Martin's BCIM Website Blog

 
I wrote a style guide for our intranet pages when I was working with Helen - before starting this blog - but have neglected it. I do think it's worth having a style guide, and I will try to resurrect it sooner or later, but probably not before the new BCIM website goes live; I think that the style guide is relatively low priority, and I don't want to get distracted. However, there are some things that I'm doing differently now and I feel I ought to make a note of them here - so that I remember to include them if and when I do update the style guide.

Don't open new browser windows for external links
I had been wondering for a while whether or not it's a good idea to open a new browser window for every external link; most of the slick websites that I see these days don't do it. I was finally persuaded by this article that we shouldn't do it (as I noted here). I asked James and Mike what they thought, and they both agreed that we should continue using the red and blue arrows ( >> and >> ) to indicate external and internal links, respectively, but that we should no longer open new browser windows for external links.

Use ordered (rather than unordered) anchor links for page sub-headings
For long pages, where users are likely to have to scroll down the page to see what's in it, we should always include a list of sub-heading anchor links under the main heading. We've always done this - but using unordered lists. I now think that ORDERED lists look better, especially when the last sub-heading is close to the bottom the page - since in that case even when a user clicks on the relevant anchor link it may not be immediately obvious where the sub-heading is. Numbering the sub-headings helps to make it clearer, I feel.

Links to individuals' PhoneBook pages
We should link to individuals' PhoneBook pages from now on rather than having mailto: links. Also, we should omit the >>'s in this case. One reason for not having mailto: links is to avoid making email addresses available on the web for spammers to harvest. (The email addresses within PhoneBook pages have been encoded in an effort to prevent this.)

Use ampersands wherever reasonable
For consistency, use ampersands ("&") wherever reasonable - e.g. within Department, Programme and Course names, where relevant - rather than using the word "and".

Refer to the "BCIM Faculty", "SDCN Department", "BIT Programme" etc....
...as opposed to the "Faculty of Business, Computing & Information Management", the "Department of Software Development & Computer Networking", etc. This is for the sake of brevity as well as consistency. We should spell out the name in full and define the acronym - e.g. "Department of Software Development & Computer Networking (SDCN)" - on a page that introduces the Department/Programme/whatever, but use the shortened for thereafter.

Choice of URLs for Departments, Programmes etc.
If a page is an entry point for some kind of sub-group within the Faculty - as in a Dept or a Programme - then it should be the index page within an appropriately named subdirectory. Hence, for example, the URL for the ISIT Dept should be the first of these two, rather than the second...

       http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/bcimnew/depts/isit/
       http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/bcimnew/depts/isit.shtml

Breadcrumbs
The first page in each section (e.g. the BUSINESS page) has links within the banner sub-navigation area to other pages within that section, but subsequent pages have breadcrumbs only within the banner sub-navigation area.

Page main (<H1>) headings
The top-level pages - ABOUT, COURSES, RESEARCH, BUSINESS, PEOPLE, SITE MAP, INTRANET - can have their main (<H1>) headings in CAPITALS, but all other page headings should be lower case (Capitalised).