Minutes of the Meeting of May 12, 2004
Davis Conference Room, 1:30 pm
Present: Christy Branston, Chris Gray, Linda Hastings, Esther Millar, Bill Oldfield, Marina Wan (Facilitator), Charles Woods (Recorder)
Regrets: none
Guest: Rose Koebel
- Minutes of the Meeting of April 14, 2004
Approved
- Business Arising
6. Training Session for Web Maintainers -- The CSS project was approved; Marina notified the Webmaint-l group
5. CMS & Macromedia Contribute -- Bill noted that Contribute "front-end software will be loaded onto the new NT servers
7. Around-the-table -- script described in this item has been implemented.
- Agenda Review
No changes were made to the agenda
- CSS-based web site project
Esther Millar demonstrated to the group various changes to the templates for elements such as styles, fonts, font-colour, etc. Discussion ensued on the range of customization that should be permitted on templates and style-sheets during the implementation of CSS on the site. It was agreed that these changes should be minimalized oand that an elaborate consultative-process with end-users should be postponed until the mechanics of a CSS site are in place, perhaps by September 1.
The current htdocs site will be copied to CD shortly. The htdocs2 site (home of http://www.libtest.uwaterloo.ca) will be regenerated from htdocs.
- UW Work Placement application
The group agreed that an aplication should be made for a co-op student for the fall term. It was advised that the tasks identified for the student should be challenging and that tedious, mechanical chores should be avoided. It was also opined that orientating and training a new member can consume WebOps time and that an appropriate skill-set should be listed. The group reviewed the task-list proposed by Marina before the meeting:
--Convert Staff Web to CSS-based site.
--Help groups to change the design (CSS) and templates of their web pages, if requested.
--Assist in Uwone/Angel programmes.
Bill suggested a task of sourcing metadata for the Discipline pages. Marina agreed to write an application that identified tasks in general terms and submit it to Lorraine Beattie as soon as possible.
- Tips' Series for Webmaint-l
The group reviewed the merits of a suggestion for creating a "Tip of the day/week/month" advisory to the Webmaint-l list. Issues were tabled:
--the series should be sustainable: a number of tips should be collated before issuing the first one
--is this the best vehicle for providing task-related training information? Should it be coordinated with other training initiatives?
--tips may not be as interactive or engaging as required
--tips should be visual, with graphic examples of the tip
--should an FAQ be built on the cumulative tips?
-- terms like "Did You Know" were discussed as alternative concepts
The group was asked to ponder the suggestion before the next meeting.
- Around the Table
Bill reported that move of the Cold Fusion server from a Linux to a NT machine has been completed. Associated machine swaps are in progress and should be completed by the end of June. He also noted that the Electronic Record Managment project is proceeding and that a meeting is scheduled for Monday, May 17 for project management issues.
Linda Hastings reported that the web-site index pages are bloating with excessive repetition of hundreds of line of code. Chris speculated that Dreamweaver MX may be improperly configured to publish local files to the server as Windows instead of UNIX files, including both carriage returns and line-feeds. He will sent a note to the group describing how to set this configuration properly.
- Next Meeting
The next meeting is scheduled for May 26, 2004. Time and place TBA
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July 14, 2005
