displayed a draft of a color palette she and Shirley had briefly discussed. Cheryl plans to create additional color palettes for review in a later meeting. The color palettes will use the closest web safe values of the PMS colors, as well as a forest green color replacing the teal.
Emergency