To kick off this whole update, I was charged with assembling a document that outlines our requirements, specifications, etc. As a part of this document, I started laying out a proposed menu and website structure that takes into account all of our current pages but reorganizes and simplifies them a bit. As anyone who has ever tried to navigate the menus knows, they can be quite confusing and overwhelming, especially with the ones that have 3 or 4(!) submenus. So, you can probably imagine that this has been a large undertaking that has consumed quite a bit of time. Aaaand, no one will even see the effects of it anytime soon - that is, except for the Undergraduate pages!
I have basically been given carte blanche to do whatever I see fit with the undergrad pages, so I was able to implement some (but unfortunately not all, yet) of the changes that I proposed in the document. If you go to the Undergraduate menu now, you will see that much has been cut back, and there is only one item with a sub-menu - and the menus go no further than that (no more 3 or 4 levels, huzzah!). I also cleaned up and updated a bunch of the pages in there, and removed pages that were either redundant or outdated with the move to semesters. Where you will see the biggest difference is when you click on "Prospective Students":
While the layout of this page is similar to how it was before, I updated the text in the boxes to use the same font as the newer CIS logo, and also added boxes for IFE (the page for which I need to update...), student stories, and a link to Monica's video. I more or less kept the same color scheme, though, which is bright and happy and still coordinates with our informational postcards and folders. Meanwhile, if you click on "What is Imaging Science?"...
you will be taken to the existing "about" page for the undergraduate program, which has been around forever but didn't appear to have been updated in a while - and, worst of all, was just big blocks of looooooong text. In an attempt to spruce things up a little, I added the "What is Imaging Science?" animation, as well as some graphic banners to help break up the text that was there. I also updated the text to reflect some lab changes and the switch to semesters, added some information on IFE, and used different typography on some parts of the text to help make it more visually appealing. Other than that I more or less kept the existing text the same, though, because even though there is a lot there, there is a lot of good content... and there are some people out there who would want to read all that. (But nobody's forcing you.) Personally, I would prefer to have less information there and instead encourage an in-person visit that would cover all of that, but since all of it was already there... and it was all pretty good stuff.... it was hard for me to just throw it all away. So there it stays. (What do you think of all that text - should it stay or should it go? Suggestions welcome in the comments!)
Other than all of that, one of the most obvious changes you may have noticed is an update to our top banner:
I put together a quick n' dirty banner using official RIT colors and the newer CIS logo. This is more consistent both with RIT but also with the newer logo we've been struggling to adopt more widely. It's a small change, but it's a great one - I've already gotten a few positive reactions (without even having to ask).
Hopefully there will be even more changes coming soon!
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