redesigning again…
Redesign in progress. When in doubt, reload. And let me know what you think; I’m going for a cleaner, more elegant look.
Redesign in progress. When in doubt, reload. And let me know what you think; I’m going for a cleaner, more elegant look.
I am on a neverending quest to find an email client that doesn’t drive me bonkers. I spend at least half my work day dealing with email. This is by design. I am a support administrator for the faculty, and I prefer to work through email rather than on the phone. That way, I can prioritize requests; the phone ringing usurps this system, giving all calls the same (high) priority. Plus it drives me nuts. So. I need an email client that can handle the job. To me, this does not seem like too much to ask. What I require is:
I finally got my hands on DWWS by Jeffrey Zeldman. We had to wait for both the state of California and HSU to get their budgets in order before we could do any ordering for this fiscal year. I am enjoying reading through it and seeing well-detailed, lucid explanations of the design strategies I take for granted. This is very timely, since the university is starting to re-think its approach to its web presence. I am hoping that they will heed the good advice offered in this book and by the designers within their institution. Who exactly they are has yet to be determined, so it is an exciting and uncertain time for the web at HSU. I really wish that certain LMS vendors would heed this advice and stop putting out bloated code that could be much more efficient. Here is a nice excerpt of the Sys Admin panel code, which coomprises only about 1/8th of the page source:
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1" WIDTH='450' class="moduleBorder" summary=" Portal Areas Module"><tr><td><table border="0" cellspacing = "0" cellpadding="2" summary= ""><a id= "4" name=" 4"><tr><td class="moduleTitlePm "> Portal Areas </td></tr></a></table><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%" summary=""><tr><td class="moduleBody"><table width="100%" cellspacing="0"><tr><td valign="top" align="left" width="50%" nowrap="1" bgcolor="#efefef"><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><table border="0"><tr><td><b><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><a HREF="/webapps/portal/admin/tabs.jsp" TARGET= "_self">Manage Tabs</a>< /font> &nbsp</b></td> </tr><tr>< td><b><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><a HREF="/webapps/portal/admin/modules.jsp" TARGET="_self"> Manage Modules< /a></font>&nbsp</b></td>< /tr>< tr><td><b><font size=" 2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#4f4f4f" > Manage Channels</font> </b></td></tr></table></font></td><td valign="top" align="left" width=" 50%" nowrap=" 1" bgcolor="#efefef"><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" ><table border=" 0"> <tr><td>< b><font size= "2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif " ><a HREF="/webapps/portal/admin/palette_items.jsp?palette_family=tools" TARGET="_self">Manage Tool&amp ;nbsp; Panel</a></font>&nbsp</b></td></tr><tr><td><b><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "><a HREF="/bin/admin/admin_tab.pl?family=pa_settings" TARGET="_self">Settings</a></font>& nbsp</b></td></tr><tr><td><b><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#4f4f4f">Export Modules< /font> </b></td></tr></table> </font></td> whew! There was a thread started on css-discuss about the potential of the WaSP focusing their efforts on CMSs(Content Management Systems) that output code like this. I think this is a logical next step; after getting browser vendors to support standards, and with more designers learning how to use them, it’s time to focus on the vendors of tools used by non-web professionals do do their day-to-day work.
I am doing a lot of work behind the scenes, getting all the MT (Movable Type) templates styled. I will then move on to linking up the rest of the stuff in the sidebar, and building out some of the supporting pages for this site. I am having trouble getting this page to validate; I keep getting an error stating cannot generate system identifier for general entity “entry_id”. I need to do some research to figure out why the template markup isn’t validating. Any info on this from you old hats out there would be great. I am having fun playing with Pixy’s no preload rollovers , and I have implemented them on the index page of this site. So far I am really liking them, and they are solving one of the barriers to getting my colleagues to accept CSS rollvers in general. It’s hard to get people to embrace learning something new, even when we’re all working in the context of academia where this kind of thing is encouraged…
Working for a governmental institution in the State of California (please don’t ask me about our future governor…), web accessibility has been on my mind of late. I am a member of our campus’ Web Accessibility Group, and we a charged with coming up with a plan to make our extensive, and frankly, poorly designed campus website accessible. This is a daunting task, to say the least. I bring this up because I am in the somewhat privelidged position of being a web designer with access to JAWS. I have the ability to test my sites in a lab on campus set up for use by students with disabilities. I also have the 40 minute demo set up on several machines in our shop, where we have 3 staff an 15 student assistants (all sighted) making websites and courseware for faculty. I must agree with Kynn Bartlett’s article Maccessibility: A Web Designer’s Guide to JAWS, in that learning to use JAWS would take me at least a week, with my monitor turned off. Listening to a website is a very eye-opening experience, and the first thing I realize is that I have no idea how to follow a link, go back, skip to content, etc. if I wanted to. That said, I find the 40 minute demo extremely useful if I just point it to a page and read through it, making sure all the content makes sense, that alt tags provide enough information, etc. And I also find that if I code to WCAG specs that my pages usually make sense in JAWS, as David Shea suggests. The next step is to get a focus group together of students & faculty who use JAWS or other screen readers. Asking them to help us test the sites is really the only way to find out if they’re truly accessible. This is a goal for our WAG group this year.
I have redesigned the main page of this blog. I haven’t had a chance to do extensive browser testing yet, so let me know if there are problems for you. There are some dead links on the left, which I set up as placeholders for what’s to come. I will be working on these as well as styling the rest of the templates in the days to come. I’m writing this on my new Titanium Powerbook, which I am having much fun setting up and configuring. So far I am very pleased with it, although I’m not used to the smaller keyboared yet, and I keep hitting the caps lock instead of the “a” key. I expect I’ll get this worked out in a couple of days. I am now much more mobile at work, since the campus has finally installed wi-fi in the Library and on the Quad. The brighter site reflects the new outlook on my life that I have finally been able to reach. I am taking time for myself this Labor Day weekend, something I haven’t done since Brian got sick, and which I sorely needed lest I go insane. My biology doesn’t really allow me to thrive under the massive amounts of stress and pressure I’ve been under both at home and at work. After a day and 1/2 of my self-imposed three day isolation from most outside influences, I seem to be doing much better. It feels good to get the creative juices flowing again and not just struggle to keep my head above water.
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