UA.edu receives high praise from EDU Checkup

I wanted to share the following independent review of UA.edu, which was recently conducted by EDU Checkup, a higher education blog and review site. The review was very positive – in fact the reviewer (Nick DeNardis) tweeted that UA.edu is “one of the highest scoring sites on @educheckup”, and called it “rock star work” (http://twitter.com/nickdenardis/status/5894882926).
Overall, [...]

Announcing the launch of UA Mobile Web (beta version)

As part of an ongoing strategic process to optimize our web presence for all users, the Office of Web Communications has completed the initial development and rollout of a UA Mobile Web site for The University of Alabama.  This site is a custom web site and suite of applications which deliver top-level content, services, and [...]

It’s Just Good Web Practice

Why do web designers do that? Well, there are a lot of reasons, but most of them are just accepted and never explained. Here’s a little look at why we do what we do in the web world.

New UA Web Templates are now available

Web templates based on the design and functionality of the current UA Home Page are available for usage by any official unit of The University of Alabama. There are three basic versions of the templates available, each of which offers numerous options for customization and arrangement of content. The template packages are organized into three [...]

Strategic iPhone/Mobile development for key UA web sites

I’d like to share the outcome of a project we’ve been working on that positively impacts our top-level strategic web sites.  Below is a high-level summary of the project.  If you have any questions about this, please ask them in the comments section and we’ll be glad to answer.
Background/Challenge
We have recently been working to optimize [...]

CSS for the Phone

With the world of web expanding to mobile devices, designers must remember that ‘fantastic’ on a computer may be ‘horrifying’ on someone’s phone. However, CSS can help. By using an alternate style sheet, the computer and all the web wandering phones out there are covered.

A new UA Home Page debuts

I’m sure most of you know by now that we rolled out a new UA Home Page yesterday at http://www.ua.edu.  This new version refreshes the Home Page with a modernized look and feel, simplified navigation, updated functionality, and close integration with the new Touching Lives campaign.  You’ll begin to see more about the latter as the fall [...]

3 ways to apply CSS to HTML

If you’re setting out to learn how to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), the first step may not be learning the language but learning where to put the language. It turns out there are 3 ways to apply CSS to your HTML.
Note: With tools like jQuery and old-fashioned JavaScript, some might say there [...]

Customizing the Appearance of an Embedded YouTube Video

As you may know, UA has a YouTube channel with some really nice video content that you may be interested in linking to or embedding on your website.  If you are interested in embedding YouTube video, there are a number of parameters that you can modify to customize the way the YouTube video appears within [...]

UA HTML E-mail Templates

As part of our effort to use the UA Web Guide as a fluid and regularly updated toolkit, a new resource has been added:  HTML E-mail templates.  Because HTML email has become more important recently and with it comes more and more questions about how to develop and send these emails, we went ahead and [...]