Writings on web design and higher education from Missoula, MT

When I went into my local print shop to ask them if they could do a letterpress project for me, they asked me what it was. I wish I had this great news segment about letterpress printing to show them a month ago. Anyone who is interested in classic design will enjoy this video, and perhaps be able to relate to it.

I heard this joke today listening to the Boag World Podcast. (A great resource that you should really check out if you are involved in the web.

A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and
spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me,
can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I
don’t know where I am.”

The woman below replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon hovering
approximately 30 feet above the ground. You’re between 40 and 41 degrees
north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”

“You must be in IT,” said the balloonist. “I am,” replied the woman,
“How did you know?”

“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is, technically
correct, but I’ve no idea what to make of your information, and the fact
is I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything,
you’ve delayed my trip.”

The woman below responded, “You must be in Management.” “I am,” replied
the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re
going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air.

You made a promise which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect people
beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same
position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault.”

My old home of Minneapolis just had a disaster. The major interstate bridge I 35-W just crashed into the water. The Star Tribune has much more info than CNN or the New York Times.

Looks like Apple is releasing Safari for Windows. This will be a good thing if, and only if, the rendering engine is the same as on Mac. This is either a really great day, or a really bad day for web designers.

Just a reminder for those in Missoula, MT. The Missoula Web Discussion Group meets tonight at 6:00 at Sean Kelly’s. Just look for the group of geeks.

In large institutions, the varying audiences of the website can cause it to pull and stretch in ways that can make the web staff cringe. Site navigation suffers most in this continuous battle to please the on-campus constituents at the risk of alienating your external audiences. Most colleges and universities have moved over to a faceted navigation, allowing prospective students easy access to admissions and residential life while still providing effective information to the news media, donors, alumni and current students. But all is not well with the staff and faculty jump-pages in most instances.

Staff and faculty usually have very strict data silos, and are often quite demanding of having information at their fingertips matching their department’s organization. These users won’t touch your jump pages because they are too generic and don’t meet their needs. Perhaps a universal portal system could take care of this, personalizing the content for the individual; however, these systems are costly and time consuming to build and tailor to faculty and staff needs in a day where student services are the only items on the budgetary menu. The answer is simple: create static department portal page (aka a Poor Man’s Portal).

What do I mean when I say static department portal page? It’s simple, create a basic HTML document that can be housed on a web sever or file share that points to exactly what members in a data silo need. Have them set it as their homepage, so any time they need answers they just pull up a web browser.

The information desk, or admissions office is an ideal candidate for such a simple solution. Every day the staff and student workers answer phone calls with highly creative questions about diverse facets of the institutions policies, people, and programs. One of these static departmental portal homepages in an admissions office could offer a quick redirect to Residential Life room rates, the Registrars Office policy on in-state residency, and scholarships for minorities.

With a couple questions to the staff, and 10 minutes of a web developer’s time, an entire department can have in place a portal that is just as functional as one that would cost many thousands of dollars to implement, and you could even include an email/Citrix/SharePoint login form too. For a 10 minute job, this will save tons of time for those on the front line while providing faster and better support to your students-talk about a return on investment.

If it meets the needs of a large portion of your staff, it could serve as a messaging platform (perhaps most useful with work-study students, who aren’t on the office distribution list.)

I’ll be implementing this type of a project for my admissions office some time soon. I’ll post a follow-up after I see how well it actually works.

Well, I finally got around to creating a decent front page design (the blog design is still old and outdated, but I’ll get to that in a second). And in the process I have constantly been thinking about how I really need to start over completely. Making tweaks regularly to the design has left it’s CSS in bad shape, filled with hacks and utterly reliant on a conditional comment for IE6. It should display nicely in mainstream browsers, but it just doesn’t feel up to snuff to me. I would never dream of sending code like this to a client, so why am I letting it slip on my own site? The answer is simple: time. My personal site does not get priority over anything, and a wholesale redesign takes a large chunk of my time.

Assuming that I wish to spend the time needed to improve the quality of my code, I am left with two choices: recode the current design from scratch or start the design from scratch. Both have some positives; the feedback on my current design has been mixed (mostly due to the disjunction of the name Northlander and the fruit scheme) and I did the concept for this design over 2 years ago, so it feels very old.

The blog design will probably get updated whenever I do one of the two options. So, should I keep this design, or develop from scratch?

This morning two shootings occurred on the Virginia Tech campus. I will not dilute this event with a personal commentary.

Since the VT server is going down due to high traffic, here is a copy of the President’s statement (taken as of 11:21 MST 4/16/07):

Shooting at Virginia Tech / Statement by President Charles W. Steger

By Larry Hincker

BLACKSBURG, Va., April 16, 2007

The university was struck today with a tragedy of monumental proportions. There were two shootings on campus. In each case, there were fatalities. The university is shocked and horrified that this would befall our campus. I want to extend my deepest, sincerest and most profound sympathies to the families of these victims which include students There are 22 confirmed deaths.

