Another project that's been great fun (even if it isn't part of my regular responsibilities) has been the redesign of the University's web site. I'm working with the Web Manager and two students (Chris and Tom) to come up with a better and faster web presence for the University. We've done some really neat stuff with the new design that should make it extremely easy for people to surf Richmond's web. The best part is that (warning: web geek speak follows; non-geeks jump to the next paragraph) through server side includes with JavaScript browser detection, we're able to switch out components of a page that make antiquated browsers implode. We've even handled our CSS this way: if you've got a 4.0 browser, CSS will control the appearance of the page; if not, we "hide" the external style sheet from older browsers and use some old HTML tags to format the page in a way that's pretty close to what the style sheet does better. By hiding or revealing the external style sheet based on the JavaScript browser detect, and by nesting the CSS formatting tags between the old HTML tags and the content that's being formatted, we can make just one page that will scale up with the latest browser tricks (dynamic hierarchical menus, randomly generated content, and more) while simultaneously scaling down for old browsers that can't handle the code.

While I realize not everyone who reads this is interested in web design, and even fewer people are interested in the technical aspects of web design, I just had to spit all of that last paragraph out because what we've been up to over the last few weeks is going to be incredible, but it's something I doubt most people will notice when they visit the new site later this Summer, since the whole point has been to make something that's extremely functional but simple to use. I've looked around at other sites and I've never seen something like this before.

The best part of the project has been our meetings. Bill (the Web Manager) has met with Tom, a rising sophomore, and me several times a day. Each time we meet we talk about aspects of the new site that we like or that worry us. Each of us has proposed all sorts of ways to resolve the problems, and the interplay of ideas is where we've made our greatest gains. It's been a blast.

Bill (the Web Manager) is doing the first official demo of our new design later this week for the folks who build the Information Services web site. After that we'll be sharing it with other parts of the University community. We plan to have the top level of pages as well as the Information Services pages in place by the time the first-year students arrive in late August for orientation. I'll be sure to mention here when the pages are available to see.