Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuide 2 Plugins, etc. was RE: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I think this sounds fascinating and like it would be awesome. Though it's above my tech paygrade so that's pretty much all I can say... -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
able to upload
more than one image at a time. And, in the meantime, there's other stuff we
can do now: community docs, templates, themes, best practices, etc. I've
been surprised by the lack of this material, considering how widely
LibGuides is implemented.
Does anyone else find this stuff interesting?
Alex
On 09/25/2014 05:48 PM, Cindi Blyberg wrote:
One more great guide to share - a literary journal from a k12 in
Australia:
http://home2.scotch.wa.edu.au/theraven_winter2014
For you LG admins out there - it's a series of RT content types that's
governed by an external stylesheet. They have LibGuides CMS, and this
private guide is in its own group.
*back to lurking*
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 2:00 PM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com
wrote:
Jesse reminds me that I meant to point out that there is a Paste from
Word button in the RTE that will strip out all that microsoft nonsense.
Not quite what you were asking for (suppressing tags from the RTE--I
passed
that suggestion on to the devs) but it's what we refer people to who
break
their formatting accidentally with a massive paste. There's also a
Paste
as Plain Text button that has a similar effect.
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Jesse Martinez jesse.marti...@bc.edu
wrote:
I can commiserate!
The tactic we've used at our university was to use the data migration
from
LGv1 to LGv2 as a means to convene guide authors and rethink
* the future overall layout of our guides (new side menu has been our
design choice but complicates preexisting three- and four-column
layouts);
* their intended use (pastiche of related but independent boxes on the
guide or something with a simple flow/concise content -- it's a
philosophical discussion, for sure);
* breakdown of content (when it is appropriate to have long detailed
pages
or break down into sub-pages, which have their own issues...);
* the strict use of accessibility policies (must set up strict
policies
about funky colors fonts, minimize use HTML tables, content column
layout
w.r.t. responsive design, etc.).
I feel our internal conversations and meetings about rethinking
LibGuides
v2 with our staff have gone over well, and reiterating appropriate
best
practices or suggestions whenever I field a LibGuides question have
birthed some improvements in guide construction. It's an ongoing
battle,
of
course!
There are some heavy-handed tactics in place here too. For instance
we've
hidden the Fonts button in the guide editor using CSS.
span#cke_12 {display:none;}
This doesn't stop custom html or copy/pasting Word content (ugh) from
getting through, but it does allows us to say, nope, we're not
supporting
Comic Sans!
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu
wrote:
I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it
is
nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is
an
organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately
it
has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where
I've
worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many
other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings
out
the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian
psyche.
Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on
the
verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will
create
a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that
would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp
this stuff out each time it happens.
To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question--
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of
outrageously poor usability,
Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides,
And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them?
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf
Of
Will Martin
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing
a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and
templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing
everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things
could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will
not.
This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to
impose
any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content
guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less
than
100% free reign appears to be anathema to them.
The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have
everything:
- Giant walls of text that no one ever reads.
- Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if
ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
of this material, considering how widely
LibGuides is implemented.
Does anyone else find this stuff interesting?
Alex
On 09/25/2014 05:48 PM, Cindi Blyberg wrote:
One more great guide to share - a literary journal from a k12 in
Australia:
http://home2.scotch.wa.edu.au/theraven_winter2014
For you LG admins out there - it's a series of RT content types that's
governed by an external stylesheet. They have LibGuides CMS, and this
private guide is in its own group.
*back to lurking*
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 2:00 PM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com
wrote:
Jesse reminds me that I meant to point out that there is a Paste from
Word button in the RTE that will strip out all that microsoft
nonsense.
Not quite what you were asking for (suppressing tags from the RTE--I
passed
that suggestion on to the devs) but it's what we refer people to who
break
their formatting accidentally with a massive paste. There's also a
Paste
as Plain Text button that has a similar effect.
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Jesse Martinez jesse.marti...@bc.edu
wrote:
I can commiserate!
The tactic we've used at our university was to use the data migration
from
LGv1 to LGv2 as a means to convene guide authors and rethink
* the future overall layout of our guides (new side menu has been our
design choice but complicates preexisting three- and four-column
layouts);
* their intended use (pastiche of related but independent boxes on the
guide or something with a simple flow/concise content -- it's a
philosophical discussion, for sure);
* breakdown of content (when it is appropriate to have long detailed
pages
or break down into sub-pages, which have their own issues...);
* the strict use of accessibility policies (must set up strict
policies
about funky colors fonts, minimize use HTML tables, content column
layout
w.r.t. responsive design, etc.).
I feel our internal conversations and meetings about rethinking
LibGuides
v2 with our staff have gone over well, and reiterating appropriate
best
practices or suggestions whenever I field a LibGuides question have
birthed some improvements in guide construction. It's an ongoing
battle,
of
course!
There are some heavy-handed tactics in place here too. For instance
we've
hidden the Fonts button in the guide editor using CSS.
span#cke_12 {display:none;}
This doesn't stop custom html or copy/pasting Word content (ugh) from
getting through, but it does allows us to say, nope, we're not
supporting
Comic Sans!
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu
wrote:
I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well,
it
is
nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is
an
organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately
it
has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where
I've
worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many
other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings
out
the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian
psyche.
Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am
on
the
verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will
create
a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that
would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could
stamp
this stuff out each time it happens.
To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question--
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of
outrageously poor usability,
Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides,
And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end
them?
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf
Of
Will Martin
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of
editing
a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and
templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing
everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things
could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will
not.
This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to
impose
any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content
guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less
than
100% free reign appears to be anathema to them.
The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We
have
everything:
- Giant walls of text that no one ever reads.
- Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if
ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do.
- A thriving ecosystem of competing labels. Is it Article Indexes,
Article
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
If we are talking about a set of _curated_ community plugins, Github (or any of umpteen git platforms) would be fine. A Springshare person and/or designated community persons could control the repos, approving pull requests and managing releases and all that. A new release would be sent to an approval process that would check for bugs, performance problems, security, etc., and this part would have to be done by a Springshare person most likely. If it is approved, regular LG users could enable the plugin by checking a box on an admin page that lists all the approved plugins. Regular non-techy users (who you indicated are the vast majority of LG sites) would never have to touch git or even know repos exist. As far as communication platforms, the only thing that might be helpful is an IRC channel. Otherwise, Github bug trackers, SS lounge (maybe with a new developers group), and listservs like this one would be sufficient. These social issues are one thing. The more difficult part IMO is determining how the plugin system would work. Wordpress and Drupal offer a good model with their systems of hooks. For instance, there could be an on_page_load hook. A plugin could register with that hook, which would tell LG under-the-hood to run the plugin whenever the page loads. The hook would pass an object into some kind of init function, where it could be manipulated in PHP and then returned. We could come up with a small handful of these hooks that would handle just about any use case the community might have. (Off the top of my head: on page load, at a scheduled interval, on loading the add box menu, on loading the add box content menu, on loading the admin guide index page.) Here's a trivial example of sorting all the boxes on a page by title: https://gist.github.com/jswelker/7c672c56be62b9d5fe58 Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cindi Blyberg Sent: Friday, September 26, 2014 8:16 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 7:29 AM, Alex Armstrong aarmstr...@acg.edu wrote: @Cindi: In my defense, I was being rhetorical as to why there's no plugin system. I wasn't trying to second-guess how you develop your products. Though I'm glad you're considering allowing more sophisticated customization for LibGuides. Navigation in particular is a thorny issue. No worries! I hope my response didn't come off as reactionary. We are happy to answer questions, even rhetorical ones. ;) (I hear you, but we were like, yeah, why *doesn't* that exist? Let's *do* it!) As for Gist/Git, there are repos out there, 20-some of them. We would very much like to replace the Lounge with something else in the future, and while I think GitHub is too high a bar for most of our users, it could play a role in us sharing with you and vice-versa. There's some simple stuff thatare worth documenting. For example, Josh mentioned that: The admin controls in LGseem to all be loaded dynamically via javascript, which makes them both very hard to customize and very easy to break. I have also noticed that changingthe ID of certain HTML elements in your template can have the unintended(and undocumented) effect of erasing particular admin features from your template. I've listed these IDs here: https://gist.github.com/alehandrof/ 9f083aa03c287931d9f0#file-required-for-admin-html We actually had this on our list of things to add to the LibGuides documentation. So, thanks for that, Alex! :) I'll see that it gets added--you're not the first one to alert us to this issue (nor was @gollydamn). Any ideas on where/how we can share things like this? I tried tweeting it to my 6 followers. To my surprise, it was not widely reported on :p We are happy to RT - just tag us @springshare. We also have a blog http://blog.springshare.com, and a web newsletter that goes out to every person with an account. I realize that this is us sharing rather than you sharing--if something else works, go for it, and if we can help, just ask. Keep being awesome, and know that we welcome your feedback. :) Thanks! -Cindi :) On 2014-09-25 23:48, Cindi Blyberg wrote: OK, one more tidbit on this. I was chatting with Slaven, our CEO, and told him of the chatter on the list and the idea of a community-developed, curated set of plug-ins, along with templates, themes, etc., and he's totally excited about this idea. He (and I!) would love it if you all would chime in on this and other ideas on the Lounge so that we can figure out how to make them happen. We're going to set up a group on the Lounge for techie admins, but our Lounge admin is in the midst of moving so it might take a day or two. Thanks for all this great feedback, everyone! We are listening, and want to make these things happen. -cb On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 3:22 PM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Alex, That's a great
[CODE4LIB] LibGuide 2 Plugins, etc. was RE: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
So, I've been scratching my chin, empathizing with the smallness of
Springshare's team, their large userbase, and the many demands they have to
prioritize over those of a few of us power admins. I think we could still
develop a system for creating community plugins without the springies needing
to create new stuff if we first begin writing a js wrapper to standardize how
dependent plugins interface with LG.
Now I'm just shooting from the hip:
Think of a very small js library that just make it easier for others to hook
into common lg components without a high skill level. At some point a person
mentioned that it would be nice to control the html output for {{guide_nav}},
but that might be a low-priority and distant feature on a small team's
timeline. In the meantime, we could write something simple that lets people set
options in a JSON file, which would have a lower learning curve than writing
the scripts themselves. Those options might look like WordPress's:
'container' : 'div',
'container_class' : '',
'container_id' : '',
'menu_class' : 'menu',
'menu_id' : '' ...
And so on. Or they could be just options in the plugin itself, but I feel like
an external json file might open up more community options. E.g., I could make
a Pinterest-style template using jQuery isotope and package it with with a
.json file wherein basic parameters are set. These are uploaded as an asset in
LG CMS [or wherever], and the only thing a user has to do is make sure the file
path in the template is correct. That file path could also be established in
the json file, as well,
Theme creators could then build a template on of a common js file and a few
optional json parameters without actually mucking with any scripts. We would
also be able to address any compatibility or performance issues at scale.
Michael
Libux.co
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joshua
Welker
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2014 10:30 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
If we are talking about a set of _curated_ community plugins, Github (or any of
umpteen git platforms) would be fine. A Springshare person and/or designated
community persons could control the repos, approving pull requests and managing
releases and all that. A new release would be sent to an approval process that
would check for bugs, performance problems, security, etc., and this part would
have to be done by a Springshare person most likely. If it is approved, regular
LG users could enable the plugin by checking a box on an admin page that lists
all the approved plugins. Regular non-techy users (who you indicated are the
vast majority of LG sites) would never have to touch git or even know repos
exist.
As far as communication platforms, the only thing that might be helpful is an
IRC channel. Otherwise, Github bug trackers, SS lounge (maybe with a new
developers group), and listservs like this one would be sufficient.
These social issues are one thing. The more difficult part IMO is determining
how the plugin system would work. Wordpress and Drupal offer a good model with
their systems of hooks. For instance, there could be an on_page_load hook. A
plugin could register with that hook, which would tell LG under-the-hood to run
the plugin whenever the page loads. The hook would pass an object into some
kind of init function, where it could be manipulated in PHP and then returned.
We could come up with a small handful of these hooks that would handle just
about any use case the community might have. (Off the top of my head: on page
load, at a scheduled interval, on loading the add box menu, on loading the
add box content menu, on loading the admin guide index page.)
Here's a trivial example of sorting all the boxes on a page by title:
https://gist.github.com/jswelker/7c672c56be62b9d5fe58
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cindi
Blyberg
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2014 8:16 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 7:29 AM, Alex Armstrong aarmstr...@acg.edu wrote:
@Cindi: In my defense, I was being rhetorical as to why there's no
plugin system. I wasn't trying to second-guess how you develop your
products.
Though I'm glad you're considering allowing more sophisticated
customization for LibGuides. Navigation in particular is a thorny issue.
No worries! I hope my response didn't come off as reactionary. We are happy to
answer questions, even rhetorical ones. ;) (I hear you, but we were like,
yeah, why *doesn't* that exist? Let's *do* it!)
As for Gist/Git, there are repos out there, 20-some of them. We would very
much like to replace the Lounge with something else in the future, and while I
think GitHub is too high a bar for most of our users, it could play a role
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I also think all of these ideas are awesome. The idea of a third-party space, or even someplace sponsored by springshare, to share customizations etc. could help so many of us. Even short of developing a plug-in system, having someplace to share template customizations, CSS, etc. would be HUGE. Github seems like a very reasonable option though it's true the tech bar for admission is pretty high. It would be great if we had a place where those admins Cindi mentioned who aren't super tech-expert but do some customizations and would like to do more (and I would put myself in that group) could go to download custom templates, CSS mods to tweak etc.. Even if it was just screenshots and text files for download. Springshare's Best Of guide is really handy and has been useful to me in the past but I think what we're all talking about transcends the capabilities of that site Or maybe not? Could all of this be housed on a regular old libguide?? Different sections for different types of customizations and boxes with individual submissions? Someone would have to manage it and the submissions which might make it untenable. On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 10:30 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: If we are talking about a set of _curated_ community plugins, Github (or any of umpteen git platforms) would be fine. A Springshare person and/or designated community persons could control the repos, approving pull requests and managing releases and all that. A new release would be sent to an approval process that would check for bugs, performance problems, security, etc., and this part would have to be done by a Springshare person most likely. If it is approved, regular LG users could enable the plugin by checking a box on an admin page that lists all the approved plugins. Regular non-techy users (who you indicated are the vast majority of LG sites) would never have to touch git or even know repos exist. As far as communication platforms, the only thing that might be helpful is an IRC channel. Otherwise, Github bug trackers, SS lounge (maybe with a new developers group), and listservs like this one would be sufficient. These social issues are one thing. The more difficult part IMO is determining how the plugin system would work. Wordpress and Drupal offer a good model with their systems of hooks. For instance, there could be an on_page_load hook. A plugin could register with that hook, which would tell LG under-the-hood to run the plugin whenever the page loads. The hook would pass an object into some kind of init function, where it could be manipulated in PHP and then returned. We could come up with a small handful of these hooks that would handle just about any use case the community might have. (Off the top of my head: on page load, at a scheduled interval, on loading the add box menu, on loading the add box content menu, on loading the admin guide index page.) Here's a trivial example of sorting all the boxes on a page by title: https://gist.github.com/jswelker/7c672c56be62b9d5fe58 Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cindi Blyberg Sent: Friday, September 26, 2014 8:16 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 7:29 AM, Alex Armstrong aarmstr...@acg.edu wrote: @Cindi: In my defense, I was being rhetorical as to why there's no plugin system. I wasn't trying to second-guess how you develop your products. Though I'm glad you're considering allowing more sophisticated customization for LibGuides. Navigation in particular is a thorny issue. No worries! I hope my response didn't come off as reactionary. We are happy to answer questions, even rhetorical ones. ;) (I hear you, but we were like, yeah, why *doesn't* that exist? Let's *do* it!) As for Gist/Git, there are repos out there, 20-some of them. We would very much like to replace the Lounge with something else in the future, and while I think GitHub is too high a bar for most of our users, it could play a role in us sharing with you and vice-versa. There's some simple stuff thatare worth documenting. For example, Josh mentioned that: The admin controls in LGseem to all be loaded dynamically via javascript, which makes them both very hard to customize and very easy to break. I have also noticed that changingthe ID of certain HTML elements in your template can have the unintended(and undocumented) effect of erasing particular admin features from your template. I've listed these IDs here: https://gist.github.com/alehandrof/ 9f083aa03c287931d9f0#file-required-for-admin-html We actually had this on our list of things to add to the LibGuides documentation. So, thanks for that, Alex! :) I'll see that it gets added--you're not the first one to alert us to this issue (nor was @gollydamn). Any ideas on where/how we can share
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
. These social issues are one thing. The more difficult part IMO is determining how the plugin system would work. Wordpress and Drupal offer a good model with their systems of hooks. For instance, there could be an on_page_load hook. A plugin could register with that hook, which would tell LG under-the-hood to run the plugin whenever the page loads. The hook would pass an object into some kind of init function, where it could be manipulated in PHP and then returned. We could come up with a small handful of these hooks that would handle just about any use case the community might have. (Off the top of my head: on page load, at a scheduled interval, on loading the add box menu, on loading the add box content menu, on loading the admin guide index page.) Here's a trivial example of sorting all the boxes on a page by title: https://gist.github.com/jswelker/7c672c56be62b9d5fe58 Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cindi Blyberg Sent: Friday, September 26, 2014 8:16 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 7:29 AM, Alex Armstrong aarmstr...@acg.edu wrote: @Cindi: In my defense, I was being rhetorical as to why there's no plugin system. I wasn't trying to second-guess how you develop your products. Though I'm glad you're considering allowing more sophisticated customization for LibGuides. Navigation in particular is a thorny issue. No worries! I hope my response didn't come off as reactionary. We are happy to answer questions, even rhetorical ones. ;) (I hear you, but we were like, yeah, why *doesn't* that exist? Let's *do* it!) As for Gist/Git, there are repos out there, 20-some of them. We would very much like to replace the Lounge with something else in the future, and while I think GitHub is too high a bar for most of our users, it could play a role in us sharing with you and vice-versa. There's some simple stuff thatare worth documenting. For example, Josh mentioned that: The admin controls in LGseem to all be loaded dynamically via javascript, which makes them both very hard to customize and very easy to break. I have also noticed that changingthe ID of certain HTML elements in your template can have the unintended(and undocumented) effect of erasing particular admin features from your template. I've listed these IDs here: https://gist.github.com/alehandrof/ 9f083aa03c287931d9f0#file-required-for-admin-html We actually had this on our list of things to add to the LibGuides documentation. So, thanks for that, Alex! :) I'll see that it gets added--you're not the first one to alert us to this issue (nor was @gollydamn). Any ideas on where/how we can share things like this? I tried tweeting it to my 6 followers. To my surprise, it was not widely reported on :p We are happy to RT - just tag us @springshare. We also have a blog http://blog.springshare.com, and a web newsletter that goes out to every person with an account. I realize that this is us sharing rather than you sharing--if something else works, go for it, and if we can help, just ask. Keep being awesome, and know that we welcome your feedback. :) Thanks! -Cindi :) On 2014-09-25 23:48, Cindi Blyberg wrote: OK, one more tidbit on this. I was chatting with Slaven, our CEO, and told him of the chatter on the list and the idea of a community-developed, curated set of plug-ins, along with templates, themes, etc., and he's totally excited about this idea. He (and I!) would love it if you all would chime in on this and other ideas on the Lounge so that we can figure out how to make them happen. We're going to set up a group on the Lounge for techie admins, but our Lounge admin is in the midst of moving so it might take a day or two. Thanks for all this great feedback, everyone! We are listening, and want to make these things happen. -cb On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 3:22 PM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Alex, That's a great question! I would surmise that a plug-in system and other advanced tech features don't exist yet for a couple of reasons. First, we're a small company. We have eight products and a small development team; right now the priority is getting out v2 apps. Second, we have more than 4500 LibGuides customers, and some have more than one site. The vast, vast majority of those folks use LibGuides out of the box, with a few color customizations that they accomplish with the UI (or a lot, as you've seen...). Some folks are advanced enough to figure out and alter the default CSS and put their customizations in the Custom JS/CSS field. Then there is this group. :) There are a few LibGuides admins who do customization at this group's level who aren't on this list (or are you? :) ). I'd also second the Lounge (springsharelounge.com) as a good group
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Jesse reminds me that I meant to point out that there is a Paste from
Word button in the RTE that will strip out all that microsoft nonsense.
