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Web Task Force (WTF)

3/26/2002 Meeting Notes

(These are not comprehensive notes.)

Review the 3/26/2002 Agenda

ASOC Student Member Replacement

Ricky Sun (ricky_maple@yahoo.com) replaced Anastassia Dolgova for today's meeting.

Review Draft #2 Web Page Guidelines

  • Practices & Policies:
    • Mark: Concept of "portal pages" should be explained
    • Under "All Divisions are required…", clearly indicate that "Academic Programs" include degrees, certificates of achievement and fast-track certificates
    • "All Departments are encouraged…" -- Should all Departments be required to have at least one single page with contact information? This will be provided at the Division level for Departments not having their own sites.
      • "Link to Class Schedule pulling info related to Department" -- the link will be to WebAdvisor (as close as we can get to a class schedule output for a particular Department)
    • "Faculty pages are required…" -- Change to "Faculty who have a web site are required…"
  • Ohlone College Logo:
    • Mark: Doesn't like the idea of forcing faculty to use the official Ohlone logo in the upper left corner of every page. A compromise was worked out that faculty could alternatively use a small version of the logo (with link to Ohlone home page) in the standard footer.
    • Bob: What about PDF/Word/Excel/etc. files provided on the Ohlone web site? Do they need the logo in the upper left corner and a standard footer?
      • No. Outside the scope of what this committee can control.
    • Bob suggested that PDF/Word/Excel/etc. files be opened in a new window so that when the window is closed, the site visitor is returned to an Ohlone page. Many agreed that this is good. However, for accessibility reasons, any link that opens a new window must indicate that it is opening a new window:
      • <a href> tags should have a "title" attribute indicating that the link opens in a new window
      • The text of the link must be descriptive (example: do not use "click here"; use "Ohlone's Academic Calendar")
      • links to PDF files should be marked with "(PDF)" or with a PDF file icon or some other method
    • Bob: What about Union pages that are on the web site? Lisa will investigate more about the Union's pages being on the Ohlone web site.
  • Accessibility:
    • Paula: "Do not use HTML frames" -- Frames aren't barred/banned by accessibility rules. Cheryl: True. We strongly prefer that no frames be used due to printing and bookmarking issues, in addition to the difficulty assistive technologies have with them. This statement will be modified to give the reasons for *not* using frames in future site designs. Pages currently using frames must be modified to comply with established accessibility guidelines for using frames on a site.
  • Content:
    • Cheryl/Mark: How to fund Adobe Acrobat 6 when it comes out? How to determine who gets to have it on their computer? Shirley: April may have $ for assistive technology software in her budget…?
    • Pilar: Is PDF icon required or can text description be used? -- The icon is not required. "(PDF)" or "(PDF file)" or * with a footnote at the bottom of the page is acceptable. A link to the Adobe Reader program on Adobe's site must be included on all pages linking to PDF files. We prefer that the link be to the "accessible version" of the Reader program.
  • Programming:
    • What is available? How to use? -- These questions will be answered in the Web Development section of the web site.
  • Testing:
    • Kevin: "Test, validate, and correct …" -- We should specify "Section 508" accessibility rules. These are more specific than the W3C WAI accessibility guidelines.

Paula asked about the ability to review web server statistics with the new server. Tj will look into this.

Cheryl will make these modifications to the Web Page Guidelines and email WTF with a link to Draft #3. Mark will email the link to Draft #3 to the Faculty Senate with a note indicating that work will be done on the web site over the summer and access will be affected until Zope training has been received. Shirley will email the link to Draft #3 to TACO members.

Review Notes re First Meeting with Doug, Tj, Shirley, Cheryl

  • Doug stopped by Cheryl's desk on Monday to let her know that the IS Department has started a review of what HTML forms are currently being used, what can be removed from the site (not used anymore), and will begin converting these forms to work with UNIX-based scripts on one of the servers in the IS Department. This will reduce the amount of cleanup work that needs to be done for those IS Department forms when the conversion to the Linux server is done. So, those scripts will already be in place and ready for other HTML forms on the site to be converted to use them.
  • Bob: Can some faculty be trained *before* the middle of August? Cheryl: No guarantee but I can try. There may be some sliding of deadlines and I may not have enough time to develop training materials before the mid-August date.
  • Lisa(?): Need a list of faculty who are heavy users of the web site. These need to be trained first.
  • Mark(?): Suggested that training for urgent-need faculty be done on the "required" Flex day to ensure that they're here.

Alternative re Creation/Maintenance of Division/Department Sites

Lisa Waits and Shirley Peck met and discussed the possibility of obtaining funding for student assistants to work with Cheryl as part of the "Web Team" with the idea that the Web Team would create/maintain web sites for Divisions/Departments that do not want to be responsible for creating/maintaining their own sites. If the Web Team assumed this responsibility, the site would be converted to the same templates used for the home page and portal pages on the web site. If a Division/Department wants to have a unique look-and-feel, they will need to create/maintain it themselves.

Responsibility for ensuring that the content of a Division/Department web site remains with the Dean.

Cheryl's additional note on 3/27: A method of collecting and organizing and prioritizing creation/maintenance requests *must* be developed, especially using a model where the Web Team is responsible for more than "just" the core web sites.

Site Design Screen Shots

Design 4

Cheryl likes this design a lot because it is clearer and brighter than the previous designs (see the bottom of Notes for the 3/12/2002 meeting).

Comments: The side navigation doesn't stand out enough -- try different buttons with a greenish background without the outline and others.

Screenshot of design 4.

Design 5

The logo in the left corner was an experimentation and would work if a unique logo (square or round) were created by each Division/Department to go in the white space next to the official Ohlone logo. An alternative is to fill that same logo space with a slightly-larger-than-usual version of the official Ohlone logo for those pages/Divisions/Departments without a unique small logo to accompany the official logo.

Comments: The narrower header leaves more room for content. However, the second horizontal navigation bar is lost since there's no room for it (this means narrowing down the number of navigational elements). Also, it is difficult to find images that are identifiable in a short area like that. It was suggested that collages of different "Ohlone" elements could be created to fill that space.

Screenshot of design 5.

Footer