2003-4 Webmaster Brownbag Series
sponsored by CITES
Office of Web Services Survey and Feedback Modules
Friday, February 13th, 2004
2nd Floor Commons in Grainger Library
Noon to 1 pm
Lance Campbell focused this presentation on the Survey and Feedback WebTools, showing how to create a custom web survey and feedback using the free modules. The survey allows multiple questions types and orientations. Results are provided in an excel spreadsheet. The Feedback tool is a custom "contact us" tool that allows multiple email recipients and protects against email harvesting.
WebTools are intended to give the campus community solutions to common web development problems. The Office of Web Services will continue to refine these tools, and your feedback and suggestions are an important part of this process.
Access to the Web Services Toolbox is available at https://webtools.uiuc.edu/toolbox. (Bluestem authentication required.)
WebTools: First Release
Friday, Jan 30, 2004
2nd floor Commons in Grainger Library
Noon to 1 pm
On January 30th Jim Wilson, Interim Director of the Office of Web Services, presented the first in the series of modules known as WebTools. Jim gave an overview of the Toolbox and the three initial WebTools: Calendar, Survey, and Feedback.
Topics included: creating a calendar, customizing a calendar in your look and feel, deploying a calendar on your site, and managing a calendar.
WebTools are intended to give the campus community solutions to common web development problems. The Office of Web Services will continue to refine these tools, and your feedback and suggestions are an important part of this process.
Access to the Web Services Toolbox is available at https://webtools.uiuc.edu/toolbox. (Bluestem authentication required.)
Accessibility
November 17, 2003
2240 DCL
Noon to 1 pm
On November 17 Jon Gunderson gave a quick overview of their new wizard for creating accessible HTML from MS Office apps and discussed current UI policy on accessibility. The bulk of the presentation was review of the accessibility of several campus web sites. He pointed out places where design and style might conflict with accessibility, and presented ways to increase accessibility.
Post-talk wrapup:
- Jon's HTML presentation: gives the URLs of volunteer web sites, and (bullet) lists where accessbility is achieved and how it could be improved. He also mentioned some of the policy and acts regarding accessibility.
- Jon showed some HTML made with the Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office, and how it converted a bar chart in Powerpoint to a valid and accessible HTML table.
- He also used many of the built-in features of Opera (mostly in the Author/User Mode pop-up menu) to show how web pages look when images are turned off, colors are high-contrast, and tables are turned off.
Web Services 'Web Tools' Overview
Friday, October 24, 2003
Room 66 Main Library
Noon to 1 pm
The Office of Web Services has developed a number of new tools and services for campus web administrators. Over the next year, CITES will host a series of brownbags to share these developments with the campus community. In the first of this series, Jim Wilson, Interim Web Services Director presented an overview of the free tools and services his office will be providing to web administrators.
Tools include:
- Customizable interactive events calendar
- Customizable online survey
- Customizable University of Illinois web page templates
- Include builder--a content management system tool to update frequently changing content on your web page Text only filter and many more!
Jim's PowerPoint presentation is available as well as an html overview.
- HTML overview
- PowerPoint file (1.5MB file)
Accepting Credit Card Payments at U of I - Implementation and Best Practices
July 15, 2003
2240 DCL
Noon to 1 pm
Our July 15th Webmaster Brown Bag was a success with over 40 people attending. Kevin Noland and Marc Henkel did a great job updating us on all the changes and improvements in the the U of I Payment Server. The PowerPoint presentation is available.
- PowerPoint file (36KB file)
NCSA Seminar Series
BetaWiz: A Wizard Tool for Web Developers
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Room E102A
NCSA South Research Park Building
1901 S. First Street, Champaign
Noon to 1 pm
- Maria Fish (EOT Webmaster), Ernest Baello, Charles Lu, and Alexander Nelson
Maria Fish and three enterprising undergraduate students gave a demonstration of a tool for webmasters. BetaWiz is a web-based application for creating online forms and data-administration tools without requiring knowledge of web programming techniques. This tool was developed for use by the Education, Outreach, and Training Division at NCSA but can be used by anyone for data collection purposes.
