World-Wide Web Steering Committee
12 September, 2002
Present: Steve Blodgett, Steve Butts, Pete Gilbert, Michael Thorp, Nancy Truesdell.
The meeting opened with a discussion of how we should begin to introduce the new site to interested parties around the campus. We resolved that the first target would be the Technical Advisory Committee, followed by the WWW Working Group and AdStaff. Mr. Butts will contact the TAC to set up a meeting time and oft-relied-upon Dynamic Duo of Blodgett and Gilbert will work up a demo to show the “look” and some of the navigational features
This dialogue led to talk about the relationship between academic departments and the new web structure. We realized that the departmental pages were going to be located much higher in the site hierarchy, that they would be taking responsibility for more content central to the site than currently, and that this raised issues such as the use of a common template and the amount of work needed to convert current pages to the new format and structure – the latter issue being of some concern for those departments that have recently put effort into their current pages. We resolved to begin a discussion of these issues at the next meeting.
Mr. Gilbert presented an example of a user view page which (uncannily, since he was not present for the meeting at which the Committee came up with these very points) showed problems with the look and usability that would arise if these pages were to have a large number of links or other navigational elements. He also showed an example of a “bottom” page in the hierarchy, which would contain no navigation. We approved, and he will send or has sent it to Netcasters.
Between the last meeting and this, Mr. Blodgett prepared an extensive list of “Reactions to the Proposed Audience View Pages and Questions Raised as to Their Usage.” The Committee adopted the greater part of these as its own and gave Mr. Butts leave to forward them on to Bambi Snodgrass (which he did on the following Friday).
The Committee sought also to resolve finally the issue of whether Admission was to have two or just one main entry point at the top of the site. We decided, with the full support of Mr. Thorp, that the home page would have a link “For Prospective Students” in the list of audience views which would lead to a top-level “Admission” page to be defined by that office, and would have NO entry for “Admission” in the list of topical views. The Admission Office will appear as a department in the regular list of all administrative departments at their appropriate location in the site.
Submitted by the Chair.