Not quite what you were asking for (suppressing tags from the RTE--I passed
that suggestion on to the devs) but it's what we refer people to who break
their formatting accidentally with a massive paste. There's also a Paste
as Plain Text button that has a similar effect.
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Jesse Martinez jesse.marti...@bc.edu
wrote:
I can commiserate!
The tactic we've used at our university was to use the data migration from
LGv1 to LGv2 as a means to convene guide authors and rethink
* the future overall layout of our guides (new side menu has been our
design choice but complicates preexisting three- and four-column layouts);
* their intended use (pastiche of related but independent boxes on the
guide or something with a simple flow/concise content -- it's a
philosophical discussion, for sure);
* breakdown of content (when it is appropriate to have long detailed pages
or break down into sub-pages, which have their own issues...);
* the strict use of accessibility policies (must set up strict policies
about funky colors fonts, minimize use HTML tables, content column layout
w.r.t. responsive design, etc.).
I feel our internal conversations and meetings about rethinking LibGuides
v2 with our staff have gone over well, and reiterating appropriate best
practices or suggestions whenever I field a LibGuides question have
birthed some improvements in guide construction. It's an ongoing battle, of
course!
There are some heavy-handed tactics in place here too. For instance we've
hidden the Fonts button in the guide editor using CSS.
span#cke_12 {display:none;}
This doesn't stop custom html or copy/pasting Word content (ugh) from
getting through, but it does allows us to say, nope, we're not supporting
Comic Sans!
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote:
I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it is
nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is an
organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately it
has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where I've
worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many
other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings out
the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian
psyche.
Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on
the
verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will
create
a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that
would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp
this stuff out each time it happens.
To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question--
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of
outrageously poor usability,
Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides,
And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them?
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Will Martin
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing
a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and
templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing
everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things
could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not.
This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to impose
any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content
guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less than
100% free reign appears to be anathema to them.
The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have
everything:
- Giant walls of text that no one ever reads.
- Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if
ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do.
- A thriving ecosystem of competing labels. Is it Article Indexes,
Article Databases, just plain Databases, or something more exotic?
Depends which apex predator rules this particular neck of the jungle.
- Green text on pink backgrounds with maroon borders. Other pages in the
same guide might go with different, equally eye-twisting color schemes.
I'm not even sure how he's doing that without access to the style sheet,
but he's probably taught himself just enough HTML to mangle things in an
effort to use friendly colors.
- Some guides have three or even FOUR rows of tabs. With drop-down
submenus on most of them, naturally
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
One more great guide to share - a literary journal from a k12 in Australia:
http://home2.scotch.wa.edu.au/theraven_winter2014
For you LG admins out there - it's a series of RT content types that's
governed by an external stylesheet. They have LibGuides CMS, and this
private guide is in its own group.
*back to lurking*
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 2:00 PM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote:
Jesse reminds me that I meant to point out that there is a Paste from
Word button in the RTE that will strip out all that microsoft nonsense.
Not quite what you were asking for (suppressing tags from the RTE--I passed
that suggestion on to the devs) but it's what we refer people to who break
their formatting accidentally with a massive paste. There's also a Paste
as Plain Text button that has a similar effect.
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Jesse Martinez jesse.marti...@bc.edu
wrote:
I can commiserate!
The tactic we've used at our university was to use the data migration from
LGv1 to LGv2 as a means to convene guide authors and rethink
* the future overall layout of our guides (new side menu has been our
design choice but complicates preexisting three- and four-column layouts);
* their intended use (pastiche of related but independent boxes on the
guide or something with a simple flow/concise content -- it's a
philosophical discussion, for sure);
* breakdown of content (when it is appropriate to have long detailed pages
or break down into sub-pages, which have their own issues...);
* the strict use of accessibility policies (must set up strict policies
about funky colors fonts, minimize use HTML tables, content column
layout
w.r.t. responsive design, etc.).
I feel our internal conversations and meetings about rethinking LibGuides
v2 with our staff have gone over well, and reiterating appropriate best
practices or suggestions whenever I field a LibGuides question have
birthed some improvements in guide construction. It's an ongoing battle,
of
course!
There are some heavy-handed tactics in place here too. For instance we've
hidden the Fonts button in the guide editor using CSS.
span#cke_12 {display:none;}
This doesn't stop custom html or copy/pasting Word content (ugh) from
getting through, but it does allows us to say, nope, we're not supporting
Comic Sans!
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote:
I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it
is
nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is an
organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately it
has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where
I've
worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many
other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings out
the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian
psyche.
Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on
the
verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will
create
a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that
would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp
this stuff out each time it happens.
To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question--
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of
outrageously poor usability,
Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides,
And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them?
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Will Martin
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing
a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and
templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing
everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things
could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not.
This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to impose
any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content
guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less than
100% free reign appears to be anathema to them.
The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have
everything:
- Giant walls of text that no one ever reads.
- Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if
ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do.
- A thriving ecosystem of competing labels. Is it Article Indexes,
Article Databases, just plain Databases, or something more exotic?
Depends which apex predator rules this particular neck of the jungle.
- Green text on pink backgrounds
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hey there, Over the last couple of years we've begun addressing many of these organizational web content issues many libraries share, and while there's still a lot to do, I think we are on a good path. We try not to be draconian but we try to be up to par. There are a few parts: 1.) You need an organizational culture which respects the Web Services Person, the overall Web Services, and external Best Practices Maintaining currency and doing user research is part of a web services librarian's description. Just as the library expects expertise from a subject specialist and respects that person's authority in the topic, the library must expect the same from its web team and, in many ways, defer certain decision making. Libraries that have web teams need to put them in a position to, first, aspire to expertise--this means ample time to experiment and learn and do usability studies--and then in a position to determine best practices. Libraries that treat their site and web content as ancillary are going to struggle to have usable and useful web services in the first place. Additionally, other people who do web stuff better have already figured out how users actually use the web. Most of this you don't need to figure out for yourself. Optimize your services for your own users, but adopt the best practices that are already out there and learn from research that has already been done. Realize that research HAS been done, and such research is just as laudable and worthy of consideration as research in any other field. 2.) Establish Axioms that Force Better Practices We decided a year or so ago that all future projects were going to be mobile first, accessible, and chase after a 2000 speed index. This forces certain decisions: we design for and write for mobile first - there's not really much screen real estate, so a.) there can't be a ton of stuff there, b.) it has to be readable and tappable [big font, big buttons], c.) we can't write ten paragraphs if we can say it in two or three. Additionally, we made everyone aware of Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 A, and so we aspire to meet those basic recommendations: y'know, alt tags for everything, transcripts for media. The 2000 speed index is roughly a 2 second load time, so we say that, hey, images can't be crazy big. It's actually pretty generous. 3.) Set some freaking guidelines Create an online media committee who agree on and agree to enforce content policies. Libraries as an organization with a web presence should be just as on point as any other organization with a web presence. Users notice when content is *bad* or inconsistent, and they don't like it when they have to check the URL to see whether they're still on XYZ site. Users who come to distrust the quality or usability of a library's content will apply that same reasoning to the rest of its services. Having designs that pop with a great color scheme are super, but users really don't care. They really don't. They just want to get the content they came for - and leave. Libraries want to be perceived as professional, but libraries without content policies won't be - even small ones. They don't have to be overwhelming. Set some simple axioms, agree on adhering to federal / state level accessibility guidelines, inherit your parent organization's style guide / content policies [if they exist], and then make a few other simple rules that don't suck. 4.) Enforce those freaking guidelines This is easier when the library actually has a web team, but designate someone as a Content Sheriff and give that person the authority to *unpublish* content that doesn't meet XYZ guidelines. There will be animosity, at first, but it's for the betterment of the organization as a whole - and once people get used to the fact that *bad content will be unpublished*, they'll write good content to avoid the annoyance. This is where editorial workflow should be an option. Prevent bad content from getting published in the first place. An *awesome* guide created by an expert science subject specialist that violates your accessibility guidelines shouldn't be publishable. If you have control over your CMS (like WordPress), you can make it so that these fields are required before the content can go live. In the case of LibGuides, establish a simple and non-jerky system of buddy review so that a second pair of eyes can confirm that, yeah, XYZ guidelines are met. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of King, Emily Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 1:19 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav At my previous institution, I struggled with the same issues as you (and probably most libguides administrators that have a large number of people creating guides). The only really positive experience that I have had was a fairly time consuming one. Every year, I sat down
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
The web content workflow and governance issues that were brought up are
really important. I would love to discuss them at excruciating length.
But content ownership conundrums and the frustrations of WYSIWYG editors
are broader issues that can be usefully taken up in other threads.
I de-lurked here because I saw an opening to discuss LibGuides with
other people who have a stake in it, especially as a lightweight CMS. I
think Josh's description of its limitations was very good. His feature
propositions, including that of a curated plugin system, were even
better. I have a question though: Why doesn't it exist already?
LibGuides is limited, though the v2 API looks promising for client-side
stuff. We should be talking with Springshare about improving workflows
for admins -- such as (an example I came across today) being able to
upload more than one image at a time. And, in the meantime, there's
other stuff we can do now: community docs, templates, themes, best
practices, etc. I've been surprised by the lack of this material,
considering how widely LibGuides is implemented.
Does anyone else find this stuff interesting?
Alex
On 09/25/2014 05:48 PM, Cindi Blyberg wrote:
One more great guide to share - a literary journal from a k12 in Australia:
http://home2.scotch.wa.edu.au/theraven_winter2014
For you LG admins out there - it's a series of RT content types that's
governed by an external stylesheet. They have LibGuides CMS, and this
private guide is in its own group.
*back to lurking*
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 2:00 PM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote:
Jesse reminds me that I meant to point out that there is a Paste from
Word button in the RTE that will strip out all that microsoft nonsense.
Not quite what you were asking for (suppressing tags from the RTE--I passed
that suggestion on to the devs) but it's what we refer people to who break
their formatting accidentally with a massive paste. There's also a Paste
as Plain Text button that has a similar effect.
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Jesse Martinez jesse.marti...@bc.edu
wrote:
I can commiserate!
The tactic we've used at our university was to use the data migration from
LGv1 to LGv2 as a means to convene guide authors and rethink
* the future overall layout of our guides (new side menu has been our
design choice but complicates preexisting three- and four-column layouts);
* their intended use (pastiche of related but independent boxes on the
guide or something with a simple flow/concise content -- it's a
philosophical discussion, for sure);
* breakdown of content (when it is appropriate to have long detailed pages
or break down into sub-pages, which have their own issues...);
* the strict use of accessibility policies (must set up strict policies
about funky colors fonts, minimize use HTML tables, content column
layout
w.r.t. responsive design, etc.).
I feel our internal conversations and meetings about rethinking LibGuides
v2 with our staff have gone over well, and reiterating appropriate best
practices or suggestions whenever I field a LibGuides question have
birthed some improvements in guide construction. It's an ongoing battle,
of
course!
There are some heavy-handed tactics in place here too. For instance we've
hidden the Fonts button in the guide editor using CSS.
span#cke_12 {display:none;}
This doesn't stop custom html or copy/pasting Word content (ugh) from
getting through, but it does allows us to say, nope, we're not supporting
Comic Sans!
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote:
I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it
is
nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is an
organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately it
has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where
I've
worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many
other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings out
the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian
psyche.
Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on
the
verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will
create
a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that
would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp
this stuff out each time it happens.
To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question--
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of
outrageously poor usability,
Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides,
And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them?
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Will Martin
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
4. Admin controls are not very
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
with this? I am on the verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will create a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp this stuff out each time it happens. To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question-- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageously poor usability, Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides, And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them? Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Will Martin Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav 4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not. This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to impose any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less than 100% free reign appears to be anathema to them. The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have everything: - Giant walls of text that no one ever reads. - Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do. - A thriving ecosystem of competing labels. Is it Article Indexes, Article Databases, just plain Databases, or something more exotic? Depends which apex predator rules this particular neck of the jungle. - Green text on pink backgrounds with maroon borders. Other pages in the same guide might go with different, equally eye-twisting color schemes. I'm not even sure how he's doing that without access to the style sheet, but he's probably taught himself just enough HTML to mangle things in an effort to use friendly colors. - Some guides have three or even FOUR rows of tabs. With drop-down submenus on most of them, naturally. - A few are nicely curated and easy to use, but they're in a distinct minority. I've tried. I've pushed peer-reviewed usability studies at them. I've reported on conference sessions explaining exactly why all these things are bad. I've brought them studies of our own analytics. I've had students sit down and get confused in front of them. Nothing has gotten through, and being the only web type at the library, I'm outnumbered. Just the thought of it makes me supremely tired. I'm sorry if this has digressed. LibGuides is not at fault, really. It's an organizational problem. LibGuides just seems to be the flash point for it. Will -- Jesse Martinez Web Services Librarian O'Neill Library, Boston College jesse.marti...@bc.edu 617-552-2509 -- Jesse Martinez Web Services Librarian O'Neill Library, Boston College jesse.marti...@bc.edu 617-552-2509
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Sir, you just won the internets. Or at least the library internets. I am going to try to get library administrators here on board with the things you mentioned. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Schofield Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 1:20 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hey there, Over the last couple of years we've begun addressing many of these organizational web content issues many libraries share, and while there's still a lot to do, I think we are on a good path. We try not to be draconian but we try to be up to par. There are a few parts: 1.) You need an organizational culture which respects the Web Services Person, the overall Web Services, and external Best Practices Maintaining currency and doing user research is part of a web services librarian's description. Just as the library expects expertise from a subject specialist and respects that person's authority in the topic, the library must expect the same from its web team and, in many ways, defer certain decision making. Libraries that have web teams need to put them in a position to, first, aspire to expertise--this means ample time to experiment and learn and do usability studies--and then in a position to determine best practices. Libraries that treat their site and web content as ancillary are going to struggle to have usable and useful web services in the first place. Additionally, other people who do web stuff better have already figured out how users actually use the web. Most of this you don't need to figure out for yourself. Optimize your services for your own users, but adopt the best practices that are already out there and learn from research that has already been done. Realize that research HAS been done, and such research is just as laudable and worthy of consideration as research in any other field. 2.) Establish Axioms that Force Better Practices We decided a year or so ago that all future projects were going to be mobile first, accessible, and chase after a 2000 speed index. This forces certain decisions: we design for and write for mobile first - there's not really much screen real estate, so a.) there can't be a ton of stuff there, b.) it has to be readable and tappable [big font, big buttons], c.) we can't write ten paragraphs if we can say it in two or three. Additionally, we made everyone aware of Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 A, and so we aspire to meet those basic recommendations: y'know, alt tags for everything, transcripts for media. The 2000 speed index is roughly a 2 second load time, so we say that, hey, images can't be crazy big. It's actually pretty generous. 3.) Set some freaking guidelines Create an online media committee who agree on and agree to enforce content policies. Libraries as an organization with a web presence should be just as on point as any other organization with a web presence. Users notice when content is *bad* or inconsistent, and they don't like it when they have to check the URL to see whether they're still on XYZ site. Users who come to distrust the quality or usability of a library's content will apply that same reasoning to the rest of its services. Having designs that pop with a great color scheme are super, but users really don't care. They really don't. They just want to get the content they came for - and leave. Libraries want to be perceived as professional, but libraries without content policies won't be - even small ones. They don't have to be overwhelming. Set some simple axioms, agree on adhering to federal / state level accessibility guidelines, inherit your parent organization's style guide / content policies [if they exist], and then make a few other simple rules that don't suck. 4.) Enforce those freaking guidelines This is easier when the library actually has a web team, but designate someone as a Content Sheriff and give that person the authority to *unpublish* content that doesn't meet XYZ guidelines. There will be animosity, at first, but it's for the betterment of the organization as a whole - and once people get used to the fact that *bad content will be unpublished*, they'll write good content to avoid the annoyance. This is where editorial workflow should be an option. Prevent bad content from getting published in the first place. An *awesome* guide created by an expert science subject specialist that violates your accessibility guidelines shouldn't be publishable. If you have control over your CMS (like WordPress), you can make it so that these fields are required before the content can go live. In the case of LibGuides, establish a simple and non-jerky system of buddy review so that a second pair of eyes can confirm that, yeah, XYZ guidelines are met. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of King, Emily Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 1:19 PM
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings out the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian psyche. Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on the verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will create a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp this stuff out each time it happens. To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question-- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageously poor usability, Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides, And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them? Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Will Martin Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav 4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not. This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to impose any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less than 100% free reign appears to be anathema to them. The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have everything: - Giant walls of text that no one ever reads. - Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do. - A thriving ecosystem of competing labels. Is it Article Indexes, Article Databases, just plain Databases, or something more exotic? Depends which apex predator rules this particular neck of the jungle. - Green text on pink backgrounds with maroon borders. Other pages in the same guide might go with different, equally eye-twisting color schemes. I'm not even sure how he's doing that without access to the style sheet, but he's probably taught himself just enough HTML to mangle things in an effort to use friendly colors. - Some guides have three or even FOUR rows of tabs. With drop-down submenus on most of them, naturally. - A few are nicely curated and easy to use, but they're in a distinct minority. I've tried. I've pushed peer-reviewed usability studies at them. I've reported on conference sessions explaining exactly why all these things are bad. I've brought them studies of our own analytics. I've had students sit down and get confused in front of them. Nothing has gotten through, and being the only web type at the library, I'm outnumbered. Just the thought of it makes me supremely tired. I'm sorry if this has digressed. LibGuides is not at fault, really. It's an organizational problem. LibGuides just seems to be the flash point for it. Will -- Jesse Martinez Web Services Librarian O'Neill Library, Boston College jesse.marti...@bc.edu 617-552-2509
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
,
of
course!
There are some heavy-handed tactics in place here too. For instance
we've
hidden the Fonts button in the guide editor using CSS.
span#cke_12 {display:none;}
This doesn't stop custom html or copy/pasting Word content (ugh) from
getting through, but it does allows us to say, nope, we're not
supporting
Comic Sans!
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu
wrote:
I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it
is
nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is
an
organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately
it
has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where
I've
worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many
other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings
out
the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian
psyche.
Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on
the
verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will
create
a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that
would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp
this stuff out each time it happens.
To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question--
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of
outrageously poor usability,
Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides,
And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them?
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf
Of
Will Martin
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing
a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and
templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing
everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things
could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will
not.
This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to
impose
any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content
guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less
than
100% free reign appears to be anathema to them.
The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have
everything:
- Giant walls of text that no one ever reads.
- Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if
ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do.
- A thriving ecosystem of competing labels. Is it Article Indexes,
Article Databases, just plain Databases, or something more exotic?
Depends which apex predator rules this particular neck of the jungle.
- Green text on pink backgrounds with maroon borders. Other pages in
the
same guide might go with different, equally eye-twisting color
schemes.
I'm not even sure how he's doing that without access to the style
sheet,
but he's probably taught himself just enough HTML to mangle things in
an
effort to use friendly colors.
- Some guides have three or even FOUR rows of tabs. With drop-down
submenus on most of them, naturally.
- A few are nicely curated and easy to use, but they're in a distinct
minority.
I've tried. I've pushed peer-reviewed usability studies at them.
I've
reported on conference sessions explaining exactly why all these
things
are bad. I've brought them studies of our own analytics. I've had
students sit down and get confused in front of them. Nothing has
gotten
through, and being the only web type at the library, I'm outnumbered.
Just the thought of it makes me supremely tired.
I'm sorry if this has digressed. LibGuides is not at fault, really.
It's an organizational problem. LibGuides just seems to be the flash
point for it.
