-- KaronMacLean

Imager Web: Status & To-Do (2008-09)

Updated Aug 09 2009 - KM

ANDRE, PLEASE COMMENT BELOW WHEN TASKS ARE DONE: replace [NOT DONE] with [DONE mm/dd]

• Web redesigner Contact: André Malan- 778 558 4516 andre.malan@ubc.ca
• GOAL: release by mid-August
• Current stable prototype version (php): http://imager.andremalan.org/imager.php

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ACTION ITEMS FOR ANDRE

[NOT DONE] Porting contact list to Imager twiki

• ascertain whether full contact list for students go on twiki? If twiki is written in php, should be simple.
  • --> inform KM. If can, give assessment if whether this is so simple Andre can do it quickly; if not really simple, then we need to hand it off to someone else.
  • 08/11: AM thinks twiki written in PERL; doesn't know. KM advises AM speak to mike sanderson, our IT guy who knows twiki, and get a better assessment of difficulty. KM will do introduction.

[NOT DONE] Document:

• transfer "process" notes onto twiki, start organizing (probably best to organize by WHO does the task, with possible prominent subcategores being the topic, like News, Student Records, etc); and Frequency (like, once/year, once/month, etc).
• Items to include:
  • • Process for moving students to alumni (Juliet; but, is add'l contact info supplied by prof?)
    • See also references below, e.g. Under News.
    • Important NOW: instructions on how to modify text content that pertains to yourself, e.g. faculty bio info.

[NOT DONE] History

• try to break up big block of text. Wish list: neat old photos, artifacts of old days that Kelly might have around? Original founding faculty photo?? Kelly might have (Karon will ask him)

[NOT DONE] Finding Us

• "We are in" text block has unclosed anchor tag (shows up in Safari)
• Include links to page sections at top (orientation); consider dropping "Quick Links" heading, or something else to make the fact that links go to out of and inside page, less confusing.
• check permissions on maps links (floor maps) *
• Mods to "Within Building" section:
  • link to whole-building map (all floors) at top of this section; no thumbnail
  • lose the bullets on individual floors
  • boldface the subjet of 1st 3 bullets: "*Imager faculty offices:* Floors X6 and X8."
  • drop the complete map item at bottom
  • If there actually is a "you are here" on the single floor maps, this note is helpful. Include all these extra wayfinding tips under the all-floors bullet.

[NOT DONE] Contact list - see Karon's source mt'l from mid Aug

[NOT DONE] Meetings: waiting on Juliet

[NOT DONE] Photos: Michiel van de Panne is the person to bug. Grad students might take photos; can ask them to also generate thumbnails of desired size (smaller than existing)

[NOTE DONE] Faculty

• put reg faculty in flat list, alphabetic by last name
• Associates in separate list at bottom, also alphabetic
• retain links to imagerweb research pages (graphics etc) for reg faculty
• Missing Michiel

[NOT DONE] Research / Graphics etc

• Boldface names
• ensure full name is first item in description for all (even if have to slightly rejig first sentence (Alla Shefer; Dinesh Pai, Ron Rensink)
• delete redundant text, such as wolfgangs" member of CS, etc
• HCI/Haptics tag in left menu: hold off until HCI fac decide what to call it

[NOT DONE] Publications

• papers need to be dumped; Andre needs to find imager web

[NOT DONE] Staff:

• drop the bullet
• BF the name

[NOT DONE] Courses

• space out top nav menu, so items more clearly separated
• try to increase contrast between 1st and 2nd level headings (using color, shading, indentation, ???)
• EECE 596 goes in "other"
• 544: "MAGUS" shoudl say "MAGIC"
• 344: Add sentence at end: "344 satisfies the graduate PhD breadth requirement."
• consistency in listing course units (add to ones missing - will need to look up)
• consistency in linking. Add links; 1st choice is instructor's website; when that site's URL looks suspiciously datable, link insted to SSC AND email the instructor to say what and why you've done this. Point to 344 as an example of how they can fix their problem. (link to current-term which is a forward to the current term).

