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 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
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
--
Nadaleen Tempelman-Kluit
Head, User Experience (UX) Department
Bobst Library, New York University
n...@nyu.edu
(212) 998-2469
@nyulibraries
--
Brad Coffield, MLIS
Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian
Saint Francis University
814-472-3315
bcoffi...@francis.edu
