World-Wide Web Steering Committee

 

29 August, 2002

 

Minutes

 

Present: Steve Blodgett, Pete Gilbert, Steve Hirby, Robert Lowe, Nancy Truesdell, Steve Butts.

 

The meeting consisted of a review of two alternative templates sent by Netcasters.  A sub-committee of Blodgett, Hirby and Gilbert met earlier and recommended the “Index4” template, with its somewhat simpler navigation, and the Committee agreed.

 

Other issues discussed were:

 

1.      Whether to have simply white space at the bottom of lower-level, largely text pages, or some kind of page-ending graphic.  The Committee felt that we should have some kind of ending mark but was unsure what that should consist of.

2.      Should there be a “last modified” date indicator on most pages?  General sentiment was negative [see also ensuing note from Blodgett on this].

3.      How to deal with a “Contact” function.  General feeling was NOT to have the Webmaster on every page, nor to have named individuals, but to use generic aliases specific to the page or area of the site being visited.

4.      “Breadcrumb” navigation, yes or no.  The Chair volunteered to query Bambi on this, and to contact Joe Gregg, who, someone remembered, had a concise and logical take on this issue, but the content of which no one present could remember.

5.      The “shell” or “frames” concept (under which information deemed relevant but from a related but separate part of the site would be "framed" by the graphics and navigation elements of the area or location the user is currently "in").  After much discussion the Committee decided that although implementing and maintaining this concept would require a fair bit of work, it was central enough to achieving one of the major overall goal of the whole redesign project that it should be encouraged.

 

 

At meeting’s end the Chair volunteered to convey these decisions to Bambi.

 

[NOTE:  subsequent to this meeting I raised the following points in a telephone conversation with Bambi:]

 

1.    I told her that we wished to pursue the Index4 template, and she thought that was best as well.

2.    I asked her opinion of "breadcrumbs," and she was fairly negative about them.  She agreed that they produced clutter and said that general research showed that only a small proportion of visitors used them and that when they were removed practically nobody noticed.

3.         I stated that we had come to a general agreement that we would try to make the "frames" system a key part of our architecture.  Bambi thought this was a good idea.

4.         I asked her to pursue lower levels for the client-based views and she said they would.