[NOT DONE] Joining Imager. ADD

• under all students:
  • (1) Talk to faculty!
• new grads: okay
• undergrads: * (1) Get to know faculty, at every opportunity - through for examples committees and our Tri-Mentoring program [LINK] as well as research. * (2) Take courses in the areas you're interested in. * (after directed study): If not ready for a thesis or paid research assistantship, volunteer. * Canadians can apply to the NSERC USRA program to work with a specific professor [linkn to http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Students-Etudiants/UG-PC/USRA-BRPC_eng.asp]

* remove the notes par when done with it

[NOT DONE] Postdocs need own list

• same style as grad students? (is problem that don't have right data?)

[NOT DONE??] Upper right image:

• • Right now, the tag is manually constructed and linked. (done by McLachlan, we believe).
  • Suggest: flat organization (not by professor)
  • New plan: files named in convention heidrich_15; associated with tag (title and full author list), and link to paper (eventually; for now, to pubs page?)

[DONE] News:

• Right sidebar (news) needs to be automatically connected to center News section (done)
  • Put past years into "year" folders. Annual task, mid-year is to dump previous calendar year into a year file and link it in, following current example (which Andre will implement) * is it possible to have right sidebar, individual items, cut off after X characters (several lines) then end in "more" with a link to the full item in News section? So more items can fit on a page. (done)
• Fix formatting (parser is written for OLT, just need to retrieve it).

[NOT DONE] Images of Imager:

• good photos, some professionally acquired, laid out carefully one time. This is not an automatically updated repository.
  • rename the section to "images of imager"
  • make "large thumbnails" (w/ varying aspect ratios) smaller than now, e.g. ~3/row.
  • [For now, use current images, and plan to augment or swap when get better ones.]

[DONE] Banner

• • If possible, in redesign make it thinner.
  • KM 8/08: the "CS|Computer Science" is graphically quite awkward. How about making "imager lab" a little smaller; putting "CS}Computer Science" to right side of banner; moving banner more central; vertically aligning all 3 elements, and downsizing til it fits.
  • KM 8/09: HCI -> User Interfaces (I just decided that we don't want an acronym here anyway, and this finesses the issue of HCI versus Haptics)

[DONE] *faculty / Research page:

• • RB et al. 8/19/09: move associate faculty to a separate list at bottom, out of graphics/user interface/vis categories.
  • KM 8/18/09: missing heidrich, van de panne in graphics page, as well as faculty page.
  • KM 8/18/09: HCI/Haptics on left sidebar -> User Interfaces
  • KM 8/03/09: change "HCI/Haptics" on hci.php -> User Interfaces: * and on line below: Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Haptics (done)
  • KM 8/03/09: rename hci.php -> userInterfaces.php
  • Move "associates" to bottom of each category (e.g. Fels to bottom of Graphics)
  • otherwise, put in alphabetic order (here and on research page)
  • Murphy is an Associate
  • Meitner/sheppard might need to switch groups (KM will check w/ Munzner)
  • Create and/or correctly populate the three research pages (graphics etc). [waiting for faculty to supply mat'l]
  • on graphics.php, Bridson bio has a typo "ExoticMatter" seems out of place.
  • Dinesh Pai's bio spills past picture - looks like formatting needs to be cleaned up to handle this situation.

[NOT DONE] *Courses

• • See "Courses" section under Faculty to-do list for overview
  • structure page into 3 areas (linked from top), and populate with the existing courses.
  • remove the descriptions (or just keep the first couple of sentences; but compact everything so courses for a given area roughly fit above the crease. E.g the web link can be incorporated into the title listing; drop prerequisites.
  • link to course schedule pages (ugrad, grad) at top with note: "For current schedule information, see [undergrad] [grad] "
  • remove other notes at top of page *
  • Otherwise awaiting content from faculty

[NOT DONE] Joining Imager

• Awaiting faculty content

[NOT DONE] Publications:

• • drop old publications page content into current one
  • same for theses
  • Malan to coordinate with Brad Swerdfeger on this
  • [we will maintain status quo on pubs database til dept change online (early 2010??)

