Public School Website

[davidmastro]

I joined forum months ago to get some info on how I should start out designing this website ( http://www.webdesignforums.net/showthread.php?p=154843 ).

It turned out that a basic design from BlueRobot's layout reservior was nearly exactly what I had envisioned before starting this project so I built upon that skeleton.
I spent a lot of time doing research to try to teach myself proper XHTML coding and CSS that would be accessible from as many browsers as possible.

Check out what I've accomplished thus far at:

http://www.woburnpublicschools.com

Be sure to check out the seasonal style themes located at the About This Website link.

Thanks for all your help and guidance. I couldn't have done this without all essential info i've gotten from this forum.

- Dave

[Philicom]

Nice layout, although one thing i have noticed is the default theme leaves no gap at the top of the page whereas all the other themes do, just thought i'd make you aware.

HTH

[davidmastro]

Thanks. I was taking into account all the users in the schools that are using an 800 x 600 resolution (nearly half) when I designed the default page; the white space was designed to fit into 800 x 600 without having to scroll to see all the index page info. If you actually went to the theme selection page (design.html) using an 800 x 600 resolution, a screen resolution detection script will inform you that the seasonal themes are designed for those using an 1024 x 768 resolution or greater... which will then center the index page white space and adds a little color to the links and border to keep things fun and semi-personalized.

NOTE: The Large and Extra Large Text styles were primarily designed not for aesthetics, but to provide basic accessibility; which is a necessity for a public school audience.

[pmj7]

Hi

A nice start. I've noticed when using Firefox that your site has a horizontal scrollbar when sized to 800x600. Also, looking at http://www.woburnpublicschools.com/students.html has a type "developement". Also on that page you've got one of my pet peeves: too much centering. Finally, your menu items give no indication of when you are going offsite. Try defining a class for those links and change the colour or add a graphic symbol. Run your pages through the validator, as you have quite a few warnings.

Peter

[davidmastro]

yeah, that was the Olde English spelling of "development"!

The centerning is going to be removed as soon as we determine the content for the resources pages, for now I just dumped all the links from the old website there so people could still access them, the layout of all the resources pages will be completely rearranged.

I agree with you on the external web page warning, I just haven't come up with a good solution for it yet... I was thinking about setting up a JavaScript Alert popup when you click on an external link that would display something like "We have no control over the content on the following external website, please click OK to proceed or Cancel to stay here and close this window"... what do you think, would that pop-up drive you crazy every time you have to click on it? ... or does anyone else have any ideas?

Thanks for the feedback.

[pmj7]

A javascript alert popup would drive me crazy. Also, how's that going to help me if I have a popup blocker on?

Peter