portals and web standards lessons learned and applied david cook d.cook@its.utexas.edu copyright the...

Portals and Web Standards

Lessons Learned and Applied

David Cookd.cook@its.utexas.edu

Copyright The University of Texas at Austin 2003. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

UT Direct

• Background/History

• UT’s Technology Environment

• UT Direct 1.0

• UT Direct 2.0 Vision

• Web Standards

• Challenges

A Bit of History

• President Faulkner’s State of the University address in Fall 1999

• Original goals of this vision– Improved quality of service– Improved efficiencies

• Help students, faculty, and staff with their university business

• Many services on the Web already

Technology Environment

• Unified databases• Distributed application development;

175 trained developers• ADABAS/Natural/webAgent

Sample Services Before UT Direct

UT Direct 1.0

• Launched in August 2000

• Customized and personalized experience to students, faculty and staff based on primary role

• Over 100 services

UT Direct 1.0 Development Effort

• 45 staff, 14,000 hours

• Estimated 50% of development hours spent on browser issues

UT Direct 1.0

UT Direct Usage

• 195K total users

• Spring 2002– 35K unique users per month– 22K repeat visitors each month

Sample Services Before UT Direct

Similar Services After UT Direct 2.0

Issues faced with UT Direct 1.0

• Changing templates• Browser problems and updates; 50% of staff

maintenance time• Frames • Some usability issues• Component institution branding• More granular role information needed

A vision for UT Direct 2.0

• Removal of frames

• Web standards (XHTML/CSS/DOM)

• Support for other UT System components

• Inline functionality rather than just links to services

UT Direct 2.0 Vision (continued)

• Support for non-webAgent technologies

• Improved modularity and maintainability

• Improved accessibility

• Closer alignment with redesigned public site

Implementing UT Direct 2.0

• Gathered developer community to outline vision

• Developed UT Direct “API”• Web standards education and

evangelization• Usability/accessibility testing• Interface guidelines• Conversion

UT Direct 2.0

Anatomy of a UT Direct 2.0 Service

Why Were Web Standards Important

• Multiple browser problems

• Accessibility

• Developers would not be drawing the complete page

• Benefits to developers, end users, and support staff

• Reduced costs

Validation Tool for Secure Pages

Sample Tab Code

<div id="headerBottom"><span

class="nonStandard">Tabs:</span>

<div class="tab"><a class="activeTab" href="/utdirect/index.WBX" title="My Home Tab" accesskey="1">My Home</a> </div>

<div class="tab"><a class="nonActiveTab" href="/utdirect/bookmarks/bkms_list.WBX" title="My Bookmarks Tab">My Bookmarks</a>

</div>

Bookmarks

Before – 6 pagesAfter – 60 lines

Logon Screen Warning

Standard vs. Non-standard Browsers

Benefits of UT Direct Development

• Common look and feel for UT and other components

• Service can be easily bookmarked

• Service usage can be logged

• Developers make fewer interface decisions

Component Support

Challenges in Development

• Technical Issues– webAgent 1 and webAgent 2– CSS Issues– Content Registry

• Political issues– Conversion– Priorities– Control

Future

• Move toward Java for portal framework

• Still must support webAgent applications

• Closer examination of uPortal features

• More open architecture

• Better alignment with public site

URLs

• Information on UT Directhttp://utdirect.utexas.edu/utdirect/

• Web Standards and CSS– World Wide Web Consortium

www.w3.org– Web Standards Project

http://www.webstandards.org/– Wired Redesign

http://www.wired.com/news/explanation.html– ESPN Redesign– CSS-discus Wiki

http://css-discuss.incutio.com/– The DAO of Web Design

http://www.alistapart.com/stories/dao/