Speaking of the boss-man. Met with Kelly Gayden the other day to review the new AAAS design and discuss what it would take to get things done over here. It actually looks like we'll be able to make the transition to the new look without much trouble. That doesn't mean, however, that it'll be a no-brainer.
The new design still uses a familiar top/left-side shell structure found on so many web sites. Replacement of the top area will be easy enough. The left-side navigation, however, should be modified to take advantage of the new functionality. Also, it looks like we'll need to forego our handy drop-down/search modifications. But I think most of these items can be easily enough integrated into the new navigational scheme.
The right-side … um … sidebar is no longer present so we'll need to rethink some of the pages on the site. I think with a number of these items we may just be able to integrate them into the actual content. For the rest I'm currently leaning towards using floated divs to allow for a similar affect. Some content I think I'd like to make more
The content areas should be a simple drop-in.
I haven't had a chance to review the stylesheets so it's hard to say if I'll need to make another end-run around their CSS code in order to have a site that's more user-friendly. Sadly, it appears they're still using tables for layout … I can't wait to boast about the work that was put in to the CCMS site. No doubt in the end I'll want to make a number of modifications. At the very least I'll need to do what I can to fit the code into our Dreamweaver templates. Much as I like what they've done to separate out things as much as possible, I'd rather see more time spent on standards-compliance.
