Under Construction

I finally have some time to blog again. I’ve been really busy lately, tweaking some features and adding a few new ones. Mainly, my recent work has been with our secure network, so I can’t really say anything about it

So, anyway, the site is in good working condition right now. There aren’t any projects that haven’t been completed, and there isn’t much work to be done. Now it’s up to our users to improve the site by reporting problems and giving suggestions through our webmaster contact page. Let’s hear what you’ve got to say folks!

I’ll post any updates here, and I’ll tell you all about any upcoming projects as soon as I come up with them.

Stuart

After a few weeks of upgrading, rewriting, and modifying, the search engine is fixed. Now that it’s fully functional again, our little spider will be crawling the site regularly.
On another note, the weather page is up and running, and the pano space on the homepage is being fitted with some great new images. I’ll reveal some sneak peeks later on…

Stuart

We had this thing for a while. A link on the right-hand side of the footer on every page, which said “Print this page”. Well, there’s no need for it anymore.

Cornell changed their web standards a while ago, amongst the changes was the elimination of that link. So, we’re following suit, and removed it.

The reason its not really needed is because when people user their browser to print pages off the internet, they don’t usually care how it comes out as long as it doesn’t use up too much ink. Well, we achieved that by adding a style sheet, specific for printers, on each page. Now, any time a page is printed, it comes out as text. All the blue and gray sections of our pages don’t show up. It’s just text, which is all the user wants anyway.

So, that’s gone, and may not come back, unless Cornell changes their web standards again…

Any comments as to whether this is a good idea or not, as well as any questions, are welcome. Just post a reply below.

Stuart

Welcome to the Wagner Lab Development Blog! This blog, similar to Cornell’s redesign blog, is meant to inform our users of updates, and changes on the Wagner Lab website. We recently underwent a large redesign in early 2007, and are still trying to tweak things here and there to get it just right. I personally have put a lot of effort into adopting Cornell’s web standards.

One new feature very similar to the one found on Cornell’s home page, is the changing pano image. Every time the page is loaded or reloaded, that main image changes, making the home page a bit more active. Having the same image for a really long time can be a bit boring. Of course, we’re working on more new pano images. The most recent one is the one with our Principal Investigator, Bettina Wagner, as the foreground, and our laboratory as the background. Hope you like it!

Another new feature is our search engine. Wow, that took quite a while to finally get right. However, there is a small glitch that I am still working out; It’s quite slow, the database is overworked. I’ll be attempting to use some other search engine technologies. The current one is open-source, but maybe we’ll have to buy one instead. After all, quality isn’t cheap!

More news on updates and features soon! That’s all I’m revealing for now.

Stuart