OCAIR

Fact Book URLs Shared by OCAIR Members

Fact Book URL

Discussion

Meihua Zhai: Many times, the layout, the way the information is presented is as important as the contents. The techniques (software and software interfacing) used in preparing the fact book (get job done within the shortest possible time) are also important. Going through five sites today, I went through five generations of Web site construction (in one afternoon). First generation, static pages with links, no graphics (none of the five qualified); second generation, links and graphics, no frames (BGSU's fact book site and Ruan's fact book site fit this category); third generation, links, graphics and frames (Andrew's site. I borrowed a lot from his site a year ago); fourth generation,links are replaced by "pull down menu links" (JAVA script)(Jing's site). The disadvantages of these are that we still have to have the people do the pasting and linking work. With E-commerce, more and more web construction are going to the fifth generation: dynamic/on-line querries, driven by the database itself. The advantages of the fifth generation is that it is NOT labor intensive, once the codes are written. Each year, one database and that's it. Jing's site is going that way, but not complete yet. Some people call it "data warehousing" and I don't agree with it. That's another topic for when? Back to the web site and fact book.

John Milam from George Mason Univ. has done a lot of work in "drill down" query and presentations. Personally, I think that's the direction our information business will go. On the other hand, before people trained as "social scientists" master JAVA or Perl OR CGI, as we just need to get things done first, quick and dirty, we can use whatever methods we know and think about improving it later. That's my personal philosophy.

One thing we will need to keep in mind is that today, when I tried to get to Ruan's site, it took me 2 minutes to get the OIR home page and another 2 minutes to get the alumni by county map. I didn't dare to get to Brian's site from my 28.8 modem connection. In that sense, it didn't take me long to get BGSU's page. That's the give-and-take. According to the site evaluators, how long it takes to load the page is another factor we need to consider. Customers' patience is as long as Amish people's telephone directory. Another things is that we still have 13" monitors on people's desks. When we design web pages, try to avoid scrolling buttons as much as possible. That's why I like Brian's fact book, half a page with data and graphics, with the linking on the same page.

I am trying out MicroSoft's MapPoints program now and it is very good. With that program, if you have data in a database (Access or other ODBC ready database), when you plug in the info, it maps out the data according to your selection. I just tried our enrollment by PA counties by linking my query in Access to that software. My enrollment distribution map is there, with different shades to indicated the difference in numbers! Each time the database changes, the map changes automatically when you refresh it. I don't get paid by MicroSoft, but when you can not defeat the yellow flowers, you may try to win this front, just to give you a sense of accomplishment.

More and more people put two versions of fact books on the web: HTML and PDF. Many times, I find myself like PDF better because I can print it out and have it handy whenever I need it. Waiting to get on site when the server is busy is a pain in you-know-where. Nothing can replace the old way (yet).

Charles Zhao: There is another side of John Milam: a novelist. Visit the following site to read version 1 of his spy/conspiracy novel "Webmaster: The Novel": http://webmaster-novel.com/

Joan Jiang: Meihua has just given us an excellent summary of web technology. To implement her suggestion, you better hire someone like me. I used to be in charge of IR web site (http://www.nd.edu/~instres) for University of Notre Dame. In addition to static web pages, it has pdf files (for Fact Books) and dynamic web interfaces (CGI Perl applications) with Oracle database supporting. Before I left IR office a month ago, I had just put TCE (Teacher and Course Evaluation) report on the web so that faculty can query their own TCE report through a web browser. I wish that I could show you the things I am proud of. But it requires logon id and password to access those web pages.

Brian Hu: I just want tell you one secret that you can create your own web page easily. I use MS Frontpage 98. Now Frontpage 2000 is in the market. There are plenty of templates to choose. It is just like typing in MS Word. Then you choose layout, color, fonds and almost everything you want. try to copy some animations from internet. You don't have to care about HTML. You create you charts in Excel and just link them to your pages. That's it. Try yourself.

Hi Yolanda, I have learned something from your web site. I will create a page indicating each year's version like your first page (start to cat copying now!). I will also add a visitor's counter to check frequency of visit. UnFortunately, my office only deal with data collections. If you are interested in anything else you may go to web site: http://www.lmu.edu.