Will
--
Jesse Martinez
Web Services Librarian
O'Neill Library, Boston College
jesse.marti...@bc.edu
617-552-2509
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Brad, Sure, it's feasible. And it's much easier to do with LibGuides v2 than with v1. Whether it's a good idea or not depends on why you're considering building your site on LibGuides. Springshare provides amazing support, but the platform itself is limited. There's a trade-off to make regarding flexibility, complexity, etc. There's no efficient workflow that I've found. (There's no SSH/SFTP, no ability to tweak the CMS, etc. I'm currently drafting a description of my workflow, in the hopes of receiving suggestions for improvement.) A lot of what we do on LibGuides is a pretty stylesheet, precise content guidelines, and a lot of copy-pasting. I'm not trying to dissuade you. LibGuides has been incredible for us. I shudder to think where we would be without it. But we decided to build our site on LibGuides due to (ahem) local operational constraints. AFAICT, it seems that the bulk of your website is already on LibGuides. If you're reasonably happy with it, maybe take the plunge and see if it works for you :) Hope this helps, Alex On 2014-09-22 23:56, Brad Coffield wrote: Alex, Thanks so much for sharing your new site built in LG2. I love it. Simple, attactive, but very useable. It's very interesting to see an honest-to-goodness this actually looks like a real website and not like just some libguide library website built using lg. More and more I'm seriously considering LG2 as a feasible option for our library site. Thanks! Brad On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I was just curious in general. I'm always interested in data on web usability. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2014 12:34 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I was actually a bit coy in my previous post. Our old site was reasonably battle-hardened for usability. It's not like we transitioned from three-column layouts and guides with three rows of tabs or anything. I'm still trying to come up with tasks for testing. I suspect a lot of the big stuff will be OK while a lot of the small stuff will be off. It's been really hard to test the latter. (And there is a glitches in our analytics so I'm also flying a bit blind.) Is there something in particular you're wondering about? Alex On 09/19/2014 07:50 PM, Joshua Welker wrote: Nice job. I like the simplicity. Let me know how the usability testing goes. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 10:28 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Long time lurker, second time poster (if memory serves). We launched our new library website yesterday, which is entirely built on LibGuides 2. You can see it here: http://library.acg.edu/ For simplicity’s sake we used only two templates: a full width template for single page guides (e.g., our home page). a content template that uses ~2/3 of the page for the content and ~1/3 for guide navigation. There are no dropdown menus anywhere, for the reasons people mentioned, nor do we use two columns for content. (Some of the landing pages use a small grid, but that’s about it.) We use LG’s built-in second column wrapped around an `aside` and placed at the bottom of the main content for related info. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see what I mean: http://library.acg.edu/citations/apa I decided to keep the navigation menu on the right to emphasize the main content. My guess is that this won’t work very well for sections with more narrative. My inspiration (GOV.uk) uses wizard navigation, which LG2 supports. That may be a way of handling this issue. I put the site together with almost no usability testing. I’ll have to grab some students in the coming weeks and find out how bad things really are :) You can see a slightly abstracted version of the content template, as well as other useful LG2 thingies in this gist: https://gist.github.com/alehandrof/9f083aa03c287931d9f0 The design was written in Sass on top of an imported and customized Bootstrap 3.2. There's an option in the LG admin to disable the default Bootstrap and I only had to write a few hundred lines to override aspects of the default LG stylesheets. Because I built the design on top of Bootstrap there was very little tweaking necessary for the admin side to work properly. Hope this helps, Alex -- Alex Armstrong E-Resource/Reference Assistant The American College of Greece Libraries, John S. Bailey Library 6 Gravias Street | GR 153 42 Agia Paraskevi | Athens, Greece Phone: +30 210 600 9800 ext. 1274, 1267 | Fax: +30 210 601 7795 Email: aarmstr...@acg.edu On 2014-09-19 12:31 AM, Joshua Welker wrote: That's a good idea. I changed the template using Bootstrap classes so
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I agree with Alex. The LibGuides 2.0 platform is a big step up from 1.0 and does a great job at what it is designed to do--easy creation of static content, simple templating, and reusing common data elements like links, databases, boxes, etc. The reusability of content IMO is the killer feature for LibGuides that isn't really present in any other platform and is very non-trivial to implement in a custom application. The LibGuides platform is very fast and reliable, and Springshare provides great support. Here are the main drawbacks I've encountered: - 1. Inflexible menu building tools. The guide level navigation menu tools are very functional but don't provide many options for customization aside from cosmetic. There is also no way that I know of to build a site-wide navigation menu except to copy/paste raw HTML into your site's header section. That means none of my colleagues can edit the menu, as they are not HTML-savvy, which negates the usefulness of a CMS in this area. 2. Lack of a plugin ecosystem and any sort of server-side scripting. This is a major one for me. This limits the site to mostly static, manually-added content. Yes, you can embed RSS feeds and iframes and javascript widgets from third-party sites, but if you want to do anything more complicated than that, you are out of luck. 3. Lots of tedious copy/paste work is required. Okay, not copy/paste per se, but if I want to change the boxes that appear in the sidebar column in a large group of guides, I am going to have to manually add and remove boxes on every single page. 4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not. For instance, right now in 2.0 you can create templates (these are great btw). But there's no way to my knowledge to limit editors to using several of them. I'd like to create official one, two, and three column templates for our library. However, my options are either to lock all guides site-wide into a single template, or to allow access to all templates, which includes the default templates that do not match very well with our site's branding. I could see Springshare fixing this in the future, as it is a relatively small tweak to an existing feature. (Okay, it would probably require database table changes, but not huge ones.) Another big peeve for me is that there is no way to limit the types of HTML that go into a rich text box. This means editors are free to add whatever whacky styling they want. We have a lot of guides in our system (hopefully not for much longer) that contain random font sizes, colors, weights, and underlining. I can only assume that people are creating content in MS Word and pasting it into LibGuides because it is full of all sorts of deprecated HTML tags, manual line breaks and non-breaking spaces, and inline styles. These are accessibility problems on all sorts of levels and make applying site-wide CSS a major chore. If I could just filter out tags like font, u, and center, along with disallowing inline styles, it would go a long way. But this would be a brand new feature requiring a pretty big under-the-hood change. I don't see it happening any time soon considering priority right now (rightly) is finalizing the 2.0 apps. - These issues aren't deal-breakers for many use cases, but they do make it difficult to make the leap to using LibGuides as your primary website. Smaller libraries are often content to having relatively simple sites, but larger libraries that have dedicated IT personnel usually want to do some more complicated things. Larger libraries also have a lot more people using the LibGuides site and a lot more content, which exacerbates most of the problems mentioned above. At our library, the balance I struck is to use a Ruby on Rails app as our main website that controls our home page, navigation menus, and complex applications--forms with business rules, new books feeds, news feeds, interactive maps, library hours, and more coming down the pipe. Then we use LibGuides for static content, like library policies and research guides. Once we launch our 2.0 site, they will both be branded identically. The only hiccup at this point is that I have to manually copy HTML from the main website's header and footer and paste them into LibGuides each time those sections change. I am looking into creating a workaround using javascript to keep the two in sync. Cross-site scripting restrictions make this sort of interaction a lot more difficult. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 4:50 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
You folks are on ball.
Joshua sez: For instance, right now in 2.0 you can create templates (these are
great btw). But there's no way to my knowledge to limit editors to using
several of them. I'd like to create official one, two, and three column
templates for our library. However, my options are either to lock all guides
site-wide into a single template, or to allow access to all templates, which
includes the default templates that do not match very well with our site's
branding.
I could see Springshare fixing this in the future, as it is a relatively small
tweak to an existing feature. (Okay, it would probably require database table
changes, but not huge ones.)
Another big peeve for me is that there is no way to limit the types of HTML
that go into a rich text box. This means editors are free to add whatever
whacky styling they want. We have a lot of guides in our system (hopefully not
for much longer) that contain random font sizes, colors, weights, and
underlining. I can only assume that people are creating content in MS Word and
pasting it into LibGuides because it is full of all sorts of deprecated HTML
tags, manual line breaks and non-breaking spaces, and inline styles.
These are the two big ones for me. I think Springshare's plans for robust
templating are in line with your thinking. I'm in a similar boat: I want to
make, say, three templates available - and lock everyone down to those. I am
not too worried about LG2's out-of-the-box accessibility issues. Since you have
control over [most] of the markup, you can write your own skip links, semantic
tags, add aria roles when necessary, even schema microdata. There isn't
granular control over {{guide_nav}}, but if you're feeling really gung-ho you
can do a little DOM scripting and rewrite the menu as needed. Since LG2 is
almost solely a javascript application*, you can hook-up handlebars / mustache
templates, or even angular.
I do worry that there seems to be zero no-js fallback. We had an issue where a
bad script we wrote years ago carried over from LG1 and broke the entire
editor. There was no way to delete that box, because there were no editing
tools with javascript disabled. Something to think about.
Most importantly, I want to strip almost all of the options from LG2's WYSIWYG.
IDEALLY we could swap it out with a markdown editor, so staff couldn't
haplessly bold things, but if we could just get rid of the font options
entirely I'd be jumping for joy. :)
Michael
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joshua
Welker
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 10:27 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I agree with Alex. The LibGuides 2.0 platform is a big step up from 1.0 and
does a great job at what it is designed to do--easy creation of static content,
simple templating, and reusing common data elements like links, databases,
boxes, etc. The reusability of content IMO is the killer feature for LibGuides
that isn't really present in any other platform and is very non-trivial to
implement in a custom application. The LibGuides platform is very fast and
reliable, and Springshare provides great support.
Here are the main drawbacks I've encountered:
-
1. Inflexible menu building tools. The guide level navigation menu tools are
very functional but don't provide many options for customization aside from
cosmetic. There is also no way that I know of to build a site-wide navigation
menu except to copy/paste raw HTML into your site's header section. That means
none of my colleagues can edit the menu, as they are not HTML-savvy, which
negates the usefulness of a CMS in this area.
2. Lack of a plugin ecosystem and any sort of server-side scripting. This is a
major one for me. This limits the site to mostly static, manually-added
content. Yes, you can embed RSS feeds and iframes and javascript widgets from
third-party sites, but if you want to do anything more complicated than that,
you are out of luck.
3. Lots of tedious copy/paste work is required. Okay, not copy/paste per se,
but if I want to change the boxes that appear in the sidebar column in a large
group of guides, I am going to have to manually add and remove boxes on every
single page.
4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing a guide,
you either have the option of locking down styles and templates completely (and
oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing everything (and oh your eyeballs will
scream). Some of these things could very well be improved in the future, and
some probably will not.
For instance, right now in 2.0 you can create templates (these are great btw).
But there's no way to my knowledge to limit editors to using several of them.
I'd like to create official one, two, and three column templates for our
library. However, my options are either to lock all guides site-wide
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I don't think viewing LibGuides as a javascript application is going to do
much good. Angular and its ilk make sense when you want the javascript to
communicate with a backend. With LibGuides, there's no backend (at least not
one accessible to us via javascript). Yes, you can build a jQuery spaghetti
mountain to rewrite the DOM, but that is a hack more than a real solution
IMO. All it would take is one script error on your page to break the whole
thing. Then there is the no-js issue. And then there is the issue of older
browsers and older computers that can handle the javascript technically but
do so incredibly slowly so that the page looks like junk for 10 seconds
until the scripts run. Looking at you, IE 8. I tried doing something like
this in the past, and it was a massive fail.
But I do commiserate with your javascript problems. The admin controls in LG
seem to all be loaded dynamically via javascript, which makes them both very
hard to customize and very easy to break. I have also noticed that changing
the ID of certain HTML elements in your template can have the unintended
(and undocumented) effect of erasing particular admin features from your
template.
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Michael Schofield
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 9:38 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
You folks are on ball.
Joshua sez: For instance, right now in 2.0 you can create templates (these
are great btw). But there's no way to my knowledge to limit editors to using
several of them. I'd like to create official one, two, and three column
templates for our library. However, my options are either to lock all guides
site-wide into a single template, or to allow access to all templates, which
includes the default templates that do not match very well with our site's
branding.
I could see Springshare fixing this in the future, as it is a relatively
small tweak to an existing feature. (Okay, it would probably require
database table changes, but not huge ones.)
Another big peeve for me is that there is no way to limit the types of HTML
that go into a rich text box. This means editors are free to add whatever
whacky styling they want. We have a lot of guides in our system (hopefully
not for much longer) that contain random font sizes, colors, weights, and
underlining. I can only assume that people are creating content in MS Word
and pasting it into LibGuides because it is full of all sorts of deprecated
HTML tags, manual line breaks and non-breaking spaces, and inline styles.
These are the two big ones for me. I think Springshare's plans for robust
templating are in line with your thinking. I'm in a similar boat: I want to
make, say, three templates available - and lock everyone down to those. I am
not too worried about LG2's out-of-the-box accessibility issues. Since you
have control over [most] of the markup, you can write your own skip links,
semantic tags, add aria roles when necessary, even schema microdata. There
isn't granular control over {{guide_nav}}, but if you're feeling really
gung-ho you can do a little DOM scripting and rewrite the menu as needed.
Since LG2 is almost solely a javascript application*, you can hook-up
handlebars / mustache templates, or even angular.
I do worry that there seems to be zero no-js fallback. We had an issue where
a bad script we wrote years ago carried over from LG1 and broke the entire
editor. There was no way to delete that box, because there were no editing
tools with javascript disabled. Something to think about.
Most importantly, I want to strip almost all of the options from LG2's
WYSIWYG. IDEALLY we could swap it out with a markdown editor, so staff
couldn't haplessly bold things, but if we could just get rid of the font
options entirely I'd be jumping for joy. :)
Michael
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Joshua Welker
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 10:27 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I agree with Alex. The LibGuides 2.0 platform is a big step up from 1.0 and
does a great job at what it is designed to do--easy creation of static
content, simple templating, and reusing common data elements like links,
databases, boxes, etc. The reusability of content IMO is the killer feature
for LibGuides that isn't really present in any other platform and is very
non-trivial to implement in a custom application. The LibGuides platform is
very fast and reliable, and Springshare provides great support.
Here are the main drawbacks I've encountered:
-
1. Inflexible menu building tools. The guide level navigation menu tools are
very functional but don't provide many options for customization aside from
cosmetic. There is also no way that I know of to build a site-wide
navigation menu except to copy/paste raw HTML
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not. This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to impose any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less than 100% free reign appears to be anathema to them. The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have everything: - Giant walls of text that no one ever reads. - Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do. - A thriving ecosystem of competing labels. Is it Article Indexes, Article Databases, just plain Databases, or something more exotic? Depends which apex predator rules this particular neck of the jungle. - Green text on pink backgrounds with maroon borders. Other pages in the same guide might go with different, equally eye-twisting color schemes. I'm not even sure how he's doing that without access to the style sheet, but he's probably taught himself just enough HTML to mangle things in an effort to use friendly colors. - Some guides have three or even FOUR rows of tabs. With drop-down submenus on most of them, naturally. - A few are nicely curated and easy to use, but they're in a distinct minority. I've tried. I've pushed peer-reviewed usability studies at them. I've reported on conference sessions explaining exactly why all these things are bad. I've brought them studies of our own analytics. I've had students sit down and get confused in front of them. Nothing has gotten through, and being the only web type at the library, I'm outnumbered. Just the thought of it makes me supremely tired. I'm sorry if this has digressed. LibGuides is not at fault, really. It's an organizational problem. LibGuides just seems to be the flash point for it. Will
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hey all, a few comments from the Springys. :) Thanks for this amazing feedback on the tools that you need to make your jobs easier. We are discussing internally and plan to come up with and add viable solutions to the roadmap for v2--some of them will be CMS-only, be aware, when they involve groups and such. Our goal with this product is to make it as tech-friendly as possible and your feedback is extremely helpful. Keep it coming! On to Josh's post, with specific answers to a couple of things: On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 10:27 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: 2. Lack of a plugin ecosystem and any sort of server-side scripting. This is a major one for me. This limits the site to mostly static, manually-added content. Yes, you can embed RSS feeds and iframes and javascript widgets from third-party sites, but if you want to do anything more complicated than that, you are out of luck. We do plan to reinstate the remote scripts capability that v1 had. It's not plugins, but would this help with this issue? 3. Lots of tedious copy/paste work is required. Okay, not copy/paste per se, but if I want to change the boxes that appear in the sidebar column in a large group of guides, I am going to have to manually add and remove boxes on every single page. Not so! :) You can create a template that has permanent boxes by calling those individual content IDs. Go to Help Guide Templates Customize Guide Templates Fine Tuning Content for more. Or http://support.springshare.com/libguides/guidetemplates/customizeguidetemplates#s-lg-box-3819 (requires login--it's not a secret per se, but we can add more detailed documentation up if we're not giving it away to competitors. ;) ). -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 4:50 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Brad, Sure, it's feasible. And it's much easier to do with LibGuides v2 than with v1. Whether it's a good idea or not depends on why you're considering building your site on LibGuides. Springshare provides amazing support, but the platform itself is limited. There's a trade-off to make regarding flexibility, complexity, etc. There's no efficient workflow that I've found. (There's no SSH/SFTP, no ability to tweak the CMS, etc. I'm currently drafting a description of my workflow, in the hopes of receiving suggestions for improvement.) A lot of what we do on LibGuides is a pretty stylesheet, precise content guidelines, and a lot of copy-pasting. I'm not trying to dissuade you. LibGuides has been incredible for us. I shudder to think where we would be without it. But we decided to build our site on LibGuides due to (ahem) local operational constraints. AFAICT, it seems that the bulk of your website is already on LibGuides. If you're reasonably happy with it, maybe take the plunge and see if it works for you :) Hope this helps, Alex On 2014-09-22 23:56, Brad Coffield wrote: Alex, Thanks so much for sharing your new site built in LG2. I love it. Simple, attactive, but very useable. It's very interesting to see an honest-to-goodness this actually looks like a real website and not like just some libguide library website built using lg. More and more I'm seriously considering LG2 as a feasible option for our library site. Thanks! Brad On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I was just curious in general. I'm always interested in data on web usability. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2014 12:34 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I was actually a bit coy in my previous post. Our old site was reasonably battle-hardened for usability. It's not like we transitioned from three-column layouts and guides with three rows of tabs or anything. I'm still trying to come up with tasks for testing. I suspect a lot of the big stuff will be OK while a lot of the small stuff will be off. It's been really hard to test the latter. (And there is a glitches in our analytics so I'm also flying a bit blind.) Is there something in particular you're wondering about? Alex On 09/19/2014 07:50 PM, Joshua Welker wrote: Nice job. I like the simplicity. Let me know how the usability testing goes. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 10:28 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Long time lurker, second time poster (if memory serves). We launched our new library website yesterday, which
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it is nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is an organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately it has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where I've worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings out the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian psyche. Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on the verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will create a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp this stuff out each time it happens. To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question-- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageously poor usability, Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides, And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them? Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Will Martin Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav 4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not. This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to impose any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less than 100% free reign appears to be anathema to them. The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have everything: - Giant walls of text that no one ever reads. - Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do. - A thriving ecosystem of competing labels. Is it Article Indexes, Article Databases, just plain Databases, or something more exotic? Depends which apex predator rules this particular neck of the jungle. - Green text on pink backgrounds with maroon borders. Other pages in the same guide might go with different, equally eye-twisting color schemes. I'm not even sure how he's doing that without access to the style sheet, but he's probably taught himself just enough HTML to mangle things in an effort to use friendly colors. - Some guides have three or even FOUR rows of tabs. With drop-down submenus on most of them, naturally. - A few are nicely curated and easy to use, but they're in a distinct minority. I've tried. I've pushed peer-reviewed usability studies at them. I've reported on conference sessions explaining exactly why all these things are bad. I've brought them studies of our own analytics. I've had students sit down and get confused in front of them. Nothing has gotten through, and being the only web type at the library, I'm outnumbered. Just the thought of it makes me supremely tired. I'm sorry if this has digressed. LibGuides is not at fault, really. It's an organizational problem. LibGuides just seems to be the flash point for it. Will
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
On 9/24/14 10:27 AM, Joshua Welker wrote: For instance, right now in 2.0 you can create templates (these are great btw). But there's no way to my knowledge to limit editors to using several of them. I'd like to create official one, two, and three column templates for our library. Honestly, this seems like asking for a technological solution to a social/organizational problem. I mean, all these editors are employees of your library, right? If you can't get them to follow an official policy of only using certain templates, that's not a tech problem. (And if it's not an official policy, what gives you the right to restrict it technically?) Believe me, I know this isn't as simple as it seems (oh, believe me, I know). But trying to work around off organizational failings with technological solutions, in my experience, usually just kicks the can down the road, the problems will keep popping up over and over again, and your attempted technological workarounds won't workaround. And I'd rather SpringShare spent there time on some of the other wishes you outline, which are things you really can't do without software enhancement, not just workarounds for organizational failings. Jonathan
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Who has the ability to make policies about content styling? If no such policy exists, and no person or entity in your organization has such an ability, then what would give you, the IT person, the right to make your own policies and enforce them with a LibGuides feature? Wouldn't that result in just as much political problems and enmity? If someone entity have that ability, does such a policy exist? If not, what would it take to make such a policy? Including consultation with neccesary stakeholders etc. If such a policy exists, but librarians are ignoring it, is it appropriate to talk to their boss? And/or have a discussion about why the policy exists, and why it's important we all follow organizational policies to have a consistent business for our users? Now, really, I know this can take literally _years_ to deal with, or be impossible to deal with in some organizations. And since this is obviously a problem at nearly every library using LibGuides, _maybe_ it makes sense to put technical features in LibGuides allowing you to restrict editing variation etc. But if you only do the technical fix without the organizational issues, it is going to keep coming up again and again -- and you're maybe just going to get in a fight about why did you have the right to configure those restrictions? Jonathan On 9/24/14 12:56 PM, Joshua Welker wrote: I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it is nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is an organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately it has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where I've worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings out the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian psyche. Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on the verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will create a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp this stuff out each time it happens. To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question-- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageously poor usability, Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides, And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them? Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Will Martin Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav 4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not. This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to impose any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less than 100% free reign appears to be anathema to them. The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have everything: - Giant walls of text that no one ever reads. - Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do. - A thriving ecosystem of competing labels. Is it Article Indexes, Article Databases, just plain Databases, or something more exotic? Depends which apex predator rules this particular neck of the jungle. - Green text on pink backgrounds with maroon borders. Other pages in the same guide might go with different, equally eye-twisting color schemes. I'm not even sure how he's doing that without access to the style sheet, but he's probably taught himself just enough HTML to mangle things in an effort to use friendly colors. - Some guides have three or even FOUR rows of tabs. With drop-down submenus on most of them, naturally. - A few are nicely curated and easy to use, but they're in a distinct minority. I've tried. I've pushed peer-reviewed usability studies at them. I've reported on conference sessions explaining exactly why all these things are bad. I've brought them studies of our own analytics. I've had students sit down and get confused in front of them. Nothing has gotten through, and being the only web type at the library, I'm outnumbered. Just the thought of it makes me supremely tired. I'm sorry if this has digressed. LibGuides is not at fault, really. It's an organizational problem. LibGuides just seems to be the flash point for it. Will
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
At my previous institution, I struggled with the same issues as you (and probably most libguides administrators that have a large number of people creating guides). The only really positive experience that I have had was a fairly time consuming one. Every year, I sat down with each content creators to talk through the goals of their individual libguides, the specific problems I saw with their libguides, the usage statistics for those guides and the amount of time they were putting into the guides themselves. I also had support from administration that the guidelines would be enforced or the guides would be removed. Having that conversation with the data to back it up helped the librarians see why those things were issues and where they might be wasting their time. It worked better than a large meeting because we could talk about their specific case. When I first starting having these conversations, many of the librarians didn't realize understand the full impact their design decisions were having on patrons actually using these guides. For some librarians, I would also show them a libguide from a subject area they were not familiar with similar design problems to theirs so they could experience what their user might be experiencing with their guide. Although it was not universal and there are still problems like you described below, these problems are significantly smaller than they were. LibGuides biggest strength and weakness is ease of creation. Anyone can create, but creating *good* content for the web is hard. Emily King, MSLS Digital Services Librarian CSN Library Services Charleston Campus (702) 651-7511 http://www.csn.edu/library On 9/24/14 9:56 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it is nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is an organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately it has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where I've worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings out the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian psyche. Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on the verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will create a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp this stuff out each time it happens. To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question-- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageously poor usability, Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides, And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them? Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Will Martin Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav 4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not. This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to impose any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less than 100% free reign appears to be anathema to them. The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have everything: - Giant walls of text that no one ever reads. - Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do. - A thriving ecosystem of competing labels. Is it Article Indexes, Article Databases, just plain Databases, or something more exotic? Depends which apex predator rules this particular neck of the jungle. - Green text on pink backgrounds with maroon borders. Other pages in the same guide might go with different, equally eye-twisting color schemes. I'm not even sure how he's doing that without access to the style sheet, but he's probably taught himself just enough HTML to mangle things in an effort to use friendly colors. - Some guides have three or even FOUR rows of tabs. With drop-down submenus on most of them, naturally. - A few are nicely curated and easy to use, but they're in a distinct minority. I've tried. I've pushed peer-reviewed usability studies at them. I've reported on conference sessions explaining exactly why all these things are bad. I've brought them studies of our own analytics. I've had students sit down and get confused in front of them. Nothing has gotten through
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Cindi,
Thanks for hearing our feedback. As I've said before, I have always been
impressed by Springshare's service. Now I am getting help without even
having to ask. :)
Regarding 3, that sounds great. I have just been confused by the
documentation. It states that if my template uses {{content}} keyword, I
can't use the individual {{content_x}} keywords. But I thought the
{{content}} keyword had to be used to get page-specific boxes to appear. So
I need to remove {{content}} and replace it with {{content_col_1}} and
{{content_col_2}} etc? I will give that a try. I imagine it could solve a
lot of woes.
