UNLV Libraries Website Blog

Thanks to those of you who showed up at today's meeting about the Libraries' new homepage. As you can see, the new page is a complete re-coding of the Libraries current page. Without going into great detail about the page itself, let me answer the real questions...

What does this change mean for Web Developers?

Three letters: CSS. The current design, as most of you recall, changed the old table-based design into a CSS-based one. This allows us to make site-wide changes easily and quickly. The new design will expand our use of CSS, so if you're not comfortable with style sheets (especially absolute and relative positioning), brush up!

WDS has some books on the subject, and there are TONS of great resources available online. Check NetLibrary as well -- they have books on just about every computer-related topic.

How will the changeover to the new template take place?

WDS is now testing how to adapt the current site to the new template with minimal problems. It looks like we'll just need to replace the header, side menu, footer, and style sheet. I can think of a few areas where this might cause problems (Special Collections and Government Info come to mind), but overall things should go smoothly.

When is this going to happen?

Hopefully before Spring semester begins -- that's why the whole process of designing and vetting the page has moved so quickly.

What does this mean for the branches?

Nothing. Branch pages can remain exactly as they are. WMC may eventually decide to adapt the branch sites to the new (or similar) template, but that decision is months away, at least. For now, the changes affecting the main site need not affect the branches at all.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact any of the WMC committee members, and if you missed today's meeting, be sure to check out the second one on Thursday, January 4, 2007, from 3:00-4:00 in Amargosa.

-Michael

Good Stuff

Okay, so after some time spent using IE7 to test the new home page design, I notice 2 big, BIG improvements to IE that make it better in some respects to Firefox (did I just say that?):

1) Printing - IE7 automatically resizes pages to print correctly. Fantastic! Printing has been one of the biggest struggles for our site over the past 4 years, and this will someday make it a non-issue. For those of you who print pages frequently (I know the branches and Media do), this alone makes it worth upgrading ASAP.

2) Zooming - Many have already heard me say this, but the coolest, most useful browsing "trick" I've come across is using CONTROL+SCROLL-WHEEL to make text bigger or smaller. This works on every browser I have (5 of them!), and is very convenient. The problem is that, if a page has been poorly coded, or if some text is actually images, it won't resize no matter what you do.

IE7 now offers zooming, rather than just text enlargement. That means that when you resize the font, the entire page and everything on it gets larger (Opera's been doing this for years, but who uses Opera, other than KK?) This is a BIG DEAL for developers, since it means that page elements won't shift when text gets resized -- basically it eliminates the need to design with this annoying element shifting in mind.

Here's hoping that Firefox 3 (already in beta!) includes this functionality as well.

Bad Stuff

This page says it best: "IE 7 team went overboard in 'simplifying' the user interface."

In fact, until about 10 seconds ago I couldn't figure out how to get to the "File" menu in IE -- something I use fairly frequently in FF. Turns out that hitting the ALT key shows the File menu, as well and the Edit, View, Favorites, Tools, and Help menus that are usually at the top of every browser. (Of course! Why didn't I think of hitting the ALT key right away?!) As an annoying bonus, once you hit the ALT key, clicking the Minimize Page button at the top right of the screen makes these menus go away rather than minimizing the screen. You have to click it twice to minimize :-(

Well, having made that discovery, the rest of my "Bad Stuff" list is out the window. Overall, just remember that, if you can't find something in IE7, the ALT key is your friend.

-Michael