WEBMASTERS’ COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES

Tuesday, February 8, 2000

W01 Anatomy Building

Ms. Lenz called the meeting to order at 9:00 a.m.

Ms. Lenz announced that an FTP workshop will be held this afternoon from 2:00-4:00 and there still is room for a few to attend.

Ms. Lenz requested potential topics for future meetings. Included were absolute and relative paths and constructing forms.

Compliance Checklist

Ms. Lenz offered assistance to anyone needing help to bring their WebPages into compliance with the updated format. The Department of Clinical Sciences and Radiological Health Sciences are now in compliance. Committee members viewed the Department of Radiological Health Sciences page. Four more pages need to be updated--Budgets and Finance, Microbiology, Network Services and the Veterinary Teaching Hospital.

Bill Cotton Photographs

Department representatives are making appointments with Bill Cotton to have two photographs taken in their department for inclusion on WebPages. Ms. Lenz asked if anyone was having difficulty choosing a photograph topic.

What Is This

Ms. Pridgen contributed a photograph of a flow cytometer/cell sorter for the "What Is This" feature. The committee approved the placement of the photograph on that page. It was agreed that more photographs are needed in order to run a different one each month (the committee's initial goal). Ideally, the committee would like to have a large enough archive to change the photographs more frequently.

Mr. Stewart demonstrated the web development software Cold Fusion Studio. This software requires some ability in HTML coding but also provides many tools for inserting tags and codes automatically. Users can either work directly from a remote server without downloading via FTP (File Transfer Protocol) or RDS (Remote Development Server) or download files from a remote site.

There are a variety of tools available; Mr. Stewart demonstrated a few. Tags are color-coded so if an end tag is left out, the text stays the same color as the tag until the tag is ended, line numbering can be turned on so finding specific tags is simplified plus the top right of the screen provides a number of wizards to simplify tasks such as tables, frames, lists, fonts and advanced features. A side toolbar provides features such as closing and opening documents, word wrap, indent, undo indent, tag insight, tag completion and tag validation. More than one document can be opened in the window and via a tab system switching among documents is simplified. Another helpful feature is the search and replace which is particularly helpful in changing links throughout a website.

Mr. Larry Cobb, Network Services Manager, requested information from committee members related to the types of web development software used in departments. He is part of a subcommittee which is making a recommendation to the committee that advises the University on the web development software to recommend as the campus choice for ACNS to support and train individuals to use. The task is challenging since the software must meet the needs of novices and sophisticated web developers. It appears that Dreamweaver will be the web development software recommended to replace the current Netscape Composer. The College would still be free to support whichever software it chose. Mr. Cobb will send an email to webmasters in the college so they can access a free copy of Dreamweaver and assess its usefulness.

The meeting was adjourned at 10:00 a.m. The next meeting will be held on Tuesday, March 14^th at 9:00 a.m.

Carol Moth 02/09/00