Mobile Website – New Application
Furthering our goal of working with groups from around campus on the Texas A&M mobile website we are pleased to announce to addition of a new feature to the site.
Student activities has created a search function that allows visitors to get information on over 800 university student organizations. Available as a stand-alone website, the organization search is now also available on m.tamu.edu under the “Search” tab.
Note that the site does appear optimized for the iPhone, but it did work on my Blackberry, even if it didn’t look quite perfect.
Expect more releases for the Texas A&M mobile web soon. I think our model will be to release features individually as they are completed rather than holding them and having a single release with lots of features. If nothing else this keeps you coming back to the site to see what might be new. 
As always, if you have a suggestion for something that you want to see on the site, please let us know. It might already be on our to-do list, but it might also be the next new idea that we drop everything to implement…
New Search Feature
If you have not noticed already, Texas A&M’s homepage has a new selectable search feature. This addition now allows users to select which areas of A&M they want to search, including internally indexed sites, the directory of departments, the directory of people, and all of Google. This search appliance was written in plain Javascript and works on all major browsers. If you are having any issues using this new feature, make sure Javascript is enabled in your browser.
TAMU News Website
Two weeks after deploying the new TAMU News website I’m experiencing something rather novel. Usually when I spend as much time developing a site as we spent on this one I’m burned out on it by the time it goes to publication — while everyone is is celebrating a fresh new site I’m already tired of looking at it. Just the opposite has happened with the news site though; I have actually come to like it more after it went live than I did before.
I think part of this was that during development I was dealing with static content and graphics. One of the best parts of the new site, though, is the equally new focus we’ve taken on using high quality photos and graphics for all elements of the site. With each element changing on a weekly, and even daily, basis this means that the site continues to seem fresh rather than quickly getting stale.
Using the power of WordPress and RSS feeds, we were also able to add the “Texas A&M in the News” and the “Around Campus” sections, as well as the “Engineering Works” podcast series, further making the site more dynamic and interesting. We pushed WordPress to its limits, many times hacking a plugin and even writing our own PHP functions to do what we needed to get done.
The end result was well worth the effort though. Getting this site out the door as the first project of the year bodes well. As I look at some of the other projects, we have really cool stuff lined up for this year. If we can avoid getting sidetracked by other out-of-the-blue demands we should be able to make some big improvements on the university web presence.
Browser Support
Departments and offices on campus will frequently ask to consult with us whenever they begin a new redesign process (we love talking to you, please continue to do so.) One of the most frequent questions that comes up, despite being a topic that has been rehashed a dozen times in the last two years, is which browsers have to be supported.
My answer usually surprises folks — “all of them.” This is my attention grabber that then lets me make a point and go into a longer explanation of content, the levels of accessibility, usability, ”browser support,” and the differences between these terms.
As a public university we have an obligation to make our information available to everyone, and as a web professional I think we have a mandate to do the same. So the informational content of the page should ideally be accessible no matter what user agent the visitor decides to use — the latest version of IE, Safari on iPhone, JAWS speech reader, lynx textual browser, or even Netscape 1.0. All of these can render the basic HTML that delivers the content, so there is no reason the site design should be such that the information is not delivered.
Note that the above makes no reference to what the page looks like. Indeed, on various user agents it will almost certainly look different, possibly even bad. But the information is there and is available. Only once this bar has been met should we get into the question of what most of us mean by browser support — those which we want the general appearance and experience to be the same.
This, then, limits us to browsers that support web standards plus those for which we are willing to make exceptions and add hacks… largely IE 6. Analytics shows us that usage of IE 6 has finally fallen to a low enough percentage that we need no longer consider it mainstream. Unfortunately it is still high enough that it can’t be ignored.
I don’t buy into the argument that a site has to look and act exactly the same for every visitor on every device. Minor differences are expected as each rendering engine treats the base HTML and CSS slightly different. So let’s extend that concept and go back to content accessibility – can we create an experience in IE 6 in which the content is delivered and the page looks OK? Not perfect, not exactly what other browsers will see, but good enough to deliver your information and not create a negative experience or perception of our organization. That can be done easily enough using IE conditional comments and a separate style sheet to overwrite and tweak the default style.
So, long answer to a short question. ”Do we have to support IE 6?” Yes… so long as you understand that support doesn’t necessarily mean providing the same experience as modern browsers, it just means making sure those who insist on using it can still get your information and not be turned off by the process.
Web Accessibility
Yesterday at the IT Forum we had a good discussion about web accessibility. One of the things that was noted in the automated scans of campus web pages was that the primary areas of non-compliance were lack of “alt” attributes on images, lack of “skip nav” links, and lack of label tags on associated form fields.
It is easy to look at those things and think they are just minor details that don’t matter that much. But let’s look at how important they really are. Last year we presented an Accessibility Showcase to campus, and one of the presentations was a description of screen readers and then a live demonstration given by a blind student. Watch or download the video and see how hard it is to navigate some of our own sites here on campus.
Flash fun and new media needs
What’s the point of having access to a blog if you can’t use it to further your own ends?
Well, the short of it is we are looking to hire a “Communications Specialist”. However, don’t let the name/title fool you. We’re really looking for someone with experience in designing/developing new media. We’re talking graphic interface/template design, interactive microsites and more.
So while skills with Photoshop and Web design are important, this person needs to have a good grasp of developing Flash and other interactive content (video, etc.).
