Tired of that old CS web page? Do something about it!
Web site Design contest!!
Cash prizes (total of $400) in two categories:
- Best functional design (includes technical simplicity and ease of maintainability)
- Best artistic design
To enter the contest, you must provide a front web page (that covers the equivalent of http://www.cs.tufts.edu ) and at least two additional subcomponents covering the following categories:
- undergraduate or graduate study or people
- events or resources or support
If you would like to propose a new category, then check with contest organizers. Interested participants should
subscribe (from an on-campus address) to the WebContest mailing list which may later provide additional
information: http://mailman.eecs.tufts.edu/mailman/listinfo/webcontest . Evaluations will take place during the week of April 4-8, 2005.
Submissions are due April 3rd at midnight. If you have any other questions send email to
or
General
- Design the main page to fail gracefully. Whatever the technology or language used the homepage should be viewable to users without that technology.
- The page should adhere to w3c standard HTML 3.0 http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/CoverPage.html 4.0, this would ensure that the page would work with browsers (Foxfire etc) other than Internet Explorer.
- Test the page with Windows, Macintosh, Solaris, and Linux.
- The entire page should be viewable without the need to scroll down, generally 800 x 600 is a safe bet.
- The front page is a "jumping off" point and need not be inclusive.
- Consider people who are using low bandwidth connections, strive for a fast load on a 56K connection.
Software/plugins
- If Javascript is used, the page should still be usable when Javascript is disabled by people visiting the homepage.
- Don't use plugins, languages, etc., such as Shockwave, RealAudio, VRML, PDF, and Java, which may cause problems for people trying to view the page. PDF files fulfill a need and may be used elsewhere in the site.
- Avoid using <blink> or other "cheesy" html markup codes.
- Avoid using cookies, frames, and "popup windows" that don't go away.
Size
- Images should run circa 100K or less. The page should not exceed 200K, however 100K overall size would be best.
Other Recommendations
- Having the same "information bar" appear on the home page and many pages below is a user convenience and makes it easier to navigate.
- Offer a predefined set of logos and color schemes so that people may easily use these items for their web pages which would create a consistent look through the primary and secondary pages.
- Use alt tags for images to ensure that all people and browsers have access.
Submission Details
- Your project will be in your "public_html" directory, in a subdirectory