Done. Well, nearly done. Done with the design/coding aspect of things. Though nobody's really been looking at it much since I started work in earnest over the last month so I'm sure a few stylistic changes will need to be made. However, I've managed to create a site that is XHTML compliant, CSS2 compliant, and addresses (most of) the accessibility guidelines. Plus, in order to get away from the, um, questionable design (of white on light blue) I've been able to create a cross-browser, cross-platform stylesheet switcher (thank you ALA). Essentially, the default style displays a text-only site (black on white) with a somewhat stylized left-side navigation (current location is indicated using color). If the user has a modern browser (IE5+, Mozilla, et al) then the style automatically switches to the "CCMS design." However, the user is presented an option at the bottom of each page to choose how the site appears. It works brilliantly and I hope it is actually used to good affect. I have no doubt that people will want to rid themselves of the difficult-to-read design, I just hope they have no trouble figuring out how to do so. Plus, the site has a CSS-defined print style and degrades nicely to older browsers (even non-CSS ones). All this is well-documented in the site code.
I'm thinking we should add a breadcrumb trail to better indicate the users location; browsing through the site feels a tad abstract at present (it's sometimes difficult to get a feel for where you are). I's not difficult to add, but deciding on the location will be something of a challenge.
Still need to add a few things: content (waiting for Communications to finish), a search engine, and a few site notes regarding the stylesheet switcher and standards compatibility. However, I suspect we'll be completely done in the next few weeks.
At least I can move on to some other major project now.
