1. Portals and Web Standards Lessons Learned and Applied David Cook d.cook@its.utexas.edu Copyright The University of Texas at Austin 2003. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

2. UT Direct Background/History UT’s Technology Environment UT Direct 1.0 UT Direct 2.0 Vision Web Standards Challenges

3. A Bit of History President Faulkner’s State of the University address in Fall 1999 Original goals of this vision –Improved quality of service –Improved efficiencies Help students, faculty, and staff with their university business Many services on the Web already

4. Technology Environment Unified databases Distributed application development; 175 trained developers ADABAS/Natural/webAgent

5. Sample Services Before UT Direct

6. UT Direct 1.0 Launched in August 2000 Customized and personalized experience to students, faculty and staff based on primary role Over 100 services

7. UT Direct 1.0 Development Effort 45 staff, 14,000 hours Estimated 50% of development hours spent on browser issues

8. UT Direct 1.0

9. UT Direct Usage 195K total users Spring 2002 –35K unique users per month –22K repeat visitors each month

10. Sample Services Before UT Direct

11. Similar Services After UT Direct 2.0

12. Issues faced with UT Direct 1.0 Changing templates Browser problems and updates; 50% of staff maintenance time Frames Some usability issues Component institution branding More granular role information needed

13. A vision for UT Direct 2.0 Removal of frames Web standards (XHTML/CSS/DOM) Support for other UT System components Inline functionality rather than just links to services

14. UT Direct 2.0 Vision (continued) Support for non-webAgent technologies Improved modularity and maintainability Improved accessibility Closer alignment with redesigned public site

15. Implementing UT Direct 2.0 Gathered developer community to outline vision Developed UT Direct “API” Web standards education and evangelization Usability/accessibility testing Interface guidelines Conversion

16. UT Direct 2.0

17. Anatomy of a UT Direct 2.0 Service

18. Why Were Web Standards Important Multiple browser problems Accessibility Developers would not be drawing the complete page Benefits to developers, end users, and support staff Reduced costs

19. Validation Tool for Secure Pages

20. Sample Tab Code Tabs: My Home My Bookmarks

21. Bookmarks Before – 6 pages After – 60 lines

22. Logon Screen Warning

23. Standard vs. Non-standard Browsers

24. Benefits of UT Direct Development Common look and feel for UT and other components Service can be easily bookmarked Service usage can be logged Developers make fewer interface decisions

25. Component Support

26. Challenges in Development Technical Issues –webAgent 1 and webAgent 2 –CSS Issues –Content Registry Political issues –Conversion –Priorities –Control

27. Future Move toward Java for portal framework Still must support webAgent applications Closer examination of uPortal features More open architecture Better alignment with public site

28. URLs Information on UT Direct http://utdirect.utexas.edu/utdirect/ Web Standards and CSS –World Wide Web Consortium www.w3.org –Web Standards Project http://www.webstandards.org/ –Wired Redesign http://www.wired.com/news/explanation.html –ESPN Redesign –CSS-discus Wiki http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ –The DAO of Web Design http://www.alistapart.com/stories/dao/