We currently are in the process of notifying families of victims. The Virginia Tech Police are being assisted by numerous other jurisdictions. Crime scenes are being investigated by the FBI, University Police, and State Police. We continue to work to identify the victims impacted by this tragedy. I cannot begin to covey my own personal sense of loss over this senselessness of such an incomprehensible and heinous act The university will immediately set up counseling centers. So far centers have been identified in Ambler Johnston and the Cook Counseling Center to work with our campus community and families.

Here are some of the facts we know:

At about 7:15 a.m. this morning a 911 call came to the University Police Department concerning an event in West Ambler Johnston Hall. There were multiple shooting victims. While in the process of investigating, about two hours later the university received reports of a shooting in Norris Hall. The police immediately responded. Victims have been transported to various hospitals in the immediate area in the region to receive emergency treatment.

We will proceed to contact the families of victims as identities are available.

All classes are cancelled [sic] and the university is closed for the remainder of today. The university will open Tuesday at 8 a.m. but classes are cancelled. [sic] The police are currently staging the release of people from campus buildings.

Families wishing to reunite with the students are suggested to meet at the Inn at Virginia Tech. We are making plans for a convocation tomorrow (Tuesday) at noon at Cassell Coliseum for the university community to come together to begin to deal with the tragedy.

Counseling is available in the Bowman Room in the Merriman Center (part of the athletic complex) for employees who seek assistance following today’s events.

Faculty and staff on the Burruss side of the Drillfield are being released and asked to go home effective immediately. Faculty and staff on the War Memorial side are asked to leave at 12:30 p.m.

Virginia Tech has closed today Monday, April 16, 2007. On Tuesday, April 17, classes will be canceled. The university will remain open for administrative operations.

There will be an additional university statement presented today at noon.

All students, faculty, and staff are required to stay where they are until police execute a planned evacuation. A phased closing will be in effect today; further information will be forthcoming as soon as police secure the campus.

Tomorrow, there will be a university convocation/ceremony at noon at Cassell Coliseum. The Inn at Virginia Tech has been designated as the site for parents to gather and obtain information.

In addition to an earlier shooting today in West Ambler Johnston, there has been a multiple shooting with multiple victims in Norris Hall.

Police and EMS are on the scene.

Police have one shooter in custody and as part of routine police procedure, they continue to search for a second shooter.

All people in university buildings are required to stay inside until further notice.

All entrances to campus are closed.

According to the latest UseIt AlertBox, it’s better to use “23″ than “twenty-three” to catch users’ eyes when they scan Web pages for facts.

Tips from the article when writing for the Web:

• Write numbers with digits, not letters (23, not twenty-three).
• Use numerals even when the number is the first word in a sentence or bullet point.
• Use numerals for big numbers up to one billon:
  • 2,000,000 is better than two million.
  • Two trillion is better than 2,000,000,000,000 because most people can’t interpret that many zeros.
  • As a compromise, you can often use numerals for the significant digits and write out the magnitude as a word. For example, write 24 billion (not twenty-four billion or 24,000,000,000).
• Spell out numbers that don’t represent specific facts.

Just another reminder that writing for the web is so different than the print writing we were all taught. Thanks for another great insight that can help all our users Jacob!

Last night was the first monthly meeting of the Missoula Web Discussion Group, and I had a great time. Several of my colleagues from The University showed up, and we seem to have been invaded by the staff at Modwest (who are a great bunch!) All in all, I think about 12 people showed up.

If you missed the meeting, we are doing it every month on the second Tuesday at 6 P.M. in the basement of Sean Kelly’s (Missoula, MT.)

The Washington Post did an astounding article about a world famous violinist playing in the New York Metro station. Not only is this notable for the sheer uniqueness of the stunt, but also for the eloquence of writing and quality of philosophical analysis. A must read.

Elsewhere at SXSW, a great presentation is available for download about web typography.

Kris Krug gives some tips on how to improve your photography. Nice video from Robert Scrobble.

Today is
Annual CSS Naked Day. As I did last year, I have removed all my CSS files from the design so you can appreciate the pure bliss of simple HTML markup. The old, crappy, design will be back tomorrow. Maybe some day soon it will get updated, I hope.

Starbucks seems to be off the deep end here, and slightly less offensively here.

If you think your coffee shouldn’t be saying that to the masses, take your words here or leave a comment.

On the suggestion of a comment, I have put in Spam Karma 2 to help with the nasty comment problems I have been having.

Let me know if there are any problems.

I came across an utterly inspiring article about what skills make up a good teacher. Dan takes the methods of calculus to break apart essential skills, helping us to learn about what aspects affect our teaching, and that we can systematically improve them to create a greater whole.