Regarding 2, the remote scripts box would indeed be useful for a lot of use
cases, and I will certainly be using it once it is implemented. However, it
isn't a solution for libraries who want to use LG as their only website, as
it requires that you have access to another website with server-side
scripting capabilities.
I still think a curated plugin ecosystem of some sort would be extremely
useful for a lot of things most libraries want on their website:
-a navigation menu builder like what is built into Wordpress and Drupal
(site-wide, not for a specific guide)
-a news feed that can show news in a slideshow format or in a blog-like list
format
-a new books feed that pulls books automatically from something like an ILS
or discovery service
I maintain websites for two libraries, and in both cases LG is used as a
secondary site alongside another web application platform (Wordpress for
one, Rails for another). These three features I think are making the
difference between using LG as the primary website and using LG as the
secondary website.
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Cindi Blyberg
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:47 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hey all, a few comments from the Springys. :) Thanks for this amazing
feedback on the tools that you need to make your jobs easier. We are
discussing internally and plan to come up with and add viable solutions to
the roadmap for v2--some of them will be CMS-only, be aware, when they
involve groups and such. Our goal with this product is to make it as
tech-friendly as possible and your feedback is extremely helpful. Keep it
coming!
On to Josh's post, with specific answers to a couple of things:
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 10:27 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote:
2. Lack of a plugin ecosystem and any sort of server-side scripting.
This is a major one for me. This limits the site to mostly static,
manually-added content. Yes, you can embed RSS feeds and iframes and
javascript widgets from third-party sites, but if you want to do
anything more complicated than that, you are out of luck.
We do plan to reinstate the remote scripts capability that v1 had. It's
not plugins, but would this help with this issue?
3. Lots of tedious copy/paste work is required. Okay, not copy/paste
per se, but if I want to change the boxes that appear in the sidebar
column in a large group of guides, I am going to have to manually add
and remove boxes on every single page.
Not so! :) You can create a template that has permanent boxes by calling
those individual content IDs. Go to Help Guide Templates Customize
Guide Templates Fine Tuning Content for more. Or
http://support.springshare.com/libguides/guidetemplates/customizeguidetemplates#s-lg-box-3819
(requires login--it's not a secret per se, but we can add more detailed
documentation up if we're not giving it away to competitors. ;) ).
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf
Of Alex Armstrong
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 4:50 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Brad,
Sure, it's feasible. And it's much easier to do with LibGuides v2 than
with v1. Whether it's a good idea or not depends on why you're
considering building your site on LibGuides. Springshare provides
amazing support, but the platform itself is limited.
There's a trade-off to make regarding flexibility, complexity, etc.
There's no efficient workflow that I've found. (There's no SSH/SFTP,
no ability to tweak the CMS, etc. I'm currently drafting a description
of my workflow, in the hopes of receiving suggestions for
improvement.) A lot of what we do on LibGuides is a pretty stylesheet,
precise content guidelines, and a lot of copy-pasting.
I'm not trying to dissuade you. LibGuides has been incredible for us.
I shudder to think where we would be without it. But we decided to
build our site on LibGuides due to (ahem) local operational constraints.
AFAICT, it seems that the bulk of your website is already on LibGuides.
If you're reasonably happy with it, maybe take the plunge and see if
it works for you :)
Hope this helps,
Alex
On 2014-09-22 23:56, Brad
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
*takes off Springy hat for a minute* At my FPOW (Eastern KY U), we had a LibGuides group (a sub-group of the UX group) that wrote up a set of standards that was adopted by the library administration. The group also created and curated a style guide for authors to use (including reusable content). Guide editing (including style) was a part of each librarian's job responsibility, and if guides weren't up to snuff, it was addressed by the manager, based on feedback from the guides group. It worked pretty well, but we were a medium-sized library and used guides mostly for getting patrons to databases and the like. *Springy hat back on* If you'd like examples of style guides, they're out there. We've snagged a few in our Best Of site (pardon the v1, it's low on the priority list atm) - http://bestof.libguides.com/bestpractices?hs=a Thanks! :) On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:18 PM, King, Emily emily.k...@csn.edu wrote: At my previous institution, I struggled with the same issues as you (and probably most libguides administrators that have a large number of people creating guides). The only really positive experience that I have had was a fairly time consuming one. Every year, I sat down with each content creators to talk through the goals of their individual libguides, the specific problems I saw with their libguides, the usage statistics for those guides and the amount of time they were putting into the guides themselves. I also had support from administration that the guidelines would be enforced or the guides would be removed. Having that conversation with the data to back it up helped the librarians see why those things were issues and where they might be wasting their time. It worked better than a large meeting because we could talk about their specific case. When I first starting having these conversations, many of the librarians didn't realize understand the full impact their design decisions were having on patrons actually using these guides. For some librarians, I would also show them a libguide from a subject area they were not familiar with similar design problems to theirs so they could experience what their user might be experiencing with their guide. Although it was not universal and there are still problems like you described below, these problems are significantly smaller than they were. LibGuides biggest strength and weakness is ease of creation. Anyone can create, but creating *good* content for the web is hard. Emily King, MSLS Digital Services Librarian CSN Library Services Charleston Campus (702) 651-7511 http://www.csn.edu/library On 9/24/14 9:56 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it is nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is an organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately it has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where I've worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings out the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian psyche. Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on the verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will create a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp this stuff out each time it happens. To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question-- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageously poor usability, Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides, And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them? Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Will Martin Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav 4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not. This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to impose any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less than 100% free reign appears to be anathema to them. The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have everything: - Giant walls of text that no one ever reads. - Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I can commiserate!
The tactic we've used at our university was to use the data migration from
LGv1 to LGv2 as a means to convene guide authors and rethink
* the future overall layout of our guides (new side menu has been our
design choice but complicates preexisting three- and four-column layouts);
* their intended use (pastiche of related but independent boxes on the
guide or something with a simple flow/concise content -- it's a
philosophical discussion, for sure);
* breakdown of content (when it is appropriate to have long detailed pages
or break down into sub-pages, which have their own issues...);
* the strict use of accessibility policies (must set up strict policies
about funky colors fonts, minimize use HTML tables, content column layout
w.r.t. responsive design, etc.).
I feel our internal conversations and meetings about rethinking LibGuides
v2 with our staff have gone over well, and reiterating appropriate best
practices or suggestions whenever I field a LibGuides question have
birthed some improvements in guide construction. It's an ongoing battle, of
course!
There are some heavy-handed tactics in place here too. For instance we've
hidden the Fonts button in the guide editor using CSS.
span#cke_12 {display:none;}
This doesn't stop custom html or copy/pasting Word content (ugh) from
getting through, but it does allows us to say, nope, we're not supporting
Comic Sans!
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote:
I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it is
nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is an
organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately it
has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where I've
worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many
other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings out
the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian
psyche.
Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on the
verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will create
a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that
would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp
this stuff out each time it happens.
To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question--
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of
outrageously poor usability,
Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides,
And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them?
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Will Martin
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing
a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and
templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing
everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things
could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not.
This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to impose
any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content
guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less than
100% free reign appears to be anathema to them.
The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have
everything:
- Giant walls of text that no one ever reads.
- Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if
ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do.
- A thriving ecosystem of competing labels. Is it Article Indexes,
Article Databases, just plain Databases, or something more exotic?
Depends which apex predator rules this particular neck of the jungle.
- Green text on pink backgrounds with maroon borders. Other pages in the
same guide might go with different, equally eye-twisting color schemes.
I'm not even sure how he's doing that without access to the style sheet,
but he's probably taught himself just enough HTML to mangle things in an
effort to use friendly colors.
- Some guides have three or even FOUR rows of tabs. With drop-down
submenus on most of them, naturally.
- A few are nicely curated and easy to use, but they're in a distinct
minority.
I've tried. I've pushed peer-reviewed usability studies at them. I've
reported on conference sessions explaining exactly why all these things
are bad. I've brought them studies of our own analytics. I've had
students sit down and get confused in front of them. Nothing has gotten
through, and being the only web type at the library, I'm outnumbered.
Just the thought of it makes me supremely tired.
I'm sorry if this has digressed. LibGuides is not at fault, really.
It's an organizational
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Thanks, Josh, I'll pass this on! I'm familiar with Drupal and Wordpress
for menus and plugins--I have a WP site of my own (augh, don't look, it
sorely need updating, and I don't really write anymore), and EKU uses
Drupal as its web platform (the discussion about adding databases via CCK
was an interesting one).
For putting content boxes on pages--sounds like you got it. Give us a
shout at supp...@springshare.com if you run into trouble. Thanks!
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote:
Cindi,
Thanks for hearing our feedback. As I've said before, I have always been
impressed by Springshare's service. Now I am getting help without even
having to ask. :)
Regarding 3, that sounds great. I have just been confused by the
documentation. It states that if my template uses {{content}} keyword, I
can't use the individual {{content_x}} keywords. But I thought the
{{content}} keyword had to be used to get page-specific boxes to appear. So
I need to remove {{content}} and replace it with {{content_col_1}} and
{{content_col_2}} etc? I will give that a try. I imagine it could solve a
lot of woes.
Regarding 2, the remote scripts box would indeed be useful for a lot of use
cases, and I will certainly be using it once it is implemented. However, it
isn't a solution for libraries who want to use LG as their only website, as
it requires that you have access to another website with server-side
scripting capabilities.
I still think a curated plugin ecosystem of some sort would be extremely
useful for a lot of things most libraries want on their website:
-a navigation menu builder like what is built into Wordpress and Drupal
(site-wide, not for a specific guide)
-a news feed that can show news in a slideshow format or in a blog-like
list
format
-a new books feed that pulls books automatically from something like an ILS
or discovery service
I maintain websites for two libraries, and in both cases LG is used as a
secondary site alongside another web application platform (Wordpress for
one, Rails for another). These three features I think are making the
difference between using LG as the primary website and using LG as the
secondary website.
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Cindi Blyberg
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:47 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hey all, a few comments from the Springys. :) Thanks for this amazing
feedback on the tools that you need to make your jobs easier. We are
discussing internally and plan to come up with and add viable solutions to
the roadmap for v2--some of them will be CMS-only, be aware, when they
involve groups and such. Our goal with this product is to make it as
tech-friendly as possible and your feedback is extremely helpful. Keep it
coming!
On to Josh's post, with specific answers to a couple of things:
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 10:27 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote:
2. Lack of a plugin ecosystem and any sort of server-side scripting.
This is a major one for me. This limits the site to mostly static,
manually-added content. Yes, you can embed RSS feeds and iframes and
javascript widgets from third-party sites, but if you want to do
anything more complicated than that, you are out of luck.
We do plan to reinstate the remote scripts capability that v1 had. It's
not plugins, but would this help with this issue?
3. Lots of tedious copy/paste work is required. Okay, not copy/paste
per se, but if I want to change the boxes that appear in the sidebar
column in a large group of guides, I am going to have to manually add
and remove boxes on every single page.
Not so! :) You can create a template that has permanent boxes by calling
those individual content IDs. Go to Help Guide Templates Customize
Guide Templates Fine Tuning Content for more. Or
http://support.springshare.com/libguides/guidetemplates/customizeguidetemplates#s-lg-box-3819
(requires login--it's not a secret per se, but we can add more detailed
documentation up if we're not giving it away to competitors. ;) ).
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf
Of Alex Armstrong
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 4:50 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Brad,
Sure, it's feasible. And it's much easier to do with LibGuides v2 than
with v1. Whether it's a good idea or not depends on why you're
considering building your site on LibGuides. Springshare provides
amazing support, but the platform itself is limited.
There's a trade-off to make regarding flexibility, complexity, etc.
