WebOPAC Redesign
Kevin Cullen, Colorado State University Libraries
kcullen@lib.colostate.edu
(970) 491-8821
Download PowerPoint slides from http://lib.colostate.edu/~kcullen/rmriug/.
Goals of the redesign
- Reduce clutter
- Improved aesthetics, capitalizing upon CSS (This meant abandoning Netscape
4.x, for the most part)
- Allow searching without having to make a selection (click) first
Our opacmenu screen
- Four identical files: opacmenu, mainmenu, srchhelp_X and srchhelp_Y
- Creates a problem with tokens which only work in srchhelp_X
- Reduces number of clicks to goal (over old design)
- Keeps down number of tabs/main menu links
- No simple keyword search
- No instructions
- Popup search tips
Innovative has made the work easier
- Direct FTP Access
- Great Screen and Graphic downloads
Cascading Style Sheets
- Make global changes without restarting the Web processes
- Separate formatting from WWWOptions file
- Finer control over various elements
- Faster changes
- CSU has two (three, really) CSS files
How to "examine" a stylesheet:
- View a page’s source and find the link to the
stylesheet:
<link href="/screens/catalogue.css" rel="stylesheet"
type="text/css">
- Take the href link (assuming it's relative) and append it to the server
name
http://library.university.edu/screens/catalogue.css
- This works a bit better in Mozilla/Netscape than IE.
How to "examine" a WWWOptions file:
- Create the URL:
"catalog servername" + "/" + "screens" + "/" +
"wwwoptions"
http://library.university.edu/screens/wwwoptions
- This looks terrible until you view the page source.
Download Innopac Web screens and graphics at http://csdirect.iii.com/faq/custfiles.shtml.
Get Top Style Lite from Bradbury Software at http://www.bradsoft.com/download/index.asp.
Get HTML-Kit from Chami.com http://www.chami.com/html-kit/download/.