10/25 Reading Notes for Week 8 Readings/Viewings
“Beyond HTML…”
CMS means Content Management System; collecting, managing and publishing content. It’s more than a database or repository. This article details one school’s movements to switch to a CMS.
Content- disconnected from layout and design elements. Librarians / others were then able to create guides in a forms-based environment, rather than needing to know HTML. This saved a lot of time and evened the playing field. Their pages contained resource links, web pages, images and files. It’s reusable.
Control- “gatekeeper” reduced. Created standards in guides - common style navigational consistency.
Customization and Context- Taggin content is crucial; it provides meaningful organization for the user. Customizing the metadata gives objects meaning for the user.
Complexity- CMS is a scalable system that can accommodate a growing body of work. Security and backups are in place. Author of each resource must be noted.
Moving toward a CMS environment requires: realizing there is a problem, search for solutions (commercial programs such as Dreamweaver, Vignette, Front Page), open source or in-house options. The rest of the article gives very specific details of the university’s development process. Decisions were made as to webpage/template design, for example what to include in the main section and in the side bar menu topics, resources, drop-down menus, etc. Template then was put to use, evaluated and rewritten as necessary. New CMS alone is not enough; training is a critical part of the system. After the system was in use for a while, users were surveyed to identify successes and areas for improvement.
This article spells out the many steps involved in deciding to change to a CMS. It will be useful for any library (or university) system considering or already implementing a similar change. A recurring theme is the need for training during the change phases as well as throughout maintenance and regular use of the CMS.
HTML Cheatsheet
The members of our class are all at varying levels of technology experience and knowledge. Therefore, those of us with little HTML experience have a nice, little cheatsheet as a reference. Those who don’t need it get to save a tree!
W3schools HTML Tutorial
This site taught me more than I’ve ever known about HTML. It is beginning to make sense to me. I liked the “Try it yourself” and editing exercises. Although it was fun, in a puzzle sort of way, I definitely do not want a job in which I will have to create HTML!
W3schools CSS Tutorial
As I hadn’t before even heard of Cascading Style Sheets, this tutorial was very informative. CSS was a logical solution to problems that arose with HTML limits. New to me are its syntax, comments, id and class selectors, etc. As with the previous tutorial, I liked using the “Try it yourself” sections and the quizzes.
I understand your not wanting to need to create HTML (although I kind of want an excuse to play with it, but currently don't have a reason to). I guess its a good thing that there are Content Management Systems that will allow you to use templates if you are required to create websites for your future jobs.
ReplyDeleteHey Michelle,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about not wanting to use HTML. It seems that CSS provides and easier way to modify and managing different things. However, it seems that we will have to go through training either way in order to understand HTML or CSS.
Ms. Farina,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and Ryan about not wanting to use HTML (though I think I could do it if someone were gently guiding me through it all), though I think CSS seemed a little more complicated to me. I didn't follow that one quite as well.
Michelle, I thought the "Try it Yourself" exercises were valuable too. It's one thing to just read the code, but it's much more meaningful to actually practice it yourself!
ReplyDelete