In the beginning of the 2004 - 2005 academic year, the California State University (CSU) system announced that new accessibility standards would be enforced for all web sites related to the school in early 2005. The web developers of the Orfalea College of Business decided it would be best to reform their site to meet the accessibility standards before they would be enforced. They also realized that since so much would need to be changed, a complete redesign and restructure of the site would be appropriate.
The result? A friendlier site with a more intuitive menu system, advanced features, and more compliant with the latest web standards (and therefore easier to maintain).
It was designed and programmed by Paulo Avila at apaulodesign while following the design guidelines defined by the Web Authoring Center. It was implemented under the supervision of the Director of Media Presentation Services for the College of Business.
Browser Compatibility
During its initial development, the Orfalea College of Business site was implemented with all major browsers in mind; any browser except Internet Explorer is recommended for aesthetic and security issues. It was tested for functional compatibility with Internet Explorer (6.x for PC & 5.x for Mac), Netscape Navigator (7.x), Firefox (1.x), and Safari (2.0).
Useful Features
An interesting characteristic of this site is the is the interlaced relationship between the client and the server. The features described below act as incentives for the webmaster to keep the files on the server organized and structured. In the the case of the Orfalea College of Business, this maintenance is important since the webmaster will most likely be a student and by no means a permanent administrator. The forced balance between the front-end and back-end workings of a site should theoretically help it maintain itself.
Bread Crumbs
The Bread Crumbs (located at the top of the page) show the path you've "traveled" to get to where you currently are. They are an obvious reference to Hansel & Gretel since they should allow you to trace your steps backwards so you don't get lost.
While the idea of bread crumbs is a popular trend in web sites, their implementation on this site is quite unique. Most bread crumbs are static text manually typed by the webmaster. But the ones here are generated on the fly when each page is loaded - directly reflecting where the file is on the server. This way, for the content of the page to be accurate, the webmaster is forced to maintain the structure of the server as well.
Navigation
The navigation menu on the left of every page contains a link to practically every page on the site, but is smart enough to only display the submenu of the section you are currently in. It achieves this by working with the bread crumbs.
For faster navigation, you can view the submenu for a section that isn't already expanded by simply putting your mouse over it for a couple seconds (700 milliseconds to be precise). Click anywhere in the content of the page to hide the submenu(s) you've manually expanded!
Link Labeling
Have you ever clicked on a link and been surprised that it opens a PDF document that takes forever to load, or begins downloading an unwanted Word document? Don't you wish the webmasters would have somehow notified you what you were getting into when clicking on a link? Well, this site will never give you those frustrations!
Sometimes it is inconvenient to the design or format of a page for the webmaster to insert extra text notifying you that the link goes to a PDF document; and sometimes, we just simply forget! To avoid this problem, our site will look at every link and automatically determine the document it links to in order to display the appropriate symbol. Whether the document is a PDF Document, a Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint Document, an anchored link on a page, a link that goes to an external site, that opens a new window, or an email link, we'll show you before you click!
(If you have Internet Explorer 6, this feature will not work)
