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Privacy and Intellectual Property
Privacy and intellectual property on Northside Web sites are governed by NISD Administrative Regulation TEC-01 , available on the Intranet.
Student and employee privacy must be protected at all times. Student and employee photos must not be posted without permission. With pictures of students, obtain written parental permission and keep it on file. Students' last names should not be used. Student and employee personal information, including home addresses, home phone numbers, grades, etc. should not be posted.
Creative works (drawings, paintings, articles, research results, etc.) by Northside students or employees may not be posted without written permission from the parent(s), or from the employee who created the work.
Identify Yourself!
Many pages on the Internet do not indicate who "owns" them (school district, company, government agency, etc.). Because people may arrive at your page directly from a search engine or a link from someone else's page, you should identify your pages so that visitors know where they are. Headers, logos, and banners can be used, especially on your school or department's first page . Even if you choose to have a header only on the first page, all pages within your site can be indentified by the page title. Titles are especially useful because they do not take up space on the page. Search engines look at them, so a meaningful title can make the difference between someone finding your page or looking for it in vain. Instead of titling a page "Calendar," you could use "2002-2003 Calendar -- Northside Independent School District, San Antonio, Texas."
Copyright
If something is published -- whether in a book, on a computer disk, on a videotape, or on the Web -- it can be assumed to be copyrighted by the creator. All Northside Web pages are the property of Northside ISD. If you want to use something that someone else has created, ask for permission, explaining what you want to do with it, where it will be put on the Web, etc. Keep copies of your message or letter, along with the author's reply. There are three good alternatives to having to ask permission:
- Create the material yourself. This is the safest way to obtain graphics and content for a Web page. Although it isn't always easy, it can be very gratifying, and it may take far less time than finding the "perfect" image somewhere.
- Use non-copyrighted government material. Government depositories (books, magazines, microfilm, etc.) in libraries can be gold mines for the Web author. On the Internet, NASA is a wonderful source for non-offensive, colorful, public domain graphics. Be careful, though: some government material is copyrighted by the original author or artist. Look for copyright notices to be safe.
- Look for materials whose copyrights have expired. This is a frequently overlooked source of some excellent graphics for Web pages. Books published more than 80 years ago are generally safe. Nineteenth century science books, for example, often have intricate, detailed engravings and stunning color plates which can easily be scanned to liven up a homepage. Seek the help of a good librarian.
Protect your own creative efforts. Post a copyright notice at the bottom of your pages. An example follows:
© 2002 Northside Independent School District.
All rights reserved.
The copyright symbol (©) can be added to a page in Dreamweaver by clicking on Insert at the top of the screen and choosing Special Characters from the menu that appears. At the bottom of the Special Characters menu, choose Other... and look for the copyright symbol in the window that appears on the screen.
Navigational Aids
Another problem with search engines is that visitors often arrive at your page with no idea of how to find any other pages within the school district. The visitor's back button is, of course, useless, because it just takes the person back to the search engine. Ideally, every page in your site should include a link to your main page, and your main page should have a link back to the NISD homepage. A convenient place for these is in text at the bottom of each page.
Testing
Test your web page on as many different computers as you can, and with both Netscape and Internet Explorer. What looks good on the computer in your office, with the latest version of Explorer, may look very different on a smaller monitor, with an older version of Netscape.
Prioritize Your Information
Present your most important information and/or links first. Details and less important information can follow later or be placed on subsidiary pages.
Graphics
Use graphics sparingly to add interest or to present information in a useful format. Keep them as small as possible (under 35K). Avoid at all costs the mistake of using Dreamweaver's Property Inspector to reduce a graphic. Changing the height and width makes the image look smaller, but it takes just as long to load, and the resizing may cause it to be distorted. Use a graphics application such as Fireworks or Adobe Photoshop to resize the actual image, and use the height and width attributes in the Property Inspector only for small size adjustments.
Logos
NISD Administrative Regulation COM-01 governs the use of the Northside Logos. The Northside Logos must not be altered. Do not resize the Web Logos. For the convenience of webmasters, a collection of Northside Logos is available on the Intranet .
Frames and Tables
Frames and tables are both useful tools for arranging information on a page. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Look at other pages in the District and elsewhere to see example of both frames and tables in use.
Frames can give a very consistent "look" to a set of related pages, as well as providing easy navigation throughout a site. If you have a long menu that must be available to visitors at all times, no matter how far down a page they scroll, use frames. On the other hand, frames are not compatible with all browsers, and search engines can't always find content in frames. Frames can cause problems for visitors who wish to print the page. They also make pages more difficult to update.
Tables, when used creatively, can accomplish many of the same things as frames. They are extremely easy to create in Dreamweaver, are compatible with a wide variety of browsers and are easy to maintain. Set Border to 0 (zero) for an invisible table that can be used to arrange text and/or graphics wherever you want it on a page. Background colors in one or more cells can be used to liven up a page or to make the information in the table easier to read..
Accessibility Issues
It is our responsibility to make Web information accessible to as many people as possible, whether that is someone using an adaptive technology, such as a voice synthesizer which reads the page aloud to the user, or a person using an older computer with a slow connection, or a visitor with a text browser on a cellular telephone or handheld computer. We therefore need to make every effort to ensure accessibility. The following suggestions may help:
- Use text equivalents (the ALT attribute) to describe all images.
- If you put a graphical link (a link that requires a visitor to click on an image) on a page, make sure that there is a corresponding text link available, perhaps at the bottom of the page.
- Check pages with verification services, such as Bobby (http://www.cast.org/bobby/) .
- Avoid the use of "higher end" applications requiring multiple plug-ins, unless a "lower end" alternative (such as a text-only page) is provided.
Overall Style and "Look"
Make every effort to make your page clear and easy to read for visitors. Avoid color combinations that are difficult to read (such as dark blue text on a dark green background) or difficult to print (white or light colored text). Avoid clutter. Treat a Web page the same way you would any official publication and try to make it as professional as possible.
Page approval
Remember that all NISD Web pages are treated as official publications, and as such, must be approved by the appropriate person in authority. |
