Three Rs of Diversity

Three Rs of Diversity - homepage

Website: no longer online - view screenshot

Size: 50 pages

Government status: Government Ministry

My professional status: contractor at CWA New Media

Website client: Ministry of Education

Dates: May - August 2004

Categories: IA & UX, Front-end developer, Govt web standards tester, Content-loader, CSS-based layout, e-govt/WCAG compliance, eZ Publish, Government websites, Medium sites

Brief: initially to develop the wireframe scoping diagrams for this site as part of TKI (Te Kete Ipurangi). Then to make extensive client alts to the coding of the site in XHTML and CSS.

This site was part of the much larger TKI website and was hosted inside the main TKI template. As such it was subject to the same rules for templating as the rest of TKI.

Alison: Many thanks for this. Yes, it’s looking good. Thanks for correcting the outstanding alphabetical order. Whew!

Judith Wright, Senior Materials Editor, Te Kete Ipurangi

My responsibilities included:

  • Development of the architecture and site navigation system with the client and project manager
  • Creation of wireframe diagrams during the scoping process, which reflected this architecture and navigation
  • Extensive alterations to both content and layout of both the pages themselves and the site architecture once the site had been built
  • Hand-coding in XHTML 1.0 Transitional to a very high level of accessibility
  • Hand-coding within a CSS-only environment, rather than by using tables for formatting
  • Ensuring that every page had been validated using the W3C Markup Validation Service and that it conformed to XHTML 1.0 Transitional requirements.

The site was built using a combination of XHTML and XML, neither of which I had had any practical experience of before. I was pleased I had learned about XHTML when I was critiqueing the Open Polytech's Web Design course earlier in the year! I loved the challenge of teaching myself the finer points of XHTML while on the job. Learning by altering another developer's work is a great way to extend one's skills in a new coding language.