There's no efficient workflow that I've found. (There's no SSH/SFTP,
no ability to tweak the CMS, etc. I'm currently drafting a description
of my
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I was just curious in general. I'm always interested in data on web usability. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2014 12:34 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I was actually a bit coy in my previous post. Our old site was reasonably battle-hardened for usability. It's not like we transitioned from three-column layouts and guides with three rows of tabs or anything. I'm still trying to come up with tasks for testing. I suspect a lot of the big stuff will be OK while a lot of the small stuff will be off. It's been really hard to test the latter. (And there is a glitches in our analytics so I'm also flying a bit blind.) Is there something in particular you're wondering about? Alex On 09/19/2014 07:50 PM, Joshua Welker wrote: Nice job. I like the simplicity. Let me know how the usability testing goes. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 10:28 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Long time lurker, second time poster (if memory serves). We launched our new library website yesterday, which is entirely built on LibGuides 2. You can see it here: http://library.acg.edu/ For simplicity’s sake we used only two templates: a full width template for single page guides (e.g., our home page). a content template that uses ~2/3 of the page for the content and ~1/3 for guide navigation. There are no dropdown menus anywhere, for the reasons people mentioned, nor do we use two columns for content. (Some of the landing pages use a small grid, but that’s about it.) We use LG’s built-in second column wrapped around an `aside` and placed at the bottom of the main content for related info. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see what I mean: http://library.acg.edu/citations/apa I decided to keep the navigation menu on the right to emphasize the main content. My guess is that this won’t work very well for sections with more narrative. My inspiration (GOV.uk) uses wizard navigation, which LG2 supports. That may be a way of handling this issue. I put the site together with almost no usability testing. I’ll have to grab some students in the coming weeks and find out how bad things really are :) You can see a slightly abstracted version of the content template, as well as other useful LG2 thingies in this gist: https://gist.github.com/alehandrof/9f083aa03c287931d9f0 The design was written in Sass on top of an imported and customized Bootstrap 3.2. There's an option in the LG admin to disable the default Bootstrap and I only had to write a few hundred lines to override aspects of the default LG stylesheets. Because I built the design on top of Bootstrap there was very little tweaking necessary for the admin side to work properly. Hope this helps, Alex -- Alex Armstrong E-Resource/Reference Assistant The American College of Greece Libraries, John S. Bailey Library 6 Gravias Street | GR 153 42 Agia Paraskevi | Athens, Greece Phone: +30 210 600 9800 ext. 1274, 1267 | Fax: +30 210 601 7795 Email: aarmstr...@acg.edu On 2014-09-19 12:31 AM, Joshua Welker wrote: That's a good idea. I changed the template using Bootstrap classes so that the sidebar will appear below the main column on small screens ( 1024px roughly). But I might consider hiding the side completely. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Schofield Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 1:55 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I love your minimal template. We're experimenting with similar minimalism. If you all can't agree on the existence of the right column, you might compromise and use media queries to display: none; until the screen is sufficiently wide. E.g., 1140px so it will only pop on widescreen monitors and avoid almost all tablet orientations. Good work. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joshua Welker Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 2:43 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I am in the middle of building a very minimalist LibGuides 2.0 template to go with our new website. Here's the current status: http://ucmo.beta.libguides.com/test-guide. We are still torn on whether to have any side columns. We currently have a right column just for important site-wide information. We used the right rather than left with the rationale that it is not an essential navigation menu and that we didn't want it to be the first thing users notice. Content should come first
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Alex, Thanks so much for sharing your new site built in LG2. I love it. Simple, attactive, but very useable. It's very interesting to see an honest-to-goodness this actually looks like a real website and not like just some libguide library website built using lg. More and more I'm seriously considering LG2 as a feasible option for our library site. Thanks! Brad On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I was just curious in general. I'm always interested in data on web usability. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2014 12:34 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I was actually a bit coy in my previous post. Our old site was reasonably battle-hardened for usability. It's not like we transitioned from three-column layouts and guides with three rows of tabs or anything. I'm still trying to come up with tasks for testing. I suspect a lot of the big stuff will be OK while a lot of the small stuff will be off. It's been really hard to test the latter. (And there is a glitches in our analytics so I'm also flying a bit blind.) Is there something in particular you're wondering about? Alex On 09/19/2014 07:50 PM, Joshua Welker wrote: Nice job. I like the simplicity. Let me know how the usability testing goes. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 10:28 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Long time lurker, second time poster (if memory serves). We launched our new library website yesterday, which is entirely built on LibGuides 2. You can see it here: http://library.acg.edu/ For simplicity’s sake we used only two templates: a full width template for single page guides (e.g., our home page). a content template that uses ~2/3 of the page for the content and ~1/3 for guide navigation. There are no dropdown menus anywhere, for the reasons people mentioned, nor do we use two columns for content. (Some of the landing pages use a small grid, but that’s about it.) We use LG’s built-in second column wrapped around an `aside` and placed at the bottom of the main content for related info. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see what I mean: http://library.acg.edu/citations/apa I decided to keep the navigation menu on the right to emphasize the main content. My guess is that this won’t work very well for sections with more narrative. My inspiration (GOV.uk) uses wizard navigation, which LG2 supports. That may be a way of handling this issue. I put the site together with almost no usability testing. I’ll have to grab some students in the coming weeks and find out how bad things really are :) You can see a slightly abstracted version of the content template, as well as other useful LG2 thingies in this gist: https://gist.github.com/alehandrof/9f083aa03c287931d9f0 The design was written in Sass on top of an imported and customized Bootstrap 3.2. There's an option in the LG admin to disable the default Bootstrap and I only had to write a few hundred lines to override aspects of the default LG stylesheets. Because I built the design on top of Bootstrap there was very little tweaking necessary for the admin side to work properly. Hope this helps, Alex -- Alex Armstrong E-Resource/Reference Assistant The American College of Greece Libraries, John S. Bailey Library 6 Gravias Street | GR 153 42 Agia Paraskevi | Athens, Greece Phone: +30 210 600 9800 ext. 1274, 1267 | Fax: +30 210 601 7795 Email: aarmstr...@acg.edu On 2014-09-19 12:31 AM, Joshua Welker wrote: That's a good idea. I changed the template using Bootstrap classes so that the sidebar will appear below the main column on small screens ( 1024px roughly). But I might consider hiding the side completely. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Schofield Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 1:55 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I love your minimal template. We're experimenting with similar minimalism. If you all can't agree on the existence of the right column, you might compromise and use media queries to display: none; until the screen is sufficiently wide. E.g., 1140px so it will only pop on widescreen monitors and avoid almost all tablet orientations. Good work. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joshua Welker Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 2:43 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I was actually a bit coy in my previous post. Our old site was reasonably battle-hardened for usability. It's not like we transitioned from three-column layouts and guides with three rows of tabs or anything. I'm still trying to come up with tasks for testing. I suspect a lot of the big stuff will be OK while a lot of the small stuff will be off. It's been really hard to test the latter. (And there is a glitches in our analytics so I'm also flying a bit blind.) Is there something in particular you're wondering about? Alex On 09/19/2014 07:50 PM, Joshua Welker wrote: Nice job. I like the simplicity. Let me know how the usability testing goes. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 10:28 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Long time lurker, second time poster (if memory serves). We launched our new library website yesterday, which is entirely built on LibGuides 2. You can see it here: http://library.acg.edu/ For simplicity’s sake we used only two templates: a full width template for single page guides (e.g., our home page). a content template that uses ~2/3 of the page for the content and ~1/3 for guide navigation. There are no dropdown menus anywhere, for the reasons people mentioned, nor do we use two columns for content. (Some of the landing pages use a small grid, but that’s about it.) We use LG’s built-in second column wrapped around an `aside` and placed at the bottom of the main content for related info. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see what I mean: http://library.acg.edu/citations/apa I decided to keep the navigation menu on the right to emphasize the main content. My guess is that this won’t work very well for sections with more narrative. My inspiration (GOV.uk) uses wizard navigation, which LG2 supports. That may be a way of handling this issue. I put the site together with almost no usability testing. I’ll have to grab some students in the coming weeks and find out how bad things really are :) You can see a slightly abstracted version of the content template, as well as other useful LG2 thingies in this gist: https://gist.github.com/alehandrof/9f083aa03c287931d9f0 The design was written in Sass on top of an imported and customized Bootstrap 3.2. There's an option in the LG admin to disable the default Bootstrap and I only had to write a few hundred lines to override aspects of the default LG stylesheets. Because I built the design on top of Bootstrap there was very little tweaking necessary for the admin side to work properly. Hope this helps, Alex -- Alex Armstrong E-Resource/Reference Assistant The American College of Greece Libraries, John S. Bailey Library 6 Gravias Street | GR 153 42 Agia Paraskevi | Athens, Greece Phone: +30 210 600 9800 ext. 1274, 1267 | Fax: +30 210 601 7795 Email: aarmstr...@acg.edu On 2014-09-19 12:31 AM, Joshua Welker wrote: That's a good idea. I changed the template using Bootstrap classes so that the sidebar will appear below the main column on small screens ( 1024px roughly). But I might consider hiding the side completely. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Schofield Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 1:55 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I love your minimal template. We're experimenting with similar minimalism. If you all can't agree on the existence of the right column, you might compromise and use media queries to display: none; until the screen is sufficiently wide. E.g., 1140px so it will only pop on widescreen monitors and avoid almost all tablet orientations. Good work. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joshua Welker Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 2:43 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I am in the middle of building a very minimalist LibGuides 2.0 template to go with our new website. Here's the current status: http://ucmo.beta.libguides.com/test-guide. We are still torn on whether to have any side columns. We currently have a right column just for important site-wide information. We used the right rather than left with the rationale that it is not an essential navigation menu and that we didn't want it to be the first thing users notice. Content should come first. The fact that users will not focus heavily on the right-hand content is actually a good thing in this instance. I go back and forth on whether to scrap the side column. I am pretty adamant that there should only be one column for page content, although I am prepared to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hi, Jeannie, We didn't have any problem porting old guides over. Haven't found any major or minor problems. I just completed one for our student veterans. Nothing fancy but simple and to the point. Here's the link: http://niagara.libguides.com/veterans Regards, j0e Joseph Umhauer Assistant Library Director for Technical Services Niagara University Library 716-286-8015 jumha...@niagara.edu -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Graham, Jeannie Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 11:48 AM To: CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Our library is also just getting ready to delve into LibGuides v2 so I'm also interested in hearing what others are doing! Thank you, -- Jeannie Graham Jeannie Graham California State University, Chico Meriam Library - Library Technology Specialist Chico, CA 95929-0295 jgra...@csuchico.edu 530-898-4311 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Monday, September 15, 2014 12:19 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hi all, I'm finally diving into our Libguides v2 migration and I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to share their experience/choices regarding templating. (Or even some code!) I'm thinking left-nav is the way to go. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns? Done that with a column-width-spanning box atop the main content area? Any other neato templates ideas? We are in the process of building a style guide for all libguides authors to use. And also some sort of peer-review process to help enforce the style guide. I'm thinking we are going to want to restrict all authors to left-nav templates but perhaps the ideal solution would be to require left-nav of all but to have a variety of custom left-nav templates to choose from. Any thoughts are much appreciated! Warm regards, Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edumailto:bcoffi...@francis.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Long time lurker, second time poster (if memory serves). We launched our new library website yesterday, which is entirely built on LibGuides 2. You can see it here: http://library.acg.edu/ For simplicity’s sake we used only two templates: a full width template for single page guides (e.g., our home page). a content template that uses ~2/3 of the page for the content and ~1/3 for guide navigation. There are no dropdown menus anywhere, for the reasons people mentioned, nor do we use two columns for content. (Some of the landing pages use a small grid, but that’s about it.) We use LG’s built-in second column wrapped around an `aside` and placed at the bottom of the main content for related info. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see what I mean: http://library.acg.edu/citations/apa I decided to keep the navigation menu on the right to emphasize the main content. My guess is that this won’t work very well for sections with more narrative. My inspiration (GOV.uk) uses wizard navigation, which LG2 supports. That may be a way of handling this issue. I put the site together with almost no usability testing. I’ll have to grab some students in the coming weeks and find out how bad things really are :) You can see a slightly abstracted version of the content template, as well as other useful LG2 thingies in this gist: https://gist.github.com/alehandrof/9f083aa03c287931d9f0 The design was written in Sass on top of an imported and customized Bootstrap 3.2. There's an option in the LG admin to disable the default Bootstrap and I only had to write a few hundred lines to override aspects of the default LG stylesheets. Because I built the design on top of Bootstrap there was very little tweaking necessary for the admin side to work properly. Hope this helps, Alex -- Alex Armstrong E-Resource/Reference Assistant The American College of Greece Libraries, John S. Bailey Library 6 Gravias Street | GR 153 42 Agia Paraskevi | Athens, Greece Phone: +30 210 600 9800 ext. 1274, 1267 | Fax: +30 210 601 7795 Email: aarmstr...@acg.edu On 2014-09-19 12:31 AM, Joshua Welker wrote: That's a good idea. I changed the template using Bootstrap classes so that the sidebar will appear below the main column on small screens ( 1024px roughly). But I might consider hiding the side completely. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Schofield Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 1:55 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I love your minimal template. We're experimenting with similar minimalism. If you all can't agree on the existence of the right column, you might compromise and use media queries to display: none; until the screen is sufficiently wide. E.g., 1140px so it will only pop on widescreen monitors and avoid almost all tablet orientations. Good work. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joshua Welker Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 2:43 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I am in the middle of building a very minimalist LibGuides 2.0 template to go with our new website. Here's the current status: http://ucmo.beta.libguides.com/test-guide. We are still torn on whether to have any side columns. We currently have a right column just for important site-wide information. We used the right rather than left with the rationale that it is not an essential navigation menu and that we didn't want it to be the first thing users notice. Content should come first. The fact that users will not focus heavily on the right-hand content is actually a good thing in this instance. I go back and forth on whether to scrap the side column. I am pretty adamant that there should only be one column for page content, although I am prepared to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 5:24 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Benjamin: Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus left-nav... LOL Margaret: Love the floating nav on that page. It's exciting that we'll be able to leverage Bootstrap with our guides now. Moving the entire library website to libguides CMS is looking more and more promising. Some more thoughts: I'm no UX expert but is it generally agreed that left-nav is the much better choice? It seems like it to me. Given current web wide conventions etc. One big issue to switching to left-nav in v2 is the amount of work it's going to take everyone to convert all guides to the new layout. Which is one of those things that both shouldn't matter (when looking at it in a principledness way - that is, Whatever is best
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Nice job. I like the simplicity. Let me know how the usability testing goes. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 10:28 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Long time lurker, second time poster (if memory serves). We launched our new library website yesterday, which is entirely built on LibGuides 2. You can see it here: http://library.acg.edu/ For simplicity’s sake we used only two templates: a full width template for single page guides (e.g., our home page). a content template that uses ~2/3 of the page for the content and ~1/3 for guide navigation. There are no dropdown menus anywhere, for the reasons people mentioned, nor do we use two columns for content. (Some of the landing pages use a small grid, but that’s about it.) We use LG’s built-in second column wrapped around an `aside` and placed at the bottom of the main content for related info. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see what I mean: http://library.acg.edu/citations/apa I decided to keep the navigation menu on the right to emphasize the main content. My guess is that this won’t work very well for sections with more narrative. My inspiration (GOV.uk) uses wizard navigation, which LG2 supports. That may be a way of handling this issue. I put the site together with almost no usability testing. I’ll have to grab some students in the coming weeks and find out how bad things really are :) You can see a slightly abstracted version of the content template, as well as other useful LG2 thingies in this gist: https://gist.github.com/alehandrof/9f083aa03c287931d9f0 The design was written in Sass on top of an imported and customized Bootstrap 3.2. There's an option in the LG admin to disable the default Bootstrap and I only had to write a few hundred lines to override aspects of the default LG stylesheets. Because I built the design on top of Bootstrap there was very little tweaking necessary for the admin side to work properly. Hope this helps, Alex -- Alex Armstrong E-Resource/Reference Assistant The American College of Greece Libraries, John S. Bailey Library 6 Gravias Street | GR 153 42 Agia Paraskevi | Athens, Greece Phone: +30 210 600 9800 ext. 1274, 1267 | Fax: +30 210 601 7795 Email: aarmstr...@acg.edu On 2014-09-19 12:31 AM, Joshua Welker wrote: That's a good idea. I changed the template using Bootstrap classes so that the sidebar will appear below the main column on small screens ( 1024px roughly). But I might consider hiding the side completely. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Schofield Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 1:55 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I love your minimal template. We're experimenting with similar minimalism. If you all can't agree on the existence of the right column, you might compromise and use media queries to display: none; until the screen is sufficiently wide. E.g., 1140px so it will only pop on widescreen monitors and avoid almost all tablet orientations. Good work. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joshua Welker Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 2:43 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I am in the middle of building a very minimalist LibGuides 2.0 template to go with our new website. Here's the current status: http://ucmo.beta.libguides.com/test-guide. We are still torn on whether to have any side columns. We currently have a right column just for important site-wide information. We used the right rather than left with the rationale that it is not an essential navigation menu and that we didn't want it to be the first thing users notice. Content should come first. The fact that users will not focus heavily on the right-hand content is actually a good thing in this instance. I go back and forth on whether to scrap the side column. I am pretty adamant that there should only be one column for page content, although I am prepared to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 5:24 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Benjamin: Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus left-nav... LOL Margaret: Love the floating nav on that page. It's exciting that we'll be able to leverage Bootstrap with our guides now. Moving the entire library website to libguides CMS is looking more and more promising. Some more thoughts: I'm no UX expert but is it generally agreed that left
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Not to be a noodg (sp?) - touch devices that use a stylus often support hover. Wacom tablets, Android tablets (e.g. Samsung Notes), the old PalmOS devices, etc. Of course it's a small market segment. relurk -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 6:17 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Mouse hover is not available to anyone using a touch device rather than a mouse, as well as being problematic for keyboard access. While there might be ways to make the on-hover UI style keyboard accessible (perhaps in some cases activating on element focus in addition toon hover), there aren't really any good ones I can think for purely touch devices (which don't really trigger focus state either). An increasing amount of web use, of course, is mobile touch devices, and probably will continue to be and to increase for some time, including on library properties. So I think probably on-hover UI should simply be abandoned at this point, even if some people love it, it will be inaccessible to an increasing portion of our users with no good accomodations. Jonathan On 9/17/14 4:25 PM, Jesse Martinez wrote: On the same token, we're making it a policy to not use mouse hover over effects to display database/asset descriptions in LG2 until this can become keyboard accessible. This is a beloved feature from LG1 so I'm hoping SpringShare read my pestering emails about this... Jesse On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 3:38 PM, Brad Coffield bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com wrote: Johnathan, That point is well taken. Accessibility, to me, shouldn't be a tacked-on we'll do the best we can sort of thing. It's an essential part of being a library being open to all users. Unfortunately I know our site has a lot of work to be done regarding accessibility. I'll also pay attention to that when/if I make mods to the v2 templates. On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 1:49 PM, Jonathan LeBreton lebre...@temple.edu wrote: I might mention here that we (Temple University) found LibGuides 2.0 to offer some noteworthy improvements in section 508 accessibility when compared with version 1.0. Accessibility is a particular point of concern for the whole institution as we look across the city, state, and country at other institutions that have been called out and settled with various disability advocacy groups. So we moved to v. 2.0 during the summer in order to have those improvements in place for the fall semester, as well as to get the value from some other developments in v. 2.0 that benefit all customers. When I see email on list about making modifications to templates and such, it gives me a bit of concern on this score that by doing so, one might easily begin to make the CMS framework for content less accessible. I thought I should voice that.This is not to say that one shouldn't customize and explore enhancements etc., but one should do so with some care if you are operating with similar mandates or concerns.Unless I am mistaken, several of the examples noted are now throwing 508 errors that are not in the out-of-the box LibGuide templates and which are not the result of an individual content contributor/author inserting bad stuff like images without alt tags. Jonathan LeBreton Senior Associate University Librarian Editor: Library Archival Security Temple University Libraries Paley M138, 1210 Polett Walk, Philadelphia PA 19122 voice: 215.204.8231 fax: 215.204.5201 mobile: 215.284.5070 email: lebre...@temple.edu email: jonat...@temple.edu -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cindi Blyberg Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 12:03 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hey everyone! Not to turn C4L into Support4LibGuides, but... :) The infrastructure for all the APIs is in place; currently, the Guides API and the Subjects API are functioning. Go to Tools API Get Guides to see the general structure of the URL. Replace guides with subjects to retrieve your subjects. You will need your LibGuides site ID, which you can get from the LibApps Dashboard screen. Word is that it will not take long to add other API calls on the back end; if you need these now, please do email supp...@springshare.com and reference this conversation. As for v1, we are planning on supporting it for 2 more years--that said, we would never leave anyone hanging, so if it takes longer than that to get everyone moved over, we're ready for that. Best, -Cindi On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:46 AM, Nadaleen F Tempelman-Kluit n...@nyu.edu wrote: Hi all- While we're on the topic of LibGuides V2, when will the GET subjects API (and other API details) be in place
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I am in the middle of building a very minimalist LibGuides 2.0 template to
go with our new website. Here's the current status:
http://ucmo.beta.libguides.com/test-guide.
We are still torn on whether to have any side columns. We currently have a
right column just for important site-wide information. We used the right
rather than left with the rationale that it is not an essential navigation
menu and that we didn't want it to be the first thing users notice. Content
should come first. The fact that users will not focus heavily on the
right-hand content is actually a good thing in this instance.
I go back and forth on whether to scrap the side column. I am pretty adamant
that there should only be one column for page content, although I am
prepared to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad
Coffield
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 5:24 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Benjamin: Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus
left-nav... LOL
Margaret: Love the floating nav on that page. It's exciting that we'll be
able to leverage Bootstrap with our guides now. Moving the entire library
website to libguides CMS is looking more and more promising.
Some more thoughts:
I'm no UX expert but is it generally agreed that left-nav is the much better
choice? It seems like it to me. Given current web wide conventions etc.
One big issue to switching to left-nav in v2 is the amount of work it's
going to take everyone to convert all guides to the new layout. Which is one
of those things that both shouldn't matter (when looking at it in a
principledness way - that is, Whatever is best for the patrons! No matter
what!) but also does matter (in a practical way - that is, OMG we are all
so busy being awesome).
But part of me, when looking at other people's guides and my own, wonders if
three columns isn't just a little TOO much for the user. How is one supposed
to scan the page? What's the prioritized information? For a couple years now
I've been eschewing three columns whenever possible. Do others agree that
three columns can be info overload?
Brad
On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 4:32 PM, Benjamin Florin benjamin.flo...@gmail.com
wrote:
We've been tinkering with our LibGuides template in preparation for an
eventual redesign of our site and guides, e.g.:
http://libguides.bc.edu/libraries/babst/staff
Some of our guide authors weren't happy with the LibGuides
side-navigation's single-column limitation, so we made our own
template, moved {{guide_nav}} off to a left column, and wrote our own
styles to make the default top-nav display as left-nav. We've found
that a 50/50 or 75/25 split next to the left nav looks pretty good.
Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus left-nav...
In general the LibGuides templating has felt modern and easy to work with.
Ben
On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 3:18 PM, Brad Coffield
bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com
wrote:
Hi all,
I'm finally diving into our Libguides v2 migration and I'm wondering
if anyone would be willing to share their experience/choices
regarding templating. (Or even some code!)
