Present: Chris Gray, Linda Hastings, Bill Oldfield, Marina Wan (Facilitator), Charles Woods (Recorder)
Regrets: Esther Millar
Chris reported on his investigation into customization of 404 error pages, noting that this can be done both directory-by-directory and site-wide. A mockup of a customized 404 page for the library site that redirects users to the Site-Search page will be done
Chris also noted that there is a Dreamweaver 4 plugin for checking 4.01 DTD errors but that it was not as thorough as Tidy. It was recommended that the plugin be placed on a network drive and staff emailed about downloading the software.
The group discussed Dreamweaver 4 installations and problems. It was noted that staff need to be encouraged to begin their DW sessions with a synchronization with the remote site to ensure that they are working with the latest copies of the pages and directories involved. Linda Hastings will write a note describing the importance of this procedure to content-creators.
It was also noted that some library web pages had disappeared. Some of these could be attributed to symbolic links used in the Ereserves directory for the navigation bar. Chris, Bill and Charles will look into this particular problem. An ftp problem was encountered by Amos: when connecting to a directory for which a person is not allowed read or write access an error message was encountered. Chris will check out an update for DW4 that possibly has some ftp fixes.
An order for DW4 manuals has been placed. Chris will investigate appropriate reference-manual titles.
Chris reported that Dreamweaver 4 seems to construct very good javascript code. The group agreed that it would remove references in previous documents (eg Standards and Procedures) that discouraged use of javascript. Staff can attend sessions that might train on use of javascript but that Webops would neither actively promote or discourage its use at this time.
The group agreed with Marina's proposal that email-forms be made availabe to staff who wish to avoid placing their email address on web pages, hence evading email-harvesting programs. Marina will customize the cgi-script that takes care of the mailing.
Chris is still attempting to contact Pat Matlock with regards to problems encountered with UNIX Netscape browsers and the library site.
Chris summarized responses to the questionnaire sent to LibAdminPlus on requirements for Web statistics. The responses were wide-ranging but two main issues emerged: