Steve and I were invited by Mike Prais (partly because we have had
our department's web pages up for some time) to join a meeting
between ACS, Publications, Art Photo and a few others. The meeting
started with Publications presenting their ideas on the layout of the
main NIU web page and the suggested headers for the Colleges and
Departments. We saw a "draft" of the designs and they are pretty
nice.
Discussion included what should go on the main NIU page and what
should not. There still does not exist a clear idea of how this web
should start, many catagories were suggested. It was then suggested
that the decision might be made by another committee (I also don't
remember the name of that committee)
Also discussed were the use of buttons at the bottom of the web
pages, taking people back to various places in the NIU web. I
suggested that different buttons could be designed for consistency
(color and design) with the headers, as well as consistency
throughout the university, but for optional use, where if you liked
them you could download the gif file from a central server on campus
and use them.
Art Photo offered that they might be able to supply photos of the
buildings etc on campus which may be available for downloading to
individual web pages. Everyone seemed to like that idea.
Other topics like who should be contacted if they want to create and
put up a web page, should a page template site be available on the
web, as well as instructions on the web for how to build a web page,
and should this be a link to ACS or where? ACS is getting funding to
have 2 graduate students hired just to help out with web pages. (See
the ad linked to the NIU home page)
>>>>>>>>>>
It sure would be a lot easier to include requirements BEFORE we
finalize our website rather than after.
>>>>>>>>>
I to hope they finaize the recommended layout soon, because I
recently found out we are not supposed to use the old NIU logo
anymore (which our site has been using since before the new logo was
officially out), but for obvious reasons, I am not going to change it
until I can get the official header. Things like this move slowly in
the University. I know that is no excuse, but at least the ball is
finally rolling and with enough enthusiastic people involved we might
finally get this University webbed.
Aline
##########################
Aline Click
Scientific Artist
Biology Department, MO 450
815/753-7821
aclick@niu.edu
http://www.bios.niu.edu/
######################