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Web Operational Management Group

Minutes of the Meeting of April 30 2003
2:30 pm, Dana Porter Conference Room

Present: Chris Gray , Esther Millar, Bill Oldfield (Recorder), Marina Wan (Facilitator), Paul St-Pierre

Absent: Linda Hastings, Charles Woods

  1. Minutes of meeting April 16, 2003 - approved with a minor change

  2. Business Arising
    • #2 - 6 Esther is continuing to remove the margin references on pages to adhere to the HTML 4.01 Transitional standard. She has also noted that some old images, which are no longer displayed, are being preloaded each time and that the Doc statement and encoding information is missing. She will make these corrections and add these missing elements as she works on these pages. WebOps will explore the ramifications of requiring XHTML 1.0 the standard for the creation of all new pages.
    • #4 Esther's machine has been setup for secure ftp through Dreamweaver to the TRELLIS servers. There will be some training issues when all staff are moved to this secure connection method.
    • #9 New pages are being converted to the new UMD page design. Since the area of WebOps concern is in a SSI this is not a major problem but our feedback to the student should be expedited.
      • WebOps has 3 concerns:
        • the "mouse over" causes the menu to jump and is confusing - the suggestion is to use "on click" instead if drop down menus are being used on the side menu
        • the use of dropdown side menus does not follow the UW gold standard
        • the primarily concern is that the pages are being prepared by a temporary staff member and permanent staff must be trained to take over maintenance once the student leaves.
      • Esther will pass on WebOps concerns
    • #6, #8 are still in process

  3. Agenda Review
    • the existing # 5 (Library Homepage re-design) was deferred and replaced with 5. Watchfire WebQA

  4. Co-op student project proposal

    A draft Co-op Job Description was discussed and revised. Accessibility standards were added as a part of the validation process and owner follow up activity. A Requirements section was added noting the skills required by the student for the job. Bill will revised the job description and send it to Marina.

  5. Watchfire WebQA

    Esther has evaluated the Watchfire WebQA software as a possible replacement for Linkbot. The newer Linkbot drops some of the needed capabilities unless we upgrade to a much more expensive version.

    WebQA seems designed for someone who not only evaluates a site but will be making the corrections themselves. There is no easy way to pass the information on to a maintainer. Although this software integrates "Bobby" into its evaluation process it quotes lines numbers to identify the errors but their code listing does not include any line numbers.

    It was decide that WebOps will stay with the existing version of Linkbot until something better comes along that can meet our requirements.

  6. Around the Table

    Esther has setup a Vacation Schedule for WebOps. Members are asked to forward their holiday information to esther as soon as it is available.

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July 15, 2005