(Resources - WWW Information) Navigation within the CRG WWW Pages


This page contains information about how the CRG WWW pages have been structured and authored for greater ease in navigation through the site. It is hoped that the steps we have taken will increase the accessibility of our pages. If you have any comments about improving the site, please email Jeni Tennison with them.

Contents

Site Structure

The indented list below shows the structure of the CRG site, with links to the home page for each section.

[Research] Research
The research carried out by the Communications Research Group. This is divided into five sections:
[Applications] Applications
Application areas in which the research carried out by the CRG can be applied. Applications are problem areas for which new technologies may be needed, or old ones utilised. Projects are examples of these general applications.
[Applications] Technologies
Technology areas which are being developed and researched by the CRG. Technologies are developed both to answer the needs of applications and as a result of research.
[Applications] Projects
Funded projects that have been or are being carried out by the CRG. These are examples of the general application areas the CRG is interested in.
[Applications] Systems
Computer systems and architectures that are used by the CRG as the basis of many projects.
[Applications] Publications
Communications Research Group publications.
[People] People
Members of the CRG and their home pages.
[Events] Events
Events organised by the CRG.
[Groups] Groups
Groups organised by members of the CRG.
[Resources] Resources
Resources available within the CRG. Most of these pages are only of interest to those working within the Communications Research Group, or the Computer Science department.
[Code] Code
A library of code.
[Library] Library
A list of proceedings and books that are available within the CRG.
[Discussion] Discussion
Mailing list archives from within the CRG.
[Local] Local
Fun and social information, only of interest to those within the CRG.

Use of Colour

As you can see from the icons above, each of the major sections has its own colour scheme which you can use to identify where you are. These colours are also used for links:

Red - Research - Link - Visited Link
Blue - People - Link - Visited Link
Yellow - Events - Link - Visited Link
Purple - Groups - Link - Visited Link
Green - Resources - Link - Visited Link

For people who have browsers that support stylesheets, there are two exceptions to this use of colour. The first exception is that links which go to anchors within the same page will have the colour of visited links, whether that anchor has actually been visited or not. The second exception is that links which lead to pages outside the CRG WWW pages are coloured in the usual default of blue for normal links and purple for visited links.

Page Structure

The structures of pages within the CRG site is similar across sections and topics. The following is a list of the elements within the page, with links to the feature if it is present within this page, in a rough order of their prevelence across the pages.

Title
At the top of the page is the title of the page, with an image indicating the section or topic in which the page resides.
Page Information
Situated at the bottom of the page is meta-information about the page itself. This gives:
  • The complete URL of the original copy of the page, so that if the page is printed, you can find it again.
  • The name, email address, and affiliation of the author of the page, so that you can get in contact if there are errors within the page.
  • The date when the page was first constructed and the date of its most recent revision, so that you can tell how up-to-date the page is.
Home Page Links
Above the page information is a set of links which lead to the home pages of the University of Nottingham, the Department of Computer Science and the Communications Research Group. Within this list, there will also be links to the home pages of the section and topic. These links provide you with quick ways to return to a central hub or index of information.
Contents
For long pages especially, a list of the contents of the page is given near the top of the page. This provides links down into the page or to separate pages which contain relevant information.
Abstract/Outline
Between the title of the page and the list of its contents, there will usually be an abstract or outline which gives a brief summary of the contents of the page.

Accessibility for Non-Graphical Browsers

Every attempt has been made to facilitate the access of these pages by users of non-graphical browsers, or those who choose to surf without images. There are basically four functions of images within WWW pages, and we have handled them as detailed below:

decoration
images which are purely decorative, serving no logical function, or used where HTML could be used instead (e.g. as horizontal or vertical separators, bullet points). These are hardly ever links.

The CRG WWW pages contain very few images which are used solely for decorative purposes. Instead, stylesheets are used to give such decoration as coloured horizontal rules or images for bullet points. On the rare occassions where decorative images are used, an empty alt attribute indicates that the image is not important.

navigation
images which are used as clickable icons or image maps, leading to other pages within the site. These are almost always links, unless the set of navigational images remains the same throughout a site, with different images (or parts of an image map) disabled on certain pages.

The CRG WWW pages do use icons to enable navigation around the WWW site. For these images, the alt attribute contains a description of the function of the icon surrounded by square brackets ([function]). For example, an image with the alternative text [home] indicates a home page while an image with the alternative text [next] indicates a link to the next page in a sequence.

information
images which transmit information which cannot be otherwise represented as text. These are sometimes links, leading to a larger version of the image, or a description of the information held within the image.

The ideal method of dealing with these images would be to use the HTML 4.0 OBJECT element, which can contain any other HTML, and thus could give a longer description of the image. However, the OBJECT element is not supported (and indeed may crash) the most recent browsers, so this change is not worth making at the moment.

Where possible, a textual description of the image will be supplied either within the alt attribute or within the text of the page itself. Where this is not possible (if the information within the image is best given within a table, say), a separate page will give a description or alternative rendering of the information and a link to this page will be given within the longdesc attribute of the IMG element and within the page itself for those browsers who do not support this attribute.

meta-information
images which identify pages or sets of pages as related to each other (e.g. using a company logo on all its pages). These are sometimes links, leading to the home page for the set of pages.

Where images are used to supply meta-information within the CRG pages, the alt attribute contains the meta-information within braces ((meta-information)). For example, (Research - Applications), (People) or (note).

[home] Communications Research Group
[home] Department of Computer Science
[home] University of Nottingham
URL:
http://www.crg.cs.nott.ac.uk/navigation.html
Author:
Jeni Tennison ( - Department of Psychology)
Created:
29 September 1997
Last-modified:
1 October 1997