There are a number of projects that we have where you can jump in feet first and do some fun stuff. Our ideas/plans/projects range from target audience microsites (future students, faculty, community) to extending the brand (interactive/online advertising and display of “It’s Time for Texas A&M”) to virtualizing A&M (outdoor virtual campus and tours).
Of course these are just our own ideas; we’re expecting this person to bring fresh ideas. What makes this job appealing is that while there are number of expectations that go along with the position, the right person can grow/make their job into whatever they want. With expanding social media and online options, there’s a lot of potential.
So if you’ve got the skills and are looking to put them to work, then we’ve got the job for you.
The position (NOV#100443) is currently open on the TAMUjobs site if you are interested or feel free to email me if you have any other questions.
IT Forum Meeting
Don’t forget that the IT Forum meets tomorrow (Jan 27) afternoon at 3:00 in Room 601 Rudder Tower.
CIS will be talking about Web Accessibility, the new state and university requirements, and the automated system they have available to check web sites for various accessibility issues.
If you manage a website I would encourage you to attend — if you haven’t already, you’ll likely be getting a call from these folks about scanning and updating your sites, and this is a good opportunity to learn ahead of time what to expect.
Image Repository online, again
Shot of the Campus Image Repository home page
Okay about a year ago I mentioned that a photo repository was online. Well, in that time we’ve had a little bit of time to test and refine it. We learned some things along the way too and have relaunched it with a few tweaks.
Probably the most important would have to be, how do you manage all of those photos? Answer: you don’t. That’s where the idea of feeds come in. This way Roz over at Mays or Matt in Engineering (two of our first guinea pigs for sharing) can add/manage/remove their photos as needed to keep them updated and fresh. But they still end up browsable and searchable in one location. So, to access any repository that has joined our “party” (as Roz called it), simply choose from the pulldown menu on the left.
Next is the importance of tags and descriptions. It’s one thing to have an image in there, but unless you want someone to go through images labeled “IMG_1234″ or the like, tags make it so much easier. Descriptions are good, too — especially if someone else ends up using a photo and you want to make sure they are noting/explaining it correctly. We’re also having to reorganize our sets so that they are more intuitive in name.
Third is to know when to stop. We originally had the geolocation thing going, but it turned out to add an extra 750K to the page load. Do people really want an extra 3/4 of a MB with each image just to tell you that the Academic Building is on the main campus? What helps is that with separate repository feeds, an image — while not geolocated — is now feed-located, so that if you grab a Mays shot you know where it at least came from.
There are a few more, but give it a shot and see. And if you have a public Flickr feed that has some good quality campus/subject shots let us know so that we can get your feed added to the list. Also let us know if there are image sets you’d like to see. For example, with all of the latest on the presidential search, we’ve had a request for a set that includes head shots of Dr. Loftin and even the upper administration.
New News Site
Tomorrow we will be launching a new Texas A&M News and Information site. We will be moving away from an antiqutied article manager to a site build on the latest version of Wordpress. There will be many new features build into the site, many leveraging the power of RSS feeds to bring in information from outside sources.
We anticipate that there will be a little downtime with the transition but will strive to make it as minimal as possible.
One thing that webmasters around campus should be aware of – if you are currently subscribing to the “recent articles” feed from the old system you should update your links to either http://feeds.feedburner.com/tamuNewsFull or http://tamunews.tamu.edu/feed/. If you already subscribe to the full version of the feed you won’t need to change anything (but might have a lag as Feedburner updates their links.)
Creatures of Habit
Users are lazy. There, I’ve said it. And if I’m honest I have to include myself in that category whenever I am going online to pay a bill, find a recipe, or make a purchase. This is especially true with sites that we regularly visit. We are comfortable with the site so we go right to the area we want (or at least where we expect it to be) without even thinking or processing the logic or navigation of the site. If what we expect to find suddenly isn’t there we go into a tizzy.
On one hand it’s a good thing that people get used to your site – it shows a steady user base of repeat customers. If you have implemented a “Don’t make me think” concept of site design your users should quickly become comfortable with finding what they’re looking for. But what happens when you make periodic changes to your site? It conflicts with our expectations, and many users simply don’t know how to cope.
For example, this morning we updated the university home page. We removed the link to the directory search, but integrated the directory search directly into the main search box. Change the value of the pull-down and you get results from the directory rather than the search appliance. What we thought would actually make the process easier — no more having to click to a separate page to make your search, and the search box is right under where the directory link was so it shouldn’t be hard to see — actually elicited a stream of emails asking where the directory search had gone and asking us to put it back. (In hindsight perhaps radio buttons would have been better than a pulldown so that the option would be more clearly visible.)
This is a rather dramatic example, but we get similar reactions whenever we rotate the quicklinks at the bottom of the page. We try to keep the links seasonal and relevant to what’s going on at the time, but users accustomed to finding the link “right there” don’t necessarily appreciate that perhaps a link to Graduation doesn’t belong on the home page in January.
All of this means that we need to be very careful in making incremental changes. People are creatures of habit and will expect your content to never change. At least not until there is a major rewrite and a completely different page look. This also bodes ill for the reshaping of the web site to a more external audience as it shows how much it is being used right now as an internal intranet. We had intended to start a maintenance release for www.tamu.edu this semester, making a series of minor updates. This gives me pause, though, and makes me wonder if we’re going to have to make a more dramatic redesign in order to create the mind shift that we’re looking for.