The IRS site

http://www.irs.gov/index.html

I stopped by the IRS site today to find out about stimulus checks, and I noticed that their site looks similar to UNF's, but even more boring. The look is simple to implement, looks neat, and is fairly easy to navigate. Not all government sites can say the same.

Some things that we do know

To lessen confusion, here's a list of things that we actually do know already:

0. Everything we do should look good in all major browsers

This is a requirement of all web designers. It is also rather difficult.

1. No transparent PNGs

PNG images are far, far superior to GIF images in almost every way (for stills). Yet we can't use them for transparent pixels and it's all IE6's fault. Transparent pixels in PNGs will simply not display in IE6 (but will in GIFs). Why care about IE6 when there's IE7? Because Microsoft is mean and won't let anyone without XP or higher use IE7 at all. I know this because I have Windows 2000, which I refuse to part with because I love it so much. I use Firefox, but not everyone knows to do that. So if some of our users still have Windows 98 or something, it simply won't work out.
( EDIT: I really, really want to break this rule whenever possible. PNG is superior.)

2. Will all sub-pages need to follow the look of the home page?

Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. What is appropriate for each page will be used. Quite actually, I like the idea of mass unification better. Which means that I wouldn't mind changing the reference page to something new. Yet the upcoming "for students" page (which is yet to be made) would look nice if it were similar to what the reference page is now. However, this doesn't need to be decided right away.

3. Breadcrumbs

As I've said before, this is not only a good idea, but is essential. When I brought this up at a meeting, I recall that everyone agreed.
How this is to be implemented, however, is debatable. I'm still in favor of a table at the top of the page (like our site has right now) with the breadcrumb links put right into it.

4. Slim, centered tables are good

So elegant:
http://www.unf.edu/library/
If we borrow anything from UNF, it's the table size. Very neat, and it looks more or less the same at all common resolutions. (Anyone with less than 800x600 should by now be used to absolutely nothing ever looking right). I know we've talked about this at a meeting before.

5. ULM has standard colors

This makes life quite a bit easier. The page colors I use the most are:

#e5e5cd

#a39058

#cfad46

#660000

That's all from the old blog. In fact, now that I think of it, the old Blog was almost entirely about making pages. So it could be worth a look. Or not. http://www.ulm.edu/%7Eniemla/webpages.htm

6. CSS?

I've used a teeny bit of CSS in some things I've made. But entirely tableless CSS? I have no idea. If anyone else knows how to compose something this way and make it look good on all major browsers, I'm all for it.


7. Do not compose in Word

Word makes a mess of your markup. I learned the hard way. Use something else, like Seamonkey.


...Does anyone have anything to add to this list that I have forgotten?

May 29th minutes

(there is no real explanation for the lateness of these minutes)

The ULMLWPC had a meeting on May 29th which began at about 11:40 and ended at about 12:00pm. In attendance were:

CA
CH
KC
CR
ML
MMag
MW
LJ
KN
(did I miss anyone?)

(As I expected) This meeting did not go anywhere, as the most difficult part of the process is coming.
-- everyone seems to be happy with the category names and link names for the time being
-- Mike said that Rob will be making the new pages
-- Karen C. suggested that we make more demo-version pages and then decide what we want
-- so we've decided to think more about what sort of page we want