HTML Team Meeting Minutes

CALL TO ORDER: 7:00 pm

Attendees & Introductions

         Thomas Gaucher   arapahoe@fortnet.org         Win95 / NT
         Hans Amann       amann@fortnet.org            Win95/Unix
         Greg Luse        gregl@fortnet.org            OS/2 / Win 3.11
         Charles Clarke   clarke@fortnet.org           Unix / Mac
         Michael Goshorn  goshorn@fortnet.org          Win95 / Unix
         Loyd Berry       ilgberry@fortnet.org         Win 3.11
         Joe Strecker     pbi@fortnet.org              Win 3.11 / Mac Sys 7
         Darryl McBroom   darrylm@fortnet.org          Win 3.1
         Lannie Boyd      boydll@lamar.colostate.edu   Win95
         Ann Harbour      aharbour@fortnet.org         Win3.11 - Win95 soon
         Carol Van Natta  crannatta@earthlink.net      Win3.11 / 95 / NT

Old Business

1. Current Projects Status.

   • Work in progress available online at http://www.fortnet.org/~goshorn/fortnet/

   • The Christian Coalition pages have been returned to the authors for additional corrections.

2. Discussion of new software:
   • Apache update: Currently on HOLD - see http://www.apache.org for details on the specific version.

   • HP-UX update: Under consideration to allow use of excite's search engine.

New Business

1. New Projects:
   • Fort Collins Audubon Society Pages:
     We have raw material including HTML coding in need of re-working. Skills required include image map creation and coding.

   • Photos of the Fort Collins area are needed to add to the system. If you have any nice photos you would like considered, please bring them to the meeting. We have scanners available to create the image files.

2. New Software:

   • Postgres is being considered as an available relational database. Anyone with experience using Postgres and any available web interfaces for it is encouraged to contribute comments, criticisms, etc.

   • Any other free, web-capable, relational database products?

   • MetaCrawler Multi-Threaded Web Search Service was suggested as a possible search engine for FortNet.

3. FortNet Re-design:

   • It has been pointed out that the structures used to indent links on the FortNet pages do not adhere to the HTML DTD. We should consider alternatives available.

   • Page Sponsers: We have no script support for this as yet. Details on what the board intends to do should be obtained and discussed.

   • Maintaining a "text-only" home page appears to be necessary.
     Although lynx displays the page acceptably, Netscape ver 1.0 (which is on our distribution disks) and some versions of "Netcruiser" (whatever that is) do not.

   • FortNet User Survey:
     This item has been on the "Volunteers Neede" list for some time. Any suggestions for things to include in such a survey would be helpful

   • Please bring a list of any other items requiring changes to the meeting.

4. HTML QA Standards Changes:

   • WIDTH and HEIGHT on IMG tags.

   • ISMAPs should have default tags

   • using the SSI for document change time instead of having to change it in the document.

   • change references from /FortNet/includes to /FortNet/includes

   • Image maps with links to named tags within a file must contain http://www.fortnet.org on the start of urls. See [submitted by Charles Clarke]

   • URL links specifying directories should end with a slash; some browsers will not mark the link as visited unless this is done. [Clarke]

   • The use of various WYSIWYG HTML editors by page authors is increasing. Many of these editors produce poor HTML code. We will compile a list of problems encountered with specific editors, which ones to avoid or ways to overcome their shortcomings.

   • Add recommendations to the QA std of lines < 80 characters

Presentation

• If time permits, there will be a short presentation on Image Maps using apache's built-in processing.

Next HTML Meeting Scheduled:

145 East Mountain Avenue
Fort Collins, CO 80521
Wed June 26, 1996 7 pm