I'm thinking left-nav is the way to go. Has anyone split the main
content column into two smaller columns? Done that with a
column-width-spanning
box
atop the main content area? Any other neato templates ideas?
We are in the process of building a style guide for all libguides
authors
to use. And also some sort of peer-review process to help enforce
the
style
guide. I'm thinking we are going to want to restrict all authors to
left-nav templates but perhaps the ideal solution would be to
require left-nav of all but to have a variety of custom left-nav
templates to choose from.
Any thoughts are much appreciated!
Warm regards,
Brad
--
Brad Coffield, MLIS
Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis
University
814-472-3315
bcoffi...@francis.edu
--
Brad Coffield, MLIS
Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University
814-472-3315
bcoffi...@francis.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I love your minimal template. We're experimenting with similar minimalism. If
you all can't agree on the existence of the right column, you might compromise
and use media queries to display: none; until the screen is sufficiently wide.
E.g., 1140px so it will only pop on widescreen monitors and avoid almost all
tablet orientations.
Good work.
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joshua
Welker
Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 2:43 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I am in the middle of building a very minimalist LibGuides 2.0 template to go
with our new website. Here's the current status:
http://ucmo.beta.libguides.com/test-guide.
We are still torn on whether to have any side columns. We currently have a
right column just for important site-wide information. We used the right rather
than left with the rationale that it is not an essential navigation menu and
that we didn't want it to be the first thing users notice. Content should come
first. The fact that users will not focus heavily on the right-hand content is
actually a good thing in this instance.
I go back and forth on whether to scrap the side column. I am pretty adamant
that there should only be one column for page content, although I am prepared
to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad
Coffield
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 5:24 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Benjamin: Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus
left-nav... LOL
Margaret: Love the floating nav on that page. It's exciting that we'll be able
to leverage Bootstrap with our guides now. Moving the entire library website to
libguides CMS is looking more and more promising.
Some more thoughts:
I'm no UX expert but is it generally agreed that left-nav is the much better
choice? It seems like it to me. Given current web wide conventions etc.
One big issue to switching to left-nav in v2 is the amount of work it's going
to take everyone to convert all guides to the new layout. Which is one of those
things that both shouldn't matter (when looking at it in a principledness way -
that is, Whatever is best for the patrons! No matter
what!) but also does matter (in a practical way - that is, OMG we are all so
busy being awesome).
But part of me, when looking at other people's guides and my own, wonders if
three columns isn't just a little TOO much for the user. How is one supposed to
scan the page? What's the prioritized information? For a couple years now I've
been eschewing three columns whenever possible. Do others agree that three
columns can be info overload?
Brad
On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 4:32 PM, Benjamin Florin benjamin.flo...@gmail.com
wrote:
We've been tinkering with our LibGuides template in preparation for an
eventual redesign of our site and guides, e.g.:
http://libguides.bc.edu/libraries/babst/staff
Some of our guide authors weren't happy with the LibGuides
side-navigation's single-column limitation, so we made our own
template, moved {{guide_nav}} off to a left column, and wrote our own
styles to make the default top-nav display as left-nav. We've found
that a 50/50 or 75/25 split next to the left nav looks pretty good.
Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus left-nav...
In general the LibGuides templating has felt modern and easy to work with.
Ben
On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 3:18 PM, Brad Coffield
bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com
wrote:
Hi all,
I'm finally diving into our Libguides v2 migration and I'm wondering
if anyone would be willing to share their experience/choices
regarding templating. (Or even some code!)
I'm thinking left-nav is the way to go. Has anyone split the main
content column into two smaller columns? Done that with a
column-width-spanning
box
atop the main content area? Any other neato templates ideas?
We are in the process of building a style guide for all libguides
authors
to use. And also some sort of peer-review process to help enforce
the
style
guide. I'm thinking we are going to want to restrict all authors to
left-nav templates but perhaps the ideal solution would be to
require left-nav of all but to have a variety of custom left-nav
templates to choose from.
Any thoughts are much appreciated!
Warm regards,
Brad
--
Brad Coffield, MLIS
Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis
University
814-472-3315
bcoffi...@francis.edu
--
Brad Coffield, MLIS
Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University
814-472-3315
bcoffi...@francis.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
There are ways around this, e.g. http://api.jquerymobile.com/taphold/ -- Andrew Anderson, Director of Development, Library and Information Resources Network, Inc. http://www.lirn.net/ | http://www.twitter.com/LIRNnotes | http://www.facebook.com/LIRNnotes On Sep 17, 2014, at 21:17, Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu wrote: Mouse hover is not available to anyone using a touch device rather than a mouse, as well as being problematic for keyboard access. While there might be ways to make the on-hover UI style keyboard accessible (perhaps in some cases activating on element focus in addition toon hover), there aren't really any good ones I can think for purely touch devices (which don't really trigger focus state either). An increasing amount of web use, of course, is mobile touch devices, and probably will continue to be and to increase for some time, including on library properties. So I think probably on-hover UI should simply be abandoned at this point, even if some people love it, it will be inaccessible to an increasing portion of our users with no good accomodations. Jonathan On 9/17/14 4:25 PM, Jesse Martinez wrote: On the same token, we're making it a policy to not use mouse hover over effects to display database/asset descriptions in LG2 until this can become keyboard accessible. This is a beloved feature from LG1 so I'm hoping SpringShare read my pestering emails about this... Jesse On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 3:38 PM, Brad Coffield bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com wrote: Johnathan, That point is well taken. Accessibility, to me, shouldn't be a tacked-on we'll do the best we can sort of thing. It's an essential part of being a library being open to all users. Unfortunately I know our site has a lot of work to be done regarding accessibility. I'll also pay attention to that when/if I make mods to the v2 templates. On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 1:49 PM, Jonathan LeBreton lebre...@temple.edu wrote: I might mention here that we (Temple University) found LibGuides 2.0 to offer some noteworthy improvements in section 508 accessibility when compared with version 1.0. Accessibility is a particular point of concern for the whole institution as we look across the city, state, and country at other institutions that have been called out and settled with various disability advocacy groups. So we moved to v. 2.0 during the summer in order to have those improvements in place for the fall semester, as well as to get the value from some other developments in v. 2.0 that benefit all customers. When I see email on list about making modifications to templates and such, it gives me a bit of concern on this score that by doing so, one might easily begin to make the CMS framework for content less accessible. I thought I should voice that.This is not to say that one shouldn't customize and explore enhancements etc., but one should do so with some care if you are operating with similar mandates or concerns.Unless I am mistaken, several of the examples noted are now throwing 508 errors that are not in the out-of-the box LibGuide templates and which are not the result of an individual content contributor/author inserting bad stuff like images without alt tags. Jonathan LeBreton Senior Associate University Librarian Editor: Library Archival Security Temple University Libraries Paley M138, 1210 Polett Walk, Philadelphia PA 19122 voice: 215.204.8231 fax: 215.204.5201 mobile: 215.284.5070 email: lebre...@temple.edu email: jonat...@temple.edu -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cindi Blyberg Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 12:03 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hey everyone! Not to turn C4L into Support4LibGuides, but... :) The infrastructure for all the APIs is in place; currently, the Guides API and the Subjects API are functioning. Go to Tools API Get Guides to see the general structure of the URL. Replace guides with subjects to retrieve your subjects. You will need your LibGuides site ID, which you can get from the LibApps Dashboard screen. Word is that it will not take long to add other API calls on the back end; if you need these now, please do email supp...@springshare.com and reference this conversation. As for v1, we are planning on supporting it for 2 more years--that said, we would never leave anyone hanging, so if it takes longer than that to get everyone moved over, we're ready for that. Best, -Cindi On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:46 AM, Nadaleen F Tempelman-Kluit n...@nyu.edu wrote: Hi all- While we're on the topic of LibGuides V2, when will the GET subjects API (and other API details) be in place? We're in a holding pattern until we get those details and we've not been able to get any timeline as to when those assets
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Have you tried assigning the Health Sciences guides to their own groups and adding custom header HTML at the group-level (Admin Groups Header/Footer/Tabs/Boxes)? You can't use the new mustache-based templating inside the headers, but you can use plain-jane HTML. An excellent suggestion! But, alas, groups are only available in LibGuides CMS. Due to budgetary constraints, we're stuck with the regular version. Templates are customizable, and those customizations apply to the entire page, not just to the content area, although Will's right that with regular LibGuides the entire system and all the guides have a single look feel. Yes, that's a good clarification -- the template can adjust the whole page, not just the content area as I mistakenly wrote. But there's no mechanism for applying a template to a specific page or group of pages unless you have LibGuides CMS, so that doesn't help in my case. I thought about writing some JS to surgically alter the page header after load time, determining who was in which library based on guide tags. That would have been like pulling your wallet from your left pocket with your right hand -- it'd work, it's just horribly awkward. Also I'm pretty certain given my set of librarians that the tags would be forgotten or mistyped fairly often, followed by complaints that it's broken. But ultimately, the main reason I shelved the idea was that I'm the only web developer the library has -- I have to be chary of my time, and other projects took priority. Will
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
On 9/16/14, 7:15 PM, Michael Schofield mschofi...@nova.edu wrote: Q4. No nav? Okay, nobody actually brought this up, but users don¹t tend to look at sidebars at all. Most libraries have a top menu in the header. If this is the case, consider dropping sidebars entirely and positioning your single column of content with equal margins. Why? Well, white-space. People like white-space. Too much stuff on the page--stuff, by the way, people won't look at anyway--increases cognitive load, which might just put your patrons in a grumpy mood when looking for simple content. Also consider that libraries--like every industry--will eventually have their mobile moment. For some of us it might be pretty far away, but eventually mobile traffic will eclipse traditional desktop traffic (charts! http://talks.ns4lib.com/patrons-on-performance/images/mobile-web-usage.png and http://talks.ns4lib.com/patrons-on-performance/images/mobilemoment.png ). Removing sidebar content also forces your design committee / content creators to think harder about the quality of their content and be a little bit more choosy about screen real estate. If you're interested in trying the no-sidebar thing, you may consider customizing the template so that the side nav appears as good old fashioned links at the top of your content, like--well--a table of contents. This isn't the best example, but it's an idea: http://public.library.nova.edu/help/#content. On this front, our analytics repeatedly show that users do not use the nav within libguides. They do not browse around between pages within the guides. Most of the entries to secondary pages come from Google searches using keywords directly related to their information. Non-search entry points are only the ŒHome¹ (first) page of the guide and those come from librarians showing the guide in instruction sessions or from the list of guides displayed on our homepage[1]. Now, this could be because the nav in LG1 is terrible, tabs with overlapping drop-downs are a horrible idea, and the design lends itself more towards users ignoring the nav section than engaging with it. YMMV. From other research we¹ve done, we know that our users are quick to google, have pointed questions that demand pointed answers. They¹re not much into exploring the breadth of information gathering techniques for their discipline/topic (e.g. Someone looking for the registration information for SciFinder isn¹t going to suddenly going to see the ŒUndergraduate Labs¹ link and feel the need to check it out.). [1] http://www.library.jhu.edu -Sean
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Michael Schofield mschofi...@nova.edu
wrote:
Q1. How complicated is it to change all 3 column guides to a single-column
left/right-nav layout?
A little. You can force the entire group [or all groups] to use a single
template, which is a huge time saver, except your guides' middle and right
columns will be in hidden columns rather than forced to collapse into a
single column. This was pretty confusing at first. We were afraid we
actually lost content during the migration. You will need to manually hit
every guide and change the layout to single-column, but that's just a click
of the button. If you have 400+ guides, though, that's 400+ clicks.
Alas, yes. Once we realized this was happening, our devs hashed it out and
will be rolling out a fix to the migration script so that this won't happen
again.
Q2. Three-columns or single column?
Single column. Users scan, and they scan the top and left-most portions of
the screen. Anything in the middle and to the right is lost. Also, three
columns on a responsive site is a little weird, because content is pretty
squishy; on tablets you might have pretty narrow left and right columns.
Actually, when you view a 3-column layout on a smaller screen, it scales
down to a single column. If you're seeing otherwise, can you send us some
examples in case this is a bug we need to fix? Thanks. :) The key here,
of course, is to have the most important information in the left-hand
column, and not to have too many boxes on a single page.
Q5. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns?
LG2 makes it crazy easy to change number and percentage-based widths of
the columns. So you could still use the tabs-across-the-top template and
create a little 33% wide left sidebar column and a 66% wide right main
column.
One slight caution here: if you add a second content column to a side-nav
layout and the guide author wants to display nav pills for the page's
boxes, only the boxes from the first content column will be displayed as
pills. This is by design, but we've filed it as a known issue.
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Blake Galbreath
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 6:37 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I have always thought that left-nav was the UX standard for left-to-right
languages (as opposed to Arabic, eg.: http://www.france24.com/ar/).
Personally, I feel that right-nav makes more sense across the board, due
to the fact that it is less distance to travel for right-handed people. But
the convention seems pretty set in stone. I am also not sure how screen
readers deal with right-nav - although i am guessing that there is no
problem there programming wise.
Blake
On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Brad Coffield
bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com
wrote:
Benjamin: Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus
left-nav... LOL
Margaret: Love the floating nav on that page. It's exciting that we'll
be able to leverage Bootstrap with our guides now. Moving the entire
library website to libguides CMS is looking more and more promising.
Some more thoughts:
I'm no UX expert but is it generally agreed that left-nav is the much
better choice? It seems like it to me. Given current web wide
conventions etc.
One big issue to switching to left-nav in v2 is the amount of work
it's going to take everyone to convert all guides to the new layout.
Which is one of those things that both shouldn't matter (when looking
at it in a principledness way - that is, Whatever is best for the
patrons! No matter
what!) but also does matter (in a practical way - that is, OMG we are
all so busy being awesome).
But part of me, when looking at other people's guides and my own,
wonders if three columns isn't just a little TOO much for the user.
How is one supposed to scan the page? What's the prioritized
information? For a couple years now I've been eschewing three columns
whenever possible. Do others agree that three columns can be info
overload?
Brad
On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 4:32 PM, Benjamin Florin
benjamin.flo...@gmail.com
wrote:
We've been tinkering with our LibGuides template in preparation for
an eventual redesign of our site and guides, e.g.:
http://libguides.bc.edu/libraries/babst/staff
Some of our guide authors weren't happy with the LibGuides
side-navigation's single-column limitation, so we made our own
template, moved {{guide_nav}} off to a left column, and wrote our
own styles to
make
the default top-nav display as left-nav. We've found that a 50/50 or
75/25
split next to the left nav looks pretty good.
Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus left-nav...
