2008 College of Engineering Web Templates

During the 2008 spring semester, Engineering Communications, working with ITECS, will be developing and applying new templates throughout the College of Engineering web site. This year's goals are to improve the site's communication and appeal, building on the technical and accessibility enhancements that were made in 2007. The changes also reflect work done by the COE Web Design Committee, which met in spring 2007 and recommended the following in its Strategic Plan for the College of Engineering Presence on the World Wide Web (PDF):

• Align our college web-design efforts with those of the NCSU Web Redesign initiative (http://www.ncsu.edu/redesign/) to avoid a duplication of effort.
• Take advantage of resources expended and acquired in the NCSU Web Redesign to enhance our own college web presence (user studies, professional design, information and site architecture, marketing and branding analysis, content management system, etc.).
• Bridge university and college sites with complementary visual design, navigation, and content for greater consistency and a more cohesive web experience.
• Shift from organization-centric to user-centric design in order to improve communication with future students and external audiences without sacrificing the delivery of sound information to our current students, faculty and staff.
• Promote the Dean’s vision for the college, identify our priorities, and leverage our strengths to attract quality students and faculty and additional resources.

The first web sites that were built to coordinate with the NCSU redesign were sites for Eos engineering computing, developed by ITECS, and the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, developed by Creative Services in the new Hannon Hill Cascade Server content management system.

2007 Template Development

The 2007 version of the template made college web pages more accessible, but not just for users with disabilities. Rethinking web design for accessibility produced a more flexible web infrastructure overall and made web viewing faster and easier for people on a variety of computing devices and browsers. The design goals that were established and met include:

• Separate content from presentation and eliminate table-based layouts.
• Reduce dependency on images and graphics in the template.
• Reduce file size and improve page load time.
• Implement Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for site-wide design control.
• Render pages with user-defined and browser-default fonts.
• Ensure correct read order of page content on all browsers and devices.
• Improve navigation in text-only display, screen readers, etc.
• Generate printer-friendly web pages with full linked URLs printed out.
• Comply with Section 508 Standards and the NC State Web Page Accessibility Regulation.
• Comply with W3C web standards (XHTML and CSS) for modern web design and compatibility across all browsers.

Please see the full template description for more information about the goals and accomplishments of the 2007 design.

January 10, 2008