Update of Humanities Sites

I met with the individuals involved with the redesign of the French website this afternoon to go over their ideas, suggest some cool features and ask some questions for further clarification.

I used an interesting tool to demo the colours for the web pages so that we could see what the web pages would look like ( ColorPicker 3.1 ). We based the colour decisions primarily from the QUAM website here: http://www.litterature.uqam.ca/index.asp.

I also informed them about xhtml 1.1 and it's deprecation of the name attribute in the tag and so as a result the FAQ page (and the other pages that use the 'name' in href attribute) will either have div expansion functionality or be separated into more pages.

I suggested the idea of having the page content included (using php) into the web pages to keep editing the website content separate from editing the website design. Also I asked them if they would want me to add functionality to the web pages so that if the user clicks a button the language used on the page switches from English to French. What I want to do is have each page default to include English versions of the page and then based on a session variable set from a drop down when moving between pages it looks for the French version.

I am going to develop a mock up and begin work on the rollout menu system.

In other news greg ordered a keyboard for me to use that will help my wrist.

Today I was able to link the conflict list page with the edit course offering page. Now the end users can click a radio button next to the conflict they would wish to correct on the conflict list page and be sent to the edit course offering page. Both the victim and assailant conflicts have this functionality. This will enable the end users to speed up the conflicts checking process. In order to do this I converted the radio button functionality of the course offerings list page over to the conflict page and also incorporated the Ajax calls which manage the menu system.

I was also able to suppress the printing of the times courses occur with a-z sequences on the following pages:
course offering list
course offering list report
audit course list
audit course list report
time table display
time table display report

Because of the change this made in the time table display and report pages I was able to condense each a-z sequence course offering to one line instead of two. This allows for a cleaner look as well as a smaller report.

I also added the dagger to the spring sessions for year courses on the course offering list page to make it easier for the end user to read the report and distinguish which course is which.

And lastly, I removed some debugging code in the lang02 account version added by Stewart.

I figured out the issue with the lost session information. Yesterday, I logged into the lang account first, which worked, then the lang02 account and the lang02 account wouldn't work. Today, I logged into the lang02 account, which worked, and then the lang account and that failed. I next shut down the web browser and tried logging in in the same order as yesterday and I got yesterday's results.

It appears that the session ids after logging into a 'lang' account will conflict with the other account if you try to log into both.

I arrived in Victoria this morning and I came to the HCMC to continue working on the Agenda project and the French Department Website. I started the afternoon by updating my workstation's OS, commandeering a new mouse pad with wrist support and asking Greg to look into an ergonomic keyboard for the Mac for the remainder of my contract.

I took time reviewing the French files that Stewart sent me earlier in the week as well as some of the example web pages provided. The file permissions for the development copy of the French website located on the lang02 account were changed so that I could access the web pages.

I next moved onto the Agenda project and I was reviewing the time table issue regarding 'zz' courses. It was noted, by Liz from the philosophy department, that courses that started after the official start time of the block were still placed at the top of that time block and were not aligned correctly. So that any course starting at 10:30, for example, would be placed at the top of the 10-11 time block, creating the illusion that it started at 10.

While this is not a bug but a feature, inherited from the previous system I noticed, while reviewing Stewart's idea for creating a 30 minute interval time sheet option to combat this issue, that within the Agenda system that there are certain times that gives the illusion that the course takes place the previous block (a more serious problem).

For example, The Philosophy Department created a 'zz' course that starts before and ends after the 10:30 - 11:30 time block (PHIL260 J01 Brown, K ELL 160 (10:20 - 12:30)) and because this course does not start at 10:30 it is placed at the top of the 9:30 - 10:30am time block which is 50 minutes before the course is scheduled to begin.

I think it would be a good idea to redesign the timetable view so that it still shows the block design but the courses were properly aligned (within 30 minute intervals). So that instead of seeing the above course starting, seemingly, at 9:30am it would be placed lower between 10 and 10:30am. I believe that this also would resolve the other issue reported by Liz, of a course starting 30 minutes late, as well.

The only issue I see with this is if there are many courses (say 3 or 4) that start at the same exact time (say 10:30am) it may stretch the time table and it may no longer fit correctly on legal size paper.

I tried to log into the the lang02 development account for the Agenda project to do some testing and I noticed that the problem that was affecting the lang account is now affecting it. So while I can log into the one located on hrd I can no longer log into the lang02 account because of the PHP session issue.

I am going to have to talk to Stewart or Martin to see if I can find the new php.ini file to add it to the lang02 account so I can continue with the new changes and testing the stretchability of the time table.

Forwarded to Clifton copies of the documents I got from Catherine and Isabelle, and my notes on our meetings. Also sent him recommendations on how to proceed over next two weeks while I'm on vacation.

I sent Stewart a report on Agenda web application regarding the four points that Liz from the Philosophy department put forth about possible changes and improvements to the course listing page.

I also forward to Stewart a .doc file I created for the end users of the Philosophy website regarding the maintenance of the file system as well as how to edit the web site page content. I've included a link on the login page to the document so that the user can access it easily.

Lastly, for the Philosophy website I had to revalidate the all the pages for the xhtml 1.1 doctype. I mistakenly validated the website for xhtml 1.0 transitional. The major conflicts I discovered were with the forms that I used, none utf8 apostrophes and the target tags employed throughout the website.

I replaced the target tags with the following javascript: onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;". I removed the
tags that were causing the form tags to not validate. And I changed all of the non utf-8 characters that were causing errors as well.

The philosophy website is completed. I spent the day reviewing the philosophy website and ensuring that all the pages and functionality worked correctly. I also removed all testing data from the file io elements of the website and created backups of the file io elements. I tried to find a website link for the human condition conference (linked from the events page) but I could find nothing, so I've added a small under construction page. What is left for this project is to a set of documentation for the end users on how to maintain the file io system.

On Friday I was able to correct the issue on the faq.php page. I was unable to figure out what the issue was when attempting to debug the page. I basically had to rebuild it and retest it again.

Today I completed finalizing the course description editing allowing. So that the user is able to edit all the course section descriptions from one location.

Catherine came down with a number of pages of paper with printed out representations of typical pages for the new French site. Reviewed them with her and asked her to send me the .doc files so I could forward them on to Clifton. She also pointed out features in the "ice" version of zengarden that she liked.

I have completed adding the fckeditor to the following pages of the Philosophy Website: Index, news, staff, employment, new courses, events, summer courses, undergraduate program, graduate program, applied ethics, awards, faq, contact us, resources, and sophia. Users who are logged into the website will be able to use the fckeditor to edit any content on these pages within their web browser.

Every single one of those pages works perfectly except for the faq page. For some reason it does not post the full contents of the text field and it adds "%3" to the end of the file.

To end the day I am going to make a local backup of my work. Tomorrow I plan to test the faq page to figure out why this it is acting differently. Also I am going to be reviewing the website to ensure that all the newly added functionality is correctly implemented and reassess the completion status. From what I understand I have to add the course materials link on the dynamic course_by_prof.php page.

I also received an email from Stewart regarding the Agenda project. Liz has a few recommendations for Agenda website that I am going to be looking into to see how easily they can (if they can) be implemented and present a report back to Stewart before moving forward with any changes. I want to make sure that whatever changes will not negatively affect any other department using this web application.