Meeting
Notes
| Date/Time |
Location |
| 3/9/2000 9:30am-11:00am |
Sansom Place West, Bits and Pieces Room, 3rd Floor |
Hi everyone.
Thanks to the following people for attending today's meeting
of HTML2000.
Joe Harris - ISC
Celeste Stewart - ISC
Darlene Jones - VPUL
Vasu Renganathan - Foreign Language Resource Center
Sarah Nachmias - SAS
Jennifer Yuan - School of Medicine
Laura Victor - ISC
Scott Roberts - History
Teresa Leo - ISC
We had a fantastic first session, had a chance to learn about the different
roles we all play here at Penn and shared our experiences using different
web products.
Here are some general notes from the meeting.
- We established that our weekly meeting time will be Thursdays at 10:30am
to Noon. Our next meeting will be on Thursday, March 16, 2000, at 10:30am
in the Bits and Pieces room, 3rd Floor, Sansom Place West.
We will hold 8 meetings in all. If the day and time presents a chronic problem
for any member, please give me a call and we'll try to work it out.
- I asked for a volunteer co-chair but had no takers, until after everyone
left. Then Scott Roberts agreed to be co-chair. Linda Lewis volunteered (by
email) to serve as webmaster, but was unable to attend today so that remains
unconfirmed.
- We established that we need to identify a few different types of "supportees."
We determined that we'd make two user "profiles."
- One profile would be based upon a "basic" user who may spend up to 20%
of his or her time on HTML development and maintenance.
- A second would be based on a "power" user who may spend over 50% of his
or her time on Web development.
Joe Harris from SOS has agreed to begin a bit of research into
how we may be able to identify the needs of each group, as well as our expectations
of each group.
For example, we may expect a basic user to have a general understanding of
HTML tags vs. text, frame structure and simple tables. This type of user's
needs may include easy object-oriented development tools and simple concurrent
text editing tools.
We may expect a power user to have an advanced understanding of HTML and perhaps
one or more other design elements (asp, php, java or vbscript). This type
of user may need better site management tools, database connectivity, etc.
We're looking forward to what Joe brings next week.
- We established a set of categories of products to review. (1) text based
editors for quick HTML and script editing and (2) WYSIWYG editors. Not every
product needs to serve both platforms, but that will be one criterion for
our recommendation.
- We established the following preliminary list of
products to review:
Macromedia Dreamweaver 3.0 (mac/pc)
Adobe GoLive 4.0 (mac/pc)
Claris HomePage 3.0 (mac/pc)
Microsoft FrontPage 2000 (pc)
Microsoft FrontPage 98 (pc) and FrontPage 1.0 (mac)
Microsoft Home Page (pc) (Scott Roberts agreed to research the availability
and support for this product)
Symantec Visual Page (pc and possibly mac)
Netscape Composer 4.07 (pc and mac)
Microsoft Word 2000 (pc) and Word 98 (mac) (generate HTML from a .doc)
NetObjects Fusion (pc/mac)
Hotdog (shareware)
Arachnophilia (freeware)
SoftQuad HotMetal Pro 6.0 (pc)
- Jennifer Yuan volunteered to begin examining how we may best organize and
present our findings once they are complete, using charts, matrices, etc.
Although this is a bit early in the process, its an important and time consuming
piece. Best to get ideas together early.
- I agreed to look at some other freeware products and also compile measurement
criteria (see the next e-mail for details)
- Vasu agreed to examine ways to measure foreign language font functionality
in various packages.
- On the topic of preparing a web page similar to the one on the Princeton
Web (see earlier mail), Celeste agreed to contact Peggy Yetter, who has done
a fair amount of work in this general direction already. Celeste is preparing
a list of resource topics already available for developers on-line.
I'm looking forward to what you are all going to bring next
week. See you then!