BUG LIST (broken links etc)

• [fixed] News and events, right sidebar title - broken link
• navigation "Local" link should have "logon" instead of "view" inside the URL to bugs.cs.ubc.ca for the Imager wiki.

Completed items

• [DONE 8/4/09] combine grads, undergrads
• plus a lot of other stuff...

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ACTION ITEMS FOR KARON:

• [DONE] assign "other imager faculty" action items
• [DONE] get Andre access to Imager Twiki (CS ID Q0T6, cwl = ramcio)

• [DONE] find what current status on pubs database is from Wolfgang and Moyra
  • --> status quo for at least another year

• [NOT DONE] photos: have professional photographer come through in early Sept, when there is lots of activity?
  • Tried to delegate to van de panne / McGrenere - confirm??

• [DONE] Courses: take a look and decide what needs to happen here (farming out, reorg) needs to be looked at and improved
  • see notes in COURSES section below

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ACTION ITEMS FOR JULIET:

• [NOT DONE] Alumni: start an alumni database which is same format as students database.

... When a student graduates, their record is simply moved into the alumni database along with any new contact info provided by professor.

• [NOT DONE] People data file (students, postdocs):
  • make sure it's updated.
  • postdocs are currently not listed in the same way; have different fields. JOK needs to fix this.

• [NOT DONE] meeting page. Which meeting belong here, which elsewhere; calendar (google) or list display; can we keep it simple, and who maintains?
  • Imager fac agreed that Catalog belongs on website, for all; those which are "public" include pointers to further information. Request Juliet to solicit/compile the catalog.

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ACTION ITEMS FOR OTHER IMAGER FACULTY

ABOUT US SECTION

• [NOT DONE] Lab overview - JOANNA
  • includes NEW photos, to come from professional (drop the existing photos and separate section at bottom of

• • Include brief list of great places where our students go to work (solicit examples from entire group)

• [NOT DONE] History: "short wikipedia" entry - KELLY ???
  • this section might get worked into the Lab Overview. Keep separate for now.

• [NOT DONE] Finding Us - TAMARA

• [DONE-check?] lab Contact page - JULIET / KARON

• [NOT DONE] Meetings: - JULIET
  • JOK, can you please collect this list from faculty, with links and designation, and put it into a text file?
  • plan: this will be a catalog not calendar; intended for advertising purposes.
  • It will provide a LIST of meetings including links (URL or personal contact), and designation of open or private.

PEOPLE SECTION

• [NEED: KELLY, JOANNA, TAMARA, WOLFGANG, ALLA, MICHIEL, RON] Faculty bios (xx words) and photo for each professor (later, these will be text-editable directly by the prof, but give to Andre in first pass) - (done: Dinesh, Robert, Karon)
  • Probably word limit = 50; embedded links fine.
  • Update your mugshot if desired

• [DONE - check?] Staff - Information about Juliet - JULIET / KARON

• [PARTLY DONE] Research area overview text: this is a short (2-3 sentence) overview at top of each of the three research subgroup pages.
  • Graphics - done
  • User Interfaces - done, needs approval by group
  • Viz - awaiting [TAMARA]

• • examples (shorter and longer respectively than our target): http://hci.usask.ca/ and http://web.cs.toronto.edu/research/groups/hci.htm

COURSES SECTION

• The plan: turn our courses into a shorter list, sorted into the three areas but grad/ugrad continuous, with course number, title and a couple of sentences.
• additionally, within each area section follow our courses with "external courses", which include dept, name/number and remarks like "most HCI graduate students are expected to take this one"

• [NOT DONE] courses: EVERYONE
  • Supply 1-2 sentences for the course that you nominally "own".
  • E.g. TAMARA/ROBERT -> 314; KARON -> 344, 543; JOANNA -> 444, 544; TAMARA 533C, ETC
  • EVERYONE: review external list and contribute remarks like "most HCI students are expected to take this one."

• • Ugrad, grad, external; we will use a flat list in numerical order since short.

JOINING IMAGER SECTION

• [NOT DONE] Joining Imager - TAMARA
  • TAMARA will take first pass, or farm out to someone else
  • ALLA has "information for prospective graduate students" on her website which could be used as reference.