In general the LibGuides templating has felt modern and easy to work
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hi all- While we're on the topic of LibGuides V2, when will the GET subjects API (and other API details) be in place? We're in a holding pattern until we get those details and we've not been able to get any timeline as to when those assets will be in place. So we're deciding between building out LibGuides CMS Global landing pages using the V1 platform, or waiting until some future date which, very soon, will mean abandoning this project till next summer. If we go the former route, it would also be great to know how long V1 will be supported. Thanks On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:29 AM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Michael Schofield mschofi...@nova.edu wrote: Q1. How complicated is it to change all 3 column guides to a single-column left/right-nav layout? A little. You can force the entire group [or all groups] to use a single template, which is a huge time saver, except your guides' middle and right columns will be in hidden columns rather than forced to collapse into a single column. This was pretty confusing at first. We were afraid we actually lost content during the migration. You will need to manually hit every guide and change the layout to single-column, but that's just a click of the button. If you have 400+ guides, though, that's 400+ clicks. Alas, yes. Once we realized this was happening, our devs hashed it out and will be rolling out a fix to the migration script so that this won't happen again. Q2. Three-columns or single column? Single column. Users scan, and they scan the top and left-most portions of the screen. Anything in the middle and to the right is lost. Also, three columns on a responsive site is a little weird, because content is pretty squishy; on tablets you might have pretty narrow left and right columns. Actually, when you view a 3-column layout on a smaller screen, it scales down to a single column. If you're seeing otherwise, can you send us some examples in case this is a bug we need to fix? Thanks. :) The key here, of course, is to have the most important information in the left-hand column, and not to have too many boxes on a single page. Q5. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns? LG2 makes it crazy easy to change number and percentage-based widths of the columns. So you could still use the tabs-across-the-top template and create a little 33% wide left sidebar column and a 66% wide right main column. One slight caution here: if you add a second content column to a side-nav layout and the guide author wants to display nav pills for the page's boxes, only the boxes from the first content column will be displayed as pills. This is by design, but we've filed it as a known issue. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Blake Galbreath Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 6:37 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I have always thought that left-nav was the UX standard for left-to-right languages (as opposed to Arabic, eg.: http://www.france24.com/ar/). Personally, I feel that right-nav makes more sense across the board, due to the fact that it is less distance to travel for right-handed people. But the convention seems pretty set in stone. I am also not sure how screen readers deal with right-nav - although i am guessing that there is no problem there programming wise. Blake On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Brad Coffield bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com wrote: Benjamin: Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus left-nav... LOL Margaret: Love the floating nav on that page. It's exciting that we'll be able to leverage Bootstrap with our guides now. Moving the entire library website to libguides CMS is looking more and more promising. Some more thoughts: I'm no UX expert but is it generally agreed that left-nav is the much better choice? It seems like it to me. Given current web wide conventions etc. One big issue to switching to left-nav in v2 is the amount of work it's going to take everyone to convert all guides to the new layout. Which is one of those things that both shouldn't matter (when looking at it in a principledness way - that is, Whatever is best for the patrons! No matter what!) but also does matter (in a practical way - that is, OMG we are all so busy being awesome). But part of me, when looking at other people's guides and my own, wonders if three columns isn't just a little TOO much for the user. How is one supposed to scan the page? What's the prioritized information? For a couple years now I've been eschewing three columns whenever possible. Do others agree that three columns can be info overload? Brad On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 4:32 PM, Benjamin Florin
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hey everyone! Not to turn C4L into Support4LibGuides, but... :) The infrastructure for all the APIs is in place; currently, the Guides API and the Subjects API are functioning. Go to Tools API Get Guides to see the general structure of the URL. Replace guides with subjects to retrieve your subjects. You will need your LibGuides site ID, which you can get from the LibApps Dashboard screen. Word is that it will not take long to add other API calls on the back end; if you need these now, please do email supp...@springshare.com and reference this conversation. As for v1, we are planning on supporting it for 2 more years--that said, we would never leave anyone hanging, so if it takes longer than that to get everyone moved over, we're ready for that. Best, -Cindi On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:46 AM, Nadaleen F Tempelman-Kluit n...@nyu.edu wrote: Hi all- While we're on the topic of LibGuides V2, when will the GET subjects API (and other API details) be in place? We're in a holding pattern until we get those details and we've not been able to get any timeline as to when those assets will be in place. So we're deciding between building out LibGuides CMS Global landing pages using the V1 platform, or waiting until some future date which, very soon, will mean abandoning this project till next summer. If we go the former route, it would also be great to know how long V1 will be supported. Thanks On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:29 AM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Michael Schofield mschofi...@nova.edu wrote: Q1. How complicated is it to change all 3 column guides to a single-column left/right-nav layout? A little. You can force the entire group [or all groups] to use a single template, which is a huge time saver, except your guides' middle and right columns will be in hidden columns rather than forced to collapse into a single column. This was pretty confusing at first. We were afraid we actually lost content during the migration. You will need to manually hit every guide and change the layout to single-column, but that's just a click of the button. If you have 400+ guides, though, that's 400+ clicks. Alas, yes. Once we realized this was happening, our devs hashed it out and will be rolling out a fix to the migration script so that this won't happen again. Q2. Three-columns or single column? Single column. Users scan, and they scan the top and left-most portions of the screen. Anything in the middle and to the right is lost. Also, three columns on a responsive site is a little weird, because content is pretty squishy; on tablets you might have pretty narrow left and right columns. Actually, when you view a 3-column layout on a smaller screen, it scales down to a single column. If you're seeing otherwise, can you send us some examples in case this is a bug we need to fix? Thanks. :) The key here, of course, is to have the most important information in the left-hand column, and not to have too many boxes on a single page. Q5. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns? LG2 makes it crazy easy to change number and percentage-based widths of the columns. So you could still use the tabs-across-the-top template and create a little 33% wide left sidebar column and a 66% wide right main column. One slight caution here: if you add a second content column to a side-nav layout and the guide author wants to display nav pills for the page's boxes, only the boxes from the first content column will be displayed as pills. This is by design, but we've filed it as a known issue. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Blake Galbreath Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 6:37 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I have always thought that left-nav was the UX standard for left-to-right languages (as opposed to Arabic, eg.: http://www.france24.com/ar/). Personally, I feel that right-nav makes more sense across the board, due to the fact that it is less distance to travel for right-handed people. But the convention seems pretty set in stone. I am also not sure how screen readers deal with right-nav - although i am guessing that there is no problem there programming wise. Blake On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Brad Coffield bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com wrote: Benjamin: Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus left-nav... LOL Margaret: Love the floating nav on that page. It's exciting that we'll be able to leverage Bootstrap with our guides now. Moving the entire library website to libguides CMS is looking more and more promising. Some more thoughts: I'm no UX expert
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I might mention here that we (Temple University) found LibGuides 2.0 to offer some noteworthy improvements in section 508 accessibility when compared with version 1.0. Accessibility is a particular point of concern for the whole institution as we look across the city, state, and country at other institutions that have been called out and settled with various disability advocacy groups. So we moved to v. 2.0 during the summer in order to have those improvements in place for the fall semester, as well as to get the value from some other developments in v. 2.0 that benefit all customers. When I see email on list about making modifications to templates and such, it gives me a bit of concern on this score that by doing so, one might easily begin to make the CMS framework for content less accessible.I thought I should voice that.This is not to say that one shouldn't customize and explore enhancements etc., but one should do so with some care if you are operating with similar mandates or concerns.Unless I am mistaken, several of the examples noted are now throwing 508 errors that are not in the out-of-the box LibGuide templates and which are not the result of an individual content contributor/author inserting bad stuff like images without alt tags. Jonathan LeBreton Senior Associate University Librarian Editor: Library Archival Security Temple University Libraries Paley M138, 1210 Polett Walk, Philadelphia PA 19122 voice: 215.204.8231 fax: 215.204.5201 mobile: 215.284.5070 email: lebre...@temple.edu email: jonat...@temple.edu -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cindi Blyberg Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 12:03 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hey everyone! Not to turn C4L into Support4LibGuides, but... :) The infrastructure for all the APIs is in place; currently, the Guides API and the Subjects API are functioning. Go to Tools API Get Guides to see the general structure of the URL. Replace guides with subjects to retrieve your subjects. You will need your LibGuides site ID, which you can get from the LibApps Dashboard screen. Word is that it will not take long to add other API calls on the back end; if you need these now, please do email supp...@springshare.com and reference this conversation. As for v1, we are planning on supporting it for 2 more years--that said, we would never leave anyone hanging, so if it takes longer than that to get everyone moved over, we're ready for that. Best, -Cindi On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:46 AM, Nadaleen F Tempelman-Kluit n...@nyu.edu wrote: Hi all- While we're on the topic of LibGuides V2, when will the GET subjects API (and other API details) be in place? We're in a holding pattern until we get those details and we've not been able to get any timeline as to when those assets will be in place. So we're deciding between building out LibGuides CMS Global landing pages using the V1 platform, or waiting until some future date which, very soon, will mean abandoning this project till next summer. If we go the former route, it would also be great to know how long V1 will be supported. Thanks On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:29 AM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Michael Schofield mschofi...@nova.edu wrote: Q1. How complicated is it to change all 3 column guides to a single-column left/right-nav layout? A little. You can force the entire group [or all groups] to use a single template, which is a huge time saver, except your guides' middle and right columns will be in hidden columns rather than forced to collapse into a single column. This was pretty confusing at first. We were afraid we actually lost content during the migration. You will need to manually hit every guide and change the layout to single-column, but that's just a click of the button. If you have 400+ guides, though, that's 400+ clicks. Alas, yes. Once we realized this was happening, our devs hashed it out and will be rolling out a fix to the migration script so that this won't happen again. Q2. Three-columns or single column? Single column. Users scan, and they scan the top and left-most portions of the screen. Anything in the middle and to the right is lost. Also, three columns on a responsive site is a little weird, because content is pretty squishy; on tablets you might have pretty narrow left and right columns. Actually, when you view a 3-column layout on a smaller screen, it scales down to a single column. If you're seeing otherwise, can you send us some examples in case this is a bug we need to fix? Thanks. :) The key here, of course, is to have the most important information in the left-hand column
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
It's also important to note that because the out-of-the-box LG2 uses Bootstrap there are some of the same accessibility problems in LG 2 that plague most out-of-the-box Bootstrap implementations, especially with keyboard navigation. For example, the top-navigation sub-page dropdowns can't be accessed from the keyboard nor can the database information popovers. You'll need to test out-of-the-box LG 2 just as thoroughly as customized LG 2 templates and use tools like Paypal's Bootstrap Accessibility Plugin ( https://github.com/paypal/bootstrap-accessibility-plugin). The out-of-the-box will probably pass automated testing, but it might not always pass more thorough manual testing. Ben On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 1:49 PM, Jonathan LeBreton lebre...@temple.edu wrote: I might mention here that we (Temple University) found LibGuides 2.0 to offer some noteworthy improvements in section 508 accessibility when compared with version 1.0. Accessibility is a particular point of concern for the whole institution as we look across the city, state, and country at other institutions that have been called out and settled with various disability advocacy groups. So we moved to v. 2.0 during the summer in order to have those improvements in place for the fall semester, as well as to get the value from some other developments in v. 2.0 that benefit all customers. When I see email on list about making modifications to templates and such, it gives me a bit of concern on this score that by doing so, one might easily begin to make the CMS framework for content less accessible. I thought I should voice that.This is not to say that one shouldn't customize and explore enhancements etc., but one should do so with some care if you are operating with similar mandates or concerns.Unless I am mistaken, several of the examples noted are now throwing 508 errors that are not in the out-of-the box LibGuide templates and which are not the result of an individual content contributor/author inserting bad stuff like images without alt tags. Jonathan LeBreton Senior Associate University Librarian Editor: Library Archival Security Temple University Libraries Paley M138, 1210 Polett Walk, Philadelphia PA 19122 voice: 215.204.8231 fax: 215.204.5201 mobile: 215.284.5070 email: lebre...@temple.edu email: jonat...@temple.edu -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cindi Blyberg Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 12:03 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hey everyone! Not to turn C4L into Support4LibGuides, but... :) The infrastructure for all the APIs is in place; currently, the Guides API and the Subjects API are functioning. Go to Tools API Get Guides to see the general structure of the URL. Replace guides with subjects to retrieve your subjects. You will need your LibGuides site ID, which you can get from the LibApps Dashboard screen. Word is that it will not take long to add other API calls on the back end; if you need these now, please do email supp...@springshare.com and reference this conversation. As for v1, we are planning on supporting it for 2 more years--that said, we would never leave anyone hanging, so if it takes longer than that to get everyone moved over, we're ready for that. Best, -Cindi On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:46 AM, Nadaleen F Tempelman-Kluit n...@nyu.edu wrote: Hi all- While we're on the topic of LibGuides V2, when will the GET subjects API (and other API details) be in place? We're in a holding pattern until we get those details and we've not been able to get any timeline as to when those assets will be in place. So we're deciding between building out LibGuides CMS Global landing pages using the V1 platform, or waiting until some future date which, very soon, will mean abandoning this project till next summer. If we go the former route, it would also be great to know how long V1 will be supported. Thanks On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:29 AM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Michael Schofield mschofi...@nova.edu wrote: Q1. How complicated is it to change all 3 column guides to a single-column left/right-nav layout? A little. You can force the entire group [or all groups] to use a single template, which is a huge time saver, except your guides' middle and right columns will be in hidden columns rather than forced to collapse into a single column. This was pretty confusing at first. We were afraid we actually lost content during the migration. You will need to manually hit every guide and change the layout to single-column, but that's just a click of the button. If you have 400+ guides, though, that's 400+ clicks. Alas, yes. Once we realized this was happening, our
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Johnathan, That point is well taken. Accessibility, to me, shouldn't be a tacked-on we'll do the best we can sort of thing. It's an essential part of being a library being open to all users. Unfortunately I know our site has a lot of work to be done regarding accessibility. I'll also pay attention to that when/if I make mods to the v2 templates. On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 1:49 PM, Jonathan LeBreton lebre...@temple.edu wrote: I might mention here that we (Temple University) found LibGuides 2.0 to offer some noteworthy improvements in section 508 accessibility when compared with version 1.0. Accessibility is a particular point of concern for the whole institution as we look across the city, state, and country at other institutions that have been called out and settled with various disability advocacy groups. So we moved to v. 2.0 during the summer in order to have those improvements in place for the fall semester, as well as to get the value from some other developments in v. 2.0 that benefit all customers. When I see email on list about making modifications to templates and such, it gives me a bit of concern on this score that by doing so, one might easily begin to make the CMS framework for content less accessible. I thought I should voice that.This is not to say that one shouldn't customize and explore enhancements etc., but one should do so with some care if you are operating with similar mandates or concerns.Unless I am mistaken, several of the examples noted are now throwing 508 errors that are not in the out-of-the box LibGuide templates and which are not the result of an individual content contributor/author inserting bad stuff like images without alt tags. Jonathan LeBreton Senior Associate University Librarian Editor: Library Archival Security Temple University Libraries Paley M138, 1210 Polett Walk, Philadelphia PA 19122 voice: 215.204.8231 fax: 215.204.5201 mobile: 215.284.5070 email: lebre...@temple.edu email: jonat...@temple.edu -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cindi Blyberg Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 12:03 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hey everyone! Not to turn C4L into Support4LibGuides, but... :) The infrastructure for all the APIs is in place; currently, the Guides API and the Subjects API are functioning. Go to Tools API Get Guides to see the general structure of the URL. Replace guides with subjects to retrieve your subjects. You will need your LibGuides site ID, which you can get from the LibApps Dashboard screen. Word is that it will not take long to add other API calls on the back end; if you need these now, please do email supp...@springshare.com and reference this conversation. As for v1, we are planning on supporting it for 2 more years--that said, we would never leave anyone hanging, so if it takes longer than that to get everyone moved over, we're ready for that. Best, -Cindi On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:46 AM, Nadaleen F Tempelman-Kluit n...@nyu.edu wrote: Hi all- While we're on the topic of LibGuides V2, when will the GET subjects API (and other API details) be in place? We're in a holding pattern until we get those details and we've not been able to get any timeline as to when those assets will be in place. So we're deciding between building out LibGuides CMS Global landing pages using the V1 platform, or waiting until some future date which, very soon, will mean abandoning this project till next summer. If we go the former route, it would also be great to know how long V1 will be supported. Thanks On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:29 AM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Michael Schofield mschofi...@nova.edu wrote: Q1. How complicated is it to change all 3 column guides to a single-column left/right-nav layout? A little. You can force the entire group [or all groups] to use a single template, which is a huge time saver, except your guides' middle and right columns will be in hidden columns rather than forced to collapse into a single column. This was pretty confusing at first. We were afraid we actually lost content during the migration. You will need to manually hit every guide and change the layout to single-column, but that's just a click of the button. If you have 400+ guides, though, that's 400+ clicks. Alas, yes. Once we realized this was happening, our devs hashed it out and will be rolling out a fix to the migration script so that this won't happen again. Q2. Three-columns or single column? Single column. Users scan, and they scan the top and left-most portions of the screen. Anything in the middle and to the right is lost. Also, three columns
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
On the same token, we're making it a policy to not use mouse hover over effects to display database/asset descriptions in LG2 until this can become keyboard accessible. This is a beloved feature from LG1 so I'm hoping SpringShare read my pestering emails about this... Jesse On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 3:38 PM, Brad Coffield bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com wrote: Johnathan, That point is well taken. Accessibility, to me, shouldn't be a tacked-on we'll do the best we can sort of thing. It's an essential part of being a library being open to all users. Unfortunately I know our site has a lot of work to be done regarding accessibility. I'll also pay attention to that when/if I make mods to the v2 templates. On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 1:49 PM, Jonathan LeBreton lebre...@temple.edu wrote: I might mention here that we (Temple University) found LibGuides 2.0 to offer some noteworthy improvements in section 508 accessibility when compared with version 1.0. Accessibility is a particular point of concern for the whole institution as we look across the city, state, and country at other institutions that have been called out and settled with various disability advocacy groups. So we moved to v. 2.0 during the summer in order to have those improvements in place for the fall semester, as well as to get the value from some other developments in v. 2.0 that benefit all customers. When I see email on list about making modifications to templates and such, it gives me a bit of concern on this score that by doing so, one might easily begin to make the CMS framework for content less accessible. I thought I should voice that.This is not to say that one shouldn't customize and explore enhancements etc., but one should do so with some care if you are operating with similar mandates or concerns.Unless I am mistaken, several of the examples noted are now throwing 508 errors that are not in the out-of-the box LibGuide templates and which are not the result of an individual content contributor/author inserting bad stuff like images without alt tags. Jonathan LeBreton Senior Associate University Librarian Editor: Library Archival Security Temple University Libraries Paley M138, 1210 Polett Walk, Philadelphia PA 19122 voice: 215.204.8231 fax: 215.204.5201 mobile: 215.284.5070 email: lebre...@temple.edu email: jonat...@temple.edu -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cindi Blyberg Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 12:03 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hey everyone! Not to turn C4L into Support4LibGuides, but... :) The infrastructure for all the APIs is in place; currently, the Guides API and the Subjects API are functioning. Go to Tools API Get Guides to see the general structure of the URL. Replace guides with subjects to retrieve your subjects. You will need your LibGuides site ID, which you can get from the LibApps Dashboard screen. Word is that it will not take long to add other API calls on the back end; if you need these now, please do email supp...@springshare.com and reference this conversation. As for v1, we are planning on supporting it for 2 more years--that said, we would never leave anyone hanging, so if it takes longer than that to get everyone moved over, we're ready for that. Best, -Cindi On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:46 AM, Nadaleen F Tempelman-Kluit n...@nyu.edu wrote: Hi all- While we're on the topic of LibGuides V2, when will the GET subjects API (and other API details) be in place? We're in a holding pattern until we get those details and we've not been able to get any timeline as to when those assets will be in place. So we're deciding between building out LibGuides CMS Global landing pages using the V1 platform, or waiting until some future date which, very soon, will mean abandoning this project till next summer. If we go the former route, it would also be great to know how long V1 will be supported. Thanks On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:29 AM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Michael Schofield mschofi...@nova.edu wrote: Q1. How complicated is it to change all 3 column guides to a single-column left/right-nav layout? A little. You can force the entire group [or all groups] to use a single template, which is a huge time saver, except your guides' middle and right columns will be in hidden columns rather than forced to collapse into a single column. This was pretty confusing at first. We were afraid we actually lost content during the migration. You will need to manually hit every guide and change the layout to single-column, but that's just
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
To digress a bit from LibGuides ... The biggest problem with accessibility is not technical: it's cultural. Producing HTML that meets basic accessibility tests is not all THAT difficult. The harder part is setting up a culture where everyone -- everyone! -- who writes content for the web is trained on how to do it accessibly. A content editor who is clueless about accessibility can very easily screw up their pages without even knowing they're doing so. The same applies to developers. Once while reviewing a library site's code, I came across a chunk of HTML that looked like this (roughly): !-- I don't know why this was here? It's invisible! Disabling. a href=#top class=hiddenReturn to top/a -- An earlier developer had put that in to assist screen reader users in getting back to the top of the page if they wanted. The hidden class was a correctly written class for hiding content while leaving it available for screen reader users. But the next person to fill that job wasn't trained on WHY and took it out again. If you really want to commit to accessibility, it needs to be a criterion in the job description for your developers, and there needs to be a training process in place for anyone who produces content for your site. Probably with refreshers at intervals. Will
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
However I'd also point out that if that class, instead of being simply 'hidden', had been similar to Bootstrap's sr-only, or even a more fully spelled out screen-reader-only, the later developer would have been more likely to wonder Hmm, maybe that's not simply hidden but means something else, maybe I should try to look up or ask someone what it means if I'm not sure Attempting self-documenting code always matters for successor developers, not just in issues of accessibility. And labelling something simply 'hidden' that is not fact always hidden is misleading your successors. I mean, in your example they left a comment with their thought process -- the thing was labelled 'hidden' after all. Jonathan On 9/17/14 5:03 PM, Will Martin wrote: To digress a bit from LibGuides ... The biggest problem with accessibility is not technical: it's cultural. Producing HTML that meets basic accessibility tests is not all THAT difficult. The harder part is setting up a culture where everyone -- everyone! -- who writes content for the web is trained on how to do it accessibly. A content editor who is clueless about accessibility can very easily screw up their pages without even knowing they're doing so. The same applies to developers. Once while reviewing a library site's code, I came across a chunk of HTML that looked like this (roughly): !-- I don't know why this was here? It's invisible! Disabling. a href=#top class=hiddenReturn to top/a -- An earlier developer had put that in to assist screen reader users in getting back to the top of the page if they wanted. The hidden class was a correctly written class for hiding content while leaving it available for screen reader users. But the next person to fill that job wasn't trained on WHY and took it out again. If you really want to commit to accessibility, it needs to be a criterion in the job description for your developers, and there needs to be a training process in place for anyone who produces content for your site. Probably with refreshers at intervals. Will
