Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 13:05:48 -0400
From: Judy Hallman <hallman@gibbs.oit.unc.edu>
To: Web-Walkers <web-walkers@unc.edu>
Cc: Dana Bayley <dbayley@email.unc.edu>, ALSHEPHE@email.unc.edu,
Scott Jared <sjared@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Summary of July 16 Web-Walkers meeting on Web Page Design
To Web-Walkers:
Summary of July 16 Web-Walkers meeting:
Web Page Design
Dana Bayley and Alison Duncan,
Design Services, University Advancement
Many thanks to Dana and Alison for an interesting and informative meeting.
We weren't able to bring up Netscape in 209 Manning, so we moved to 304 Wilson Library.
We looked at the Registrar's page (http://regweb.unc.edu). It looked fine in 304 Wilson, but some Mac users say it comes up dark grey, almost black, on their computers. Someone said that http://regweb.unc.edu/blue.gif "dithers" to grey.
Dana likes the design of the NCSU home page (http://www.ncsu.edu/), particularly the top section, which is repeated on lower level pages, and their School of Design (http://www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/design/), particularly the consistent use of the background graphic.
Someone mentioned that the New England Journal of Medicine has a nice site (http://www.nejm.org/).
Alison has drafted web pages for Design Services at http://www.unc.edu/~alshephe/design/. She has a design for The Center for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS) at http://www.unc.edu/~alshephe/curs/curs.html.
Yale's Center for Advanced Instructional Media (C/AIM) (http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/) has a particularly good Web Style Manual. See, for example, the section "Color display primer," at http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/graphics/display_primer.html.
The Yale manual led to a discussion of frames. Frames make it easy to provide consistent information, like a table of contents, for all screens. The Yale manual achieves similar results using tables instead of frames. You can tell the difference -- with frames you can scroll in the separate windows, while with tables, there is only one scroll bar. If you aren't sure, view the source.
Bob Stepno mentioned Jakob Nielsen's web page on "Why Frames Suck (Most of the Time)" at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9612.html, which now has a section "When it's OK to use Frames."
Someone said that frames are useful for people who need high hit counts because they keep viewers in your screen and increase your hits.
Pages with dark backgrounds often don't print well. To make the printed copy readable, go to Options and change the colors.
Design Services serves as the University's advertising agency, providing graphic design and marketing services to the entire University. They have three full-time designers and charge $40/hour.
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Attendees:
Deb Aikat, JOMC, daikat@email.unc.edu
Ann Brookhart, Housing, ann_brookhart@unc.edu
Eva Clontz, Medicine, eva_clontz@unc.edu
Kathleen Crook, Sheps Center, kathleen_crook@unc.edu
Mary E. Daniel, Student Loans, m_daniel@unc.edu
Elizabeth A. Evans, Carolina Population Center, evans@unc.edu
Brady Fowler, Frank Porter Graham Child Dev. Ctr, brady_fowler@unc.edu
Rob Garris, European Studies, crgarris@email.unc.edu
Wayne Green, Public Relations, mwgreene@email.unc.edu
Judy Hallman, ATN, judy_hallman@unc.edu
Holly A. Hyland, Student Aid, hyland.sao@mhs.unc.edu
Lynn Igoe, Carolina Population Center, igoe.cpc@mhs.unc.edu
Mark Ingram, Advancement, mark.dev@mhs.unc.edu
Marilyn Knowles, Epidemiology, m_knowles@unc.edu
Carrie Lovelace, Undergrad. Forum on Euro. Studies, cllovela@email.unc.edu
John Meeker, Pharmacy, john_meeker@unc.edu
Joe Pellegrino, ATN Documentation, joe_pellegrino@unc.edu
Michael Phillips, ATN, michael_phillips@unc.edu
Brenda Roberts, AIS, brenda_roberts@unc.edu
Barbara Rowan, University Gazette, btrowan@email.unc.edu
Gina Sanguinetti0, Environmental Resource Program, gina_sanguinetti@unc.edu
Bob Stepno, JOMC, rpstepno@email.unc.edu
Lucinda Thompson, Davis Library, lst@unc.edu
Loren Watterson, Carolina Population Center, loren_watterson@unc.edu
Landon Whitt, Psychology, landon_whitt@unc.edu
Judy Hallman (judy_hallman@unc.edu, http://www.unc.edu/~hallman/)
Campus-Wide Information Systems Manager, UNC-Chapel Hill
