W3SC minutes
24 April 2003
In attendance: Steve Blodgett, Jim Evans, Joe Gregg, Steve Hirby, Nancy Truesdell, Pete Gilbert, and Special Guest Geek, Joey Lawrance
- Joey's stuff
Joey walked us through a demo of his Apache Cocoon "transformation" of the web site:
http://lawrancj-1.student.lawrence.edu:8080/index.html
We were, of course, extremely impressed. We noted the need to recover all this work from Joey before he graduates in June.
- Steve Blodgett's stuff:
Steve demoed his top-level mock up (http://www.lawrence.edu:8080/test/) and described several problems he's found as he's been developing the pages.
- The vertical dots turn out to be more trouble than they're worth. We agreed to remove them.
- The alignment/placement of the footers continues to be a problem. It was suggested that Pete try to implement a "position:relative" placement scheme.
- The pages don't print completely on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper. We discussed various issues of international paper sizing conventions. Pete mentioned again his dream of a print media stylesheet that would eliminate the need for a printable version of the site (and the requisite "Print this page" button on every page). He'll continue to work on that. There was some concern that Netcasters hadn't fulfilled their contract in this regard and that we should sic Mr. Butts and/or Dean Truesdell on them.
- David Berk's stuff:
David has been working with the Committee on Instructional Technology to develop course website templates. The idea is that a standard set of easy-to-use templates would encourage faculty to post course info on the web. Pete showed David's work: http://www.lawrence.edu/academics/it/coursetest/
The Committee asked if the phrase "Course Description" on the template home page could be changed to "Course Overview." It turns out "Course Description" is a trademarked phrase referring to canonical course catalog copy and nothing else. David graciously agreed to make the change.
- We had a brief discussion of editing programs. Frontpage is widely available and less expensive than Dreamweaver. Pete reported that he had created working web pages with Frontpage (http://www.lawrence.edu:8080/test/dept/english/) but that it's not particularly straightforward. Dreamweaver would work better but would cost more and require more set up and (perhaps) training.
- Next meeting:
The Trustees are on campus on May 1, so it is unlikely we will meet then. Gilbert is out of town on the 8th, but the committee may meet anyway. Stay tuned for further developments.
24 April 2003