Present: Sandra Keys, Esther Millar, Rachel Caldwell, Dan Sich, William Oldfield, Charles Woods, Marina Wan (facilitator), Chris Gray (recorder)
Minutes of Joint Meeting, June 29
Minutes were accepted with minor changes. Esther will update the minutes.
Business Arising
None.
Agenda Review
Item 11 was added to allow Bill to report on his investigation of managing access to Web files for people who need to use Dreamweaver.
Recommendations on URLs to subscribed resources
Bill presented his documentation on the value of using ERM and the Go script throughout our Web site. It was agreed that it would be most effective to present this information to Web maintainers at a special information session. Marina will arrange this session.
Placing cursor in TRELLIS search box on the homepage
It was agreed that the change should be made to the homepage. Chris will make the change.
State of the Web site
Marina reported on the fix that was recently done to the template to bring it in line with changes made to the UW template to handle a print CSS compatibility issue with Internet explorer 5.5.
Esther reported on the continuing work to convert the staff Web to the new common look and feel. There is still a lot of work and many pages pages that need major work (for example, committee minutes in .txt files). Esther will do an analysis of the staff site and the work that still needs to be done to see how work can be reduced, eliminated, or aided automatically.
Library Web Review Group
Susan and Mark have approved in principle keeping the Library Web Review committee working in tandem with Web Ops. It was agreed to keep these two groups separate and the Web Review group will meet next week to work on their own terms of reference document.
Template updates
It currently takes about two days of solid work by one person to use Dreamweaver to update the entire Web site when there is a change to the template. Changes are better done this way since the template is a Dreamweaver technology. The template technology allows Web maintainers to do certain customizations to pages through the user interface in Contribute.
Chris will double check with Jesse what procedure is in place to make sure the Library knows when changes are made to the UW CLF templates and style sheets. Chris will also look into changes to the template that make the link back to the Library's home page change color to indicate a link.
Chris tested the possibility of sticking to XHTML and CSS standards to avoid needing to fiddle with style sheets and templates for reasons of browser compatibility. Chris will bring the issue to Jesse's attention and see if a University-wide policy can't be set and maintained.
Use of SSIs to include CSSs in the template
Bill has done some preliminary experiments with increasing use of server-side includes in our template to reduce the amount of the editing that must be done when a change is made to the CLF. Bill and Chris will do further exploration to see if it is possible to replace or reduce the use of Dreamweaver templates without spoiling the Contribute editing experience.
Graphics resources
Our access to www.clipart.com has expired and Susan Routliffe has said she is uncomfortable with renewing a subscription. Marina will ask Marian to look for a good alternative source of graphics for use in our Web pages.
Dreamweaver permissions
Bill reported on his discoveries of ways to allow use of Dreamweaver to edit pages on sites controlled by the Contribute manager. Those who need such access can be given permission to use Dreamweaver as an external editor or they can edit directly with Dreamweaver if they are made owners of files as long as webmaint is kept as group owner.
It was agreed that web maintainers should be encouraged to use Contribute unless Dreamweaver is necessary.
Around the table
Charles reported that Dreamweaver 8 is out and IST is not rushing to upgrade.
Bill is reviewing to what degree our implementation of Contribute and the CLF meets the requirements for a Content Management System as laid out by the report sponsored by DLCC.
Christy reported that the campus usability committee had its first meeting and is well on the way toward its first usability study. Approval for the study is being put before the ethics committee and questions for inclusion are being sought.
Esther said the next meeting will be held in LIB 407 if 428 is not by then available because of the renovation disruptions.
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