G'morning gang,
Time for me to request a big RFF.
Tomorrow we're opening the second stage of the big project I've been
working on. Need to run a few checks to see how it looks in various
browsers. At this point, I'm most interested in:
1. Does it work with your browser/OS combo?
2. Is it speedy?
It should work with all browsers down to lynx, and should be quick to
load. Given the nature of the content (UN Foundation), we want it to
work for everyone around the world (though about 80% of the audience to
date is in the US). The current site is about half as fast as it will
be when it gets moved to the Sparc and dedicated copies of CF and Oracle
in the morning.
CAVEATS:
1. I know some of the design decisions go against what the group holds
(like un-underlined links). I'm just the conduit between management,
the designers and multiple content providers on this one -- did my best
to get all of the discussions on the table and educate everyone, but the
final calls weren't mine. The look is "light" by intention--this stage
is the formal stuff (the the management liaisons were tossing around the
term "Bauhaus" a lot), while the next stage introduces more lighthearted
and "fun" action pages and subsidiary sites for support of specific
goals that will have a more "active" interface.
2. There's still edits and pages going in today. Some links might be in
progress Sunday afternoon, and the consistency edit is in progress.
3. The UN Wire stuff on the home page isn't active yet. Tomorrow
morning, that will pull the headlines from our daily news summary as it
is posted. The transition between the look of this site and that one
(opened a month ago) is still in progress. If you're interested in that,
it's at http://www.unfoundation.org/unwire. Registration is required
only because we're trying to get realistic stats to justify the costs of
producing it, and as a step toward the site personalization options in
future stages. Email address and password only.
4. Languages aren't activated. We'll pull those links from the home
page in the morning, and put them back as we get the six translations
done.
5. We're still doing a lot of graphic tweaking. We overcompressed a few
times and need to go back and tweak a lot of stuff.
6. The donation system won't be online tomorrow. Bank isn't done with
their end yet. Eventually, though, the shopping cart will be linked
throughout the site, and you'll be able to give to almost every project
listed. "Shopping for Global Change"
7. Etc.
In short, there's pressures to get support up for various NPR and other
informational campaigns that start soon, so we'll be opening and then
doing about 4 weeks of tweaking, adding graphical enhancements, etc., on
the fly.
And finally, I'm also interested in feedback on the content. I tried to
make every part of this site tell a story about the UN. The research we
had was kind of scary--less than 20% of Americans know that UNICEF is
part of the UN, few anywhere know the UN was responsible for eradicating
small pox and will eradicate polio in the next 5 years, etc.
Thus, we try to work into the story of the Foundation's work the story
of the UN's work and the current state of global "problems", and use
people's interests in the grant coverage areas to drive them to learn a
little more about the system and how it works. Curious as to how it
engages people, whether you learn anything, and whether the message
makes you give a hoot about the cause (oh, and whether it gives you a
feeling the Foundation is a credible way to route your money to
international causes ;).
Anyway, feedback appreciated.
Back to pounding links . . .
B
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