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Mouse hover is not available to anyone using a touch device rather than a mouse, as well as being problematic for keyboard access. While there might be ways to make the on-hover UI style keyboard accessible (perhaps in some cases activating on element focus in addition toon hover), there aren't really any good ones I can think for purely touch devices (which don't really trigger focus state either). An increasing amount of web use, of course, is mobile touch devices, and probably will continue to be and to increase for some time, including on library properties. So I think probably on-hover UI should simply be abandoned at this point, even if some people love it, it will be inaccessible to an increasing portion of our users with no good accomodations. Jonathan On 9/17/14 4:25 PM, Jesse Martinez wrote: On the same token, we're making it a policy to not use mouse hover over effects to display database/asset descriptions in LG2 until this can become keyboard accessible. This is a beloved feature from LG1 so I'm hoping SpringShare read my pestering emails about this... Jesse On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 3:38 PM, Brad Coffield bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com wrote: Johnathan, That point is well taken. Accessibility, to me, shouldn't be a tacked-on we'll do the best we can sort of thing. It's an essential part of being a library being open to all users. Unfortunately I know our site has a lot of work to be done regarding accessibility. I'll also pay attention to that when/if I make mods to the v2 templates. On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 1:49 PM, Jonathan LeBreton lebre...@temple.edu wrote: I might mention here that we (Temple University) found LibGuides 2.0 to offer some noteworthy improvements in section 508 accessibility when compared with version 1.0. Accessibility is a particular point of concern for the whole institution as we look across the city, state, and country at other institutions that have been called out and settled with various disability advocacy groups. So we moved to v. 2.0 during the summer in order to have those improvements in place for the fall semester, as well as to get the value from some other developments in v. 2.0 that benefit all customers. When I see email on list about making modifications to templates and such, it gives me a bit of concern on this score that by doing so, one might easily begin to make the CMS framework for content less accessible. I thought I should voice that.This is not to say that one shouldn't customize and explore enhancements etc., but one should do so with some care if you are operating with similar mandates or concerns.Unless I am mistaken, several of the examples noted are now throwing 508 errors that are not in the out-of-the box LibGuide templates and which are not the result of an individual content contributor/author inserting bad stuff like images without alt tags. Jonathan LeBreton Senior Associate University Librarian Editor: Library Archival Security Temple University Libraries Paley M138, 1210 Polett Walk, Philadelphia PA 19122 voice: 215.204.8231 fax: 215.204.5201 mobile: 215.284.5070 email: lebre...@temple.edu email: jonat...@temple.edu -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cindi Blyberg Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 12:03 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hey everyone! Not to turn C4L into Support4LibGuides, but... :) The infrastructure for all the APIs is in place; currently, the Guides API and the Subjects API are functioning. Go to Tools API Get Guides to see the general structure of the URL. Replace guides with subjects to retrieve your subjects. You will need your LibGuides site ID, which you can get from the LibApps Dashboard screen. Word is that it will not take long to add other API calls on the back end; if you need these now, please do email supp...@springshare.com and reference this conversation. As for v1, we are planning on supporting it for 2 more years--that said, we would never leave anyone hanging, so if it takes longer than that to get everyone moved over, we're ready for that. Best, -Cindi On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:46 AM, Nadaleen F Tempelman-Kluit n...@nyu.edu wrote: Hi all- While we're on the topic of LibGuides V2, when will the GET subjects API (and other API details) be in place? We're in a holding pattern until we get those details and we've not been able to get any timeline as to when those assets will be in place. So we're deciding between building out LibGuides CMS Global landing pages using the V1 platform, or waiting until some future date which, very soon, will mean abandoning this project till next summer. If we go the former route, it would also be great to know how long V1 will be supported. Thanks On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:29 AM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Michael
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Our library is also just getting ready to delve into LibGuides v2 so I'm also interested in hearing what others are doing! Thank you, -- Jeannie Graham Jeannie Graham California State University, Chico Meriam Library - Library Technology Specialist Chico, CA 95929-0295 jgra...@csuchico.edu 530-898-4311 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Monday, September 15, 2014 12:19 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hi all, I'm finally diving into our Libguides v2 migration and I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to share their experience/choices regarding templating. (Or even some code!) I'm thinking left-nav is the way to go. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns? Done that with a column-width-spanning box atop the main content area? Any other neato templates ideas? We are in the process of building a style guide for all libguides authors to use. And also some sort of peer-review process to help enforce the style guide. I'm thinking we are going to want to restrict all authors to left-nav templates but perhaps the ideal solution would be to require left-nav of all but to have a variety of custom left-nav templates to choose from. Any thoughts are much appreciated! Warm regards, Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edumailto:bcoffi...@francis.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
My impression of the LibGuides v2 template system is that it's decent within strict boundaries. We just launched LibGuides v2 about 6 weeks ago. We took a look at the templates, and opted not to do anything with them, because they didn't do what we needed them to. Our instance of LibGuides is shared between the main campus library and the health sciences library. Students navigating the system are often confused if they accidentally wind up looking at a guide produced for the other set of patrons. So the one thing we really wanted to do was customize the header of a guide based on whether it was produced at the health sciences library or at the main campus library, to hopefully help students keep track of where they are. Unfortunately, LibGuides' template system can't do that. It only applies to the content areas of the guide. Within that area, it affords a great degree of flexibility as regards the HTML markup of the guides. Outside of that area, it's useless. So we're running with the defaults. I may revisit those at some point, but for now we're reasonably happy with them. Oh, and here's a link to the documentation for the template system: http://support.springshare.com/libguides/guidetemplates/intro It does require you to be logged into your LibApps account, because apparently the details of their templating system is a deep, dark secret. Will On 2014-09-16 10:48, Graham, Jeannie wrote: Our library is also just getting ready to delve into LibGuides v2 so I'm also interested in hearing what others are doing! Thank you, -- Jeannie Graham Jeannie Graham California State University, Chico Meriam Library - Library Technology Specialist Chico, CA 95929-0295 jgra...@csuchico.edu 530-898-4311 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Monday, September 15, 2014 12:19 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hi all, I'm finally diving into our Libguides v2 migration and I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to share their experience/choices regarding templating. (Or even some code!) I'm thinking left-nav is the way to go. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns? Done that with a column-width-spanning box atop the main content area? Any other neato templates ideas? We are in the process of building a style guide for all libguides authors to use. And also some sort of peer-review process to help enforce the style guide. I'm thinking we are going to want to restrict all authors to left-nav templates but perhaps the ideal solution would be to require left-nav of all but to have a variety of custom left-nav templates to choose from. Any thoughts are much appreciated! Warm regards, Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edumailto:bcoffi...@francis.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
We didn't modify the templates much, but I did do a few things with them to make them feel like our own, plus experiment with some ideas for the main library website which is due for a slight update. Here's an example of a guide: http://libguides.luc.edu/anthropology1. The major thing I changed was to modify the header to exactly mirror the university website main header. This is different from the library website, which I did on purpose. I also had hoped to move to left nav to mirror other sites on the university and library site, but everyone wanted to stick with tab navigation. As an attempt to aid navigation and mirror the university's use of tabs, I used a built-in Bootstrap function to float the tabs above the content after scrolling down past them. I set a few media queries so this doesn't happen on a phone size, as well as modifying a few other elements for tablet and phone size. I accomplished most of what I wanted to do with CSS (s much display:none for things I didn't like...) and changing the header, only had to modify a few items in the template itself. Mostly this was adding in new divs I needed for styling and so on. I didn't modify the structure of the columns at all. If you have the higher end version (LibGuides CMS I ! think) you have a lot more options for templates, though I still don't think this would address Will's issue. As a side note, I am working on a piece for ACRL TechConnect on this topic right now and looking for examples, so if anyone would be interested in featuring their guides in that, please get in touch with me. Best, Margaret Heller Digital Services Librarian Loyola University Chicago 773-508-2686 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Will Martin Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 2:14 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav My impression of the LibGuides v2 template system is that it's decent within strict boundaries. We just launched LibGuides v2 about 6 weeks ago. We took a look at the templates, and opted not to do anything with them, because they didn't do what we needed them to. Our instance of LibGuides is shared between the main campus library and the health sciences library. Students navigating the system are often confused if they accidentally wind up looking at a guide produced for the other set of patrons. So the one thing we really wanted to do was customize the header of a guide based on whether it was produced at the health sciences library or at the main campus library, to hopefully help students keep track of where they are. Unfortunately, LibGuides' template system can't do that. It only applies to the content areas of the guide. Within that area, it affords a great degree of flexibility as regards the HTML markup of the guides. Outside of that area, it's useless. So we're running with the defaults. I may revisit those at some point, but for now we're reasonably happy with them. Oh, and here's a link to the documentation for the template system: http://support.springshare.com/libguides/guidetemplates/intro It does require you to be logged into your LibApps account, because apparently the details of their templating system is a deep, dark secret. Will On 2014-09-16 10:48, Graham, Jeannie wrote: Our library is also just getting ready to delve into LibGuides v2 so I'm also interested in hearing what others are doing! Thank you, -- Jeannie Graham Jeannie Graham California State University, Chico Meriam Library - Library Technology Specialist Chico, CA 95929-0295 jgra...@csuchico.edu 530-898-4311 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Monday, September 15, 2014 12:19 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hi all, I'm finally diving into our Libguides v2 migration and I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to share their experience/choices regarding templating. (Or even some code!) I'm thinking left-nav is the way to go. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns? Done that with a column-width-spanning box atop the main content area? Any other neato templates ideas? We are in the process of building a style guide for all libguides authors to use. And also some sort of peer-review process to help enforce the style guide. I'm thinking we are going to want to restrict all authors to left-nav templates but perhaps the ideal solution would be to require left-nav of all but to have a variety of custom left-nav templates to choose from. Any thoughts are much appreciated! Warm regards, Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
So the one thing we really wanted to do was customize the header of a guide based on whether it was produced at the health sciences library or at the main campus library, to hopefully help students keep track of where they are. Have you tried assigning the Health Sciences guides to their own groups and adding custom header HTML at the group-level (Admin Groups Header/Footer/Tabs/Boxes)? You can't use the new mustache-based templating inside the headers, but you can use plain-jane HTML. On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 3:14 PM, Will Martin w...@will-martin.net wrote: My impression of the LibGuides v2 template system is that it's decent within strict boundaries. We just launched LibGuides v2 about 6 weeks ago. We took a look at the templates, and opted not to do anything with them, because they didn't do what we needed them to. Our instance of LibGuides is shared between the main campus library and the health sciences library. Students navigating the system are often confused if they accidentally wind up looking at a guide produced for the other set of patrons. So the one thing we really wanted to do was customize the header of a guide based on whether it was produced at the health sciences library or at the main campus library, to hopefully help students keep track of where they are. Unfortunately, LibGuides' template system can't do that. It only applies to the content areas of the guide. Within that area, it affords a great degree of flexibility as regards the HTML markup of the guides. Outside of that area, it's useless. So we're running with the defaults. I may revisit those at some point, but for now we're reasonably happy with them. Oh, and here's a link to the documentation for the template system: http://support.springshare.com/libguides/guidetemplates/intro It does require you to be logged into your LibApps account, because apparently the details of their templating system is a deep, dark secret. Will On 2014-09-16 10:48, Graham, Jeannie wrote: Our library is also just getting ready to delve into LibGuides v2 so I'm also interested in hearing what others are doing! Thank you, -- Jeannie Graham Jeannie Graham California State University, Chico Meriam Library - Library Technology Specialist Chico, CA 95929-0295 jgra...@csuchico.edu 530-898-4311 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Monday, September 15, 2014 12:19 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hi all, I'm finally diving into our Libguides v2 migration and I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to share their experience/choices regarding templating. (Or even some code!) I'm thinking left-nav is the way to go. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns? Done that with a column-width-spanning box atop the main content area? Any other neato templates ideas? We are in the process of building a style guide for all libguides authors to use. And also some sort of peer-review process to help enforce the style guide. I'm thinking we are going to want to restrict all authors to left-nav templates but perhaps the ideal solution would be to require left-nav of all but to have a variety of custom left-nav templates to choose from. Any thoughts are much appreciated! Warm regards, Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edumailto:bcoffi...@francis.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hey everyone! Just wanted to de-lurk and answer a couple of questions here. :) Templates are customizable, and those customizations apply to the entire page, not just to the content area, although Will's right that with regular LibGuides the entire system and all the guides have a single look feel. You can create groups of guides in the LibGuides CMS upgrade, and each group of guides can have its own look and feel. There are actually templates not only for guide pages, but for the system homepage, the A-Z databases page, and other public pages. LibGuides 2 is based on Bootstrap 3, which you can choose to not apply if you like. Something else this group might be interested in is the RESTful API offered by LibGuides 2 CMS. For Margaret, here are a few systems that have come to our attention in recent weeks. If you'd like more examples, you can see most of the 623 live LibGuides 2 sites by exploring the LibGuides Community at libguides.com--just choose LibGuides v2 from the Product menu. http://libguides.gvsu.edu/ http://thegordon.libguides.com/library http://libguides.ashland.edu/ http://furman.beta.libguides.com/wexler/home http://libguides.usask.ca/ http://guides.library.georgetown.edu/researchcourseguides Hope this helps! Happy to answer questions. Cheers, -Cindi -- Cindi Trainor Blyberg (who works for Springshare) :D On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 3:47 PM, Heller, Margaret mhell...@luc.edu wrote: We didn't modify the templates much, but I did do a few things with them to make them feel like our own, plus experiment with some ideas for the main library website which is due for a slight update. Here's an example of a guide: http://libguides.luc.edu/anthropology1. The major thing I changed was to modify the header to exactly mirror the university website main header. This is different from the library website, which I did on purpose. I also had hoped to move to left nav to mirror other sites on the university and library site, but everyone wanted to stick with tab navigation. As an attempt to aid navigation and mirror the university's use of tabs, I used a built-in Bootstrap function to float the tabs above the content after scrolling down past them. I set a few media queries so this doesn't happen on a phone size, as well as modifying a few other elements for tablet and phone size. I accomplished most of what I wanted to do with CSS (s much display:none for things I didn't like...) and changing the header, only had to modify a few items in the template itself. Mostly this was adding in new divs I needed for styling and so on. I didn't modify the structure of the columns at all. If you have the higher end version (LibGuides CMS I ! think) you have a lot more options for templates, though I still don't think this would address Will's issue. As a side note, I am working on a piece for ACRL TechConnect on this topic right now and looking for examples, so if anyone would be interested in featuring their guides in that, please get in touch with me. Best, Margaret Heller Digital Services Librarian Loyola University Chicago 773-508-2686 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Will Martin Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 2:14 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav My impression of the LibGuides v2 template system is that it's decent within strict boundaries. We just launched LibGuides v2 about 6 weeks ago. We took a look at the templates, and opted not to do anything with them, because they didn't do what we needed them to. Our instance of LibGuides is shared between the main campus library and the health sciences library. Students navigating the system are often confused if they accidentally wind up looking at a guide produced for the other set of patrons. So the one thing we really wanted to do was customize the header of a guide based on whether it was produced at the health sciences library or at the main campus library, to hopefully help students keep track of where they are. Unfortunately, LibGuides' template system can't do that. It only applies to the content areas of the guide. Within that area, it affords a great degree of flexibility as regards the HTML markup of the guides. Outside of that area, it's useless. So we're running with the defaults. I may revisit those at some point, but for now we're reasonably happy with them. Oh, and here's a link to the documentation for the template system: http://support.springshare.com/libguides/guidetemplates/intro It does require you to be logged into your LibApps account, because apparently the details of their templating system is a deep, dark secret. Will On 2014-09-16 10:48, Graham, Jeannie wrote: Our library is also just getting ready to delve into LibGuides v2 so I'm also interested in hearing what others are doing! Thank you, -- Jeannie
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I have always thought that left-nav was the UX standard for left-to-right
languages (as opposed to Arabic, eg.: http://www.france24.com/ar/).
Personally, I feel that right-nav makes more sense across the board, due to
the fact that it is less distance to travel for right-handed people. But
the convention seems pretty set in stone. I am also not sure how screen
readers deal with right-nav - although i am guessing that there is no
problem there programming wise.
Blake
On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Brad Coffield bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com
wrote:
Benjamin: Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus
left-nav... LOL
Margaret: Love the floating nav on that page. It's exciting that we'll be
able to leverage Bootstrap with our guides now. Moving the entire library
website to libguides CMS is looking more and more promising.
Some more thoughts:
I'm no UX expert but is it generally agreed that left-nav is the much
better choice? It seems like it to me. Given current web wide conventions
etc.
One big issue to switching to left-nav in v2 is the amount of work it's
going to take everyone to convert all guides to the new layout. Which is
one of those things that both shouldn't matter (when looking at it in a
principledness way - that is, Whatever is best for the patrons! No matter
what!) but also does matter (in a practical way - that is, OMG we are all
so busy being awesome).
But part of me, when looking at other people's guides and my own, wonders
if three columns isn't just a little TOO much for the user. How is one
supposed to scan the page? What's the prioritized information? For a couple
years now I've been eschewing three columns whenever possible. Do others
agree that three columns can be info overload?
Brad
On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 4:32 PM, Benjamin Florin
benjamin.flo...@gmail.com
wrote:
We've been tinkering with our LibGuides template in preparation for an
eventual redesign of our site and guides, e.g.:
http://libguides.bc.edu/libraries/babst/staff
Some of our guide authors weren't happy with the LibGuides
side-navigation's single-column limitation, so we made our own template,
moved {{guide_nav}} off to a left column, and wrote our own styles to
make
the default top-nav display as left-nav. We've found that a 50/50 or
75/25
split next to the left nav looks pretty good.
Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus left-nav...
In general the LibGuides templating has felt modern and easy to work
with.
Ben
On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 3:18 PM, Brad Coffield
bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com
wrote:
Hi all,
I'm finally diving into our Libguides v2 migration and I'm wondering if
anyone would be willing to share their experience/choices regarding
templating. (Or even some code!)
I'm thinking left-nav is the way to go. Has anyone split the main
content
column into two smaller columns? Done that with a column-width-spanning
box
atop the main content area? Any other neato templates ideas?
We are in the process of building a style guide for all libguides
authors
to use. And also some sort of peer-review process to help enforce the
style
guide. I'm thinking we are going to want to restrict all authors to
left-nav templates but perhaps the ideal solution would be to require
left-nav of all but to have a variety of custom left-nav templates to
choose from.
Any thoughts are much appreciated!
Warm regards,
Brad
--
Brad Coffield, MLIS
Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian
Saint Francis University
814-472-3315
bcoffi...@francis.edu
--
Brad Coffield, MLIS
Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian
Saint Francis University
814-472-3315
bcoffi...@francis.edu
--
Blake L. Galbreath
Systems Librarian
Eastern Oregon University
One University Boulevard
La Grande, OR 97850
(541) 962.3017
bgalbre...@eou.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I'm going to weigh-in a little before I leave for the day. We have made a few big templating customizations out of the box when we went live with LG2 as a transition for further customizations this fall (including replacing Bootstrap* entirely). If anyone is on the fence about LG2, back in March I wrote a pretty glowing preview (http://ns4lib.com/libguides-is-no-joke/) - which turned out to be a tad optimistic. There WERE some complications, but I think most libraries should be fine using LG2 out of the box. LG2 is leaps and bounds better than LG1. Thoughts: Q1. How complicated is it to change all 3 column guides to a single-column left/right-nav layout? A little. You can force the entire group [or all groups] to use a single template, which is a huge time saver, except your guides' middle and right columns will be in hidden columns rather than forced to collapse into a single column. This was pretty confusing at first. We were afraid we actually lost content during the migration. You will need to manually hit every guide and change the layout to single-column, but that's just a click of the button. If you have 400+ guides, though, that's 400+ clicks. Q2. Three-columns or single column? Single column. Users scan, and they scan the top and left-most portions of the screen. Anything in the middle and to the right is lost. Also, three columns on a responsive site is a little weird, because content is pretty squishy; on tablets you might have pretty narrow left and right columns. Q3. Left nav or right nav? Left nav, probably. Many sites have main content on the left, which I like just fine, but if it's a question of either / or, right-column stuff is considered ancillary and users will be less likely to look at it. Which might actually be what you want out of a nav. Actually, because of that, you might want to just do right nav. LibGuides 2 is mobile first (using Bootstrap 3), so when the grid collapses the left nav appear at the top of every guide, a right nav will slide underneath. Q4. No nav? Okay, nobody actually brought this up, but users don’t tend to look at sidebars at all. Most libraries have a top menu in the header. If this is the case, consider dropping sidebars entirely and positioning your single column of content with equal margins. Why? Well, white-space. People like white-space. Too much stuff on the page--stuff, by the way, people won't look at anyway--increases cognitive load, which might just put your patrons in a grumpy mood when looking for simple content. Also consider that libraries--like every industry--will eventually have their mobile moment. For some of us it might be pretty far away, but eventually mobile traffic will eclipse traditional desktop traffic (charts! http://talks.ns4lib.com/patrons-on-performance/images/mobile-web-usage.png and http://talks.ns4lib.com/patrons-on-performance/images/mobilemoment.png ). Removing sidebar content also forces your design committee / content creators to think harder about the quality of their content and be a little bit more choosy about screen real estate. If you're interested in trying the no-sidebar thing, you may consider customizing the template so that the side nav appears as good old fashioned links at the top of your content, like--well--a table of contents. This isn't the best example, but it's an idea: http://public.library.nova.edu/help/#content. Q5. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns? LG2 makes it crazy easy to change number and percentage-based widths of the columns. So you could still use the tabs-across-the-top template and create a little 33% wide left sidebar column and a 66% wide right main column. Q6. Should I restrict all authors to XYZ template? I think so. IMHO, consistency is key. The arguments from here were, like, that our staff wanted to be creative; but users only appreciate creative insofar as it doesn't get in the way of their content. If every guide is different, the user will have to spend extra time parsing every guide. Not fun. You can create a bunch of different groups with their own styles or whatever, but IMHO lock those groups down, so groups are at least thematically consistent. Q7. Bootstrap? Bootstrap! Since LG2 is Bootstrapped, libraries should bootstrap responsibly (http://acrl.ala.org/techconnect/?p=4439) - not all responsive web design is created equal. :) Michael www.libux.co -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Blake Galbreath Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 6:37 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I have always thought that left-nav was the UX standard for left-to-right languages (as opposed to Arabic, eg.: http://www.france24.com/ar/). Personally, I feel that right-nav makes more sense across the board, due to the fact that it is less distance to travel for right-handed
[CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hi all, I'm finally diving into our Libguides v2 migration and I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to share their experience/choices regarding templating. (Or even some code!) I'm thinking left-nav is the way to go. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns? Done that with a column-width-spanning box atop the main content area? Any other neato templates ideas? We are in the process of building a style guide for all libguides authors to use. And also some sort of peer-review process to help enforce the style guide. I'm thinking we are going to want to restrict all authors to left-nav templates but perhaps the ideal solution would be to require left-nav of all but to have a variety of custom left-nav templates to choose from. Any thoughts are much appreciated! Warm regards, Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edu
