Attempted update, some thoughts, some links
I spent too much time today trying to update my version of textpattern on the latest version and failed. What I have now is a site limping along, but it seems to work. On with links (or I will never post them):
- How would you like your site? Fixed, fluid, or elastic?
- Ideal web team size – how about we start with a web team.
- More corners that I like much better… just not as easy.
- Mighty Essential links
- Copywriting is interface design sort of supports what Jen is talking about. Good content makes a good web site.
What else have I been doing? Well trying to get organized with the help of Basecamp and my nifty Backpack. The more I learn about Backpack, the more I can’t believe how useful this will become. Web based productivity tools that are simple, cheap, and effective. The email/cell phone integration alone… amazing and it makes me want to spend time with Ruby on Rails even more.
Oh, I have been playing with Tiger too. What an amazing OS.
CSS to shake your finger at
OK so this site hasn’t been re-designed as yet. Working on it as time allows… What have I been doing? Keeping my co-op student (Areeb) busy of course.
- RSS feed for news releases fixed – that was acting up for a while. It now pulls the XML from the DB and validates. Yay for that.
- Keeping on top of home page feedback and making adjustments to the home page where required – I wonder if people think before they type? 99% great stuff, just that 1% that don’t get it – “your site sucks” is not feedback, it is whinging. For all web folks on campus, distinguish between the legitimate stuff and the soap box rant and don’t let it get to you.
- PHP script for a DevNet article which happens to make a good training excercise for Areeb. Not sure if he thinks so. Anyway, I will post more about the article closer to publication time.
- Co-op boot camps – great fun had by all. Loads of students working on campus web sites this term. I would expect great things by the fall term!!!
The only thing stopping this site from being worked on is that centering bug (collapse window and site slides left). Not sure how to fix that with the CSS I have. But shall see.
Back to code.. grr.
Let the games begin – Home page changed
Ok so I posted this a couple days late. I really wanted to get part 3 written before I did anything else though. This blog will undergo a redesign shortly – as soon as I get through yesterday’s feedback. I really want to re-state that the UW home page as it is right now is still being worked on. We are not going to make any major navigation changes but you will see lots of cosmetic upgrades.
A Beta Home Page: part 3, the layout
The Beta site has gone live over the weekend so now you likely have already seen the changes. Obvious layout changes are the search in the top, no drop down menus, and a more detailed footer which are all inline with the CLF. Some other layout changes include page centering, strong headlines, and a little background colouring on paragraphs.
CSS Changes
First off, you may notice that I refer to different CSS. Why? Well I made a few minor adjustments for centering (left nav over a bit, bigger, and lower) and I wasn’t sure if that should just be custom or an actual change to the ‘UWblank.css.’ I think offering up some v2p0 will give you chance to test your pages. But there are some other things I needed to fix:
bugs from bug fixes
Wow is this an annoying bug. There are a few workarounds, but what I have done is add this line:
* html ul li a {height:1em;}
This should take care of the problem for future ul’s used for navigation but it opens up a new one. The fix is posted on the forum.
Page centre/er
This one is causing some discussion in places. What I did was insert a ‘pagecontainer’ div at the top of the document that encases the entire site. Then in the custom.css file i added:
#pagecontainer {
position:absolute;
width: 760px;
height:inherit;
right:50%;
margin:0 -380px 0 0;
}
This has the effect of centering the web page without much fuss. Neato. It does have some drawbacks though. Seems if you go at 640×480 resolution, the page gets cut off to the left. Now if you are using 640×480, I wonder how usable the internet or any applications are for you but that shouldn’t matter. That needs to be fixed and it is on the list of fixes for final version in the fall.
One thing, if you are going with centering please know it is a pretty rough implementation.
Back to the content
Loads of people have noticed that the right navigation appears to be floating with text wrapped. Well that isn’t right navigation. Those links are as much part of the relevant content of the page as anything else. It does not appear anywhere else either, just that page. That is why it is different.
How about the home page right nav? Well that is a fluid column that will change regularly. It is the ‘flavour of the month’ club. So if you have something you want in there, let me know. We are going to changing out links as they come.
The rest of the content is a mix of what was there before and the ‘We’re Waterloo’ annual report that goes out yearly. The content based on the report will be updated when the report is.
On to beta 2?
Over the summer we will be doing some usability testing, some development, and listening to other feedback received. We expect to be done fiddling with the home page in the fall – then the cycle starts again
I will be posting here thoughts, ideas, beta URL’s to new features, and links over the summer. So stay tuned. Keep those kind words and entertaining feedback submissions coming… I could right a book.
A Beta home page: part 2, how scripting makes it better
We in the middle of a three part series on some of the technology used on the beta version of the new UW home page. In this part I will over how scripting, both server side and client side, come together to make site production and maintenance better. This is all non-techie… and there is a sneak peak at the end.
Client side
This basically is the sIFR and the nifty corners mentioned in part 1. If you have visited their perspective web sites you have some idea of what they do. One is basically a javascript function that parses flash text, trick the browser, and allows the web developer to offer up fonts that people don’t have on their computer.
The second just tells the browser to use a bunch of CSS classes that result in a nice rounded corner on a box. This saves the developer/designer from putting in a lot of tags to achieve the same effect.
Of course there is also the CSS files but we will talk about those in Part 3.
Server side
All the pages are PHP or forced to behave like PHP with .htaccess. This is so two main features work properly: the ‘Graphics made’ PHP search and the PHP includes.
I think that deserves a good diagram so hold on in regards to that. Basically there are four includes: header, right nav, and footer. There is also one that calls in the nifty javascript. These are all set up so I don’t have to update the Dreameaver template to update those parts of the site. The only things I have to update the .dwt file for are left navigation changes (and I don’t plan on making too many) and include changes. Oh and CSS calls, lets not forget about those.
The PHP includes have a huge advantage for me over your typical SSI’s – I can use them across servers and domains. CPA has files scattered over several domains and servers. Some are official UW pages, some are just CPA related, some are ‘other’ but over the years they have been scattered. But we are talking pages that have had the same file names for 13 years in a couple cases. I am not moving them
The search is probably the heaviest server side script with this page but that is not saying much, for now it just pulls the google results so they appear locally. In the future we would like to build on that script and have tabs that allow you to initiate the same search but in a different domain just with one click. No typing. Look for that in the final version 5.0.
In the next part I will go over some of the major CSS changes and layout tweaks. Maybe even have textpattern here include some images… Ok for now, take a look a screen shot of the new and old UW home page side by side. Smart folks will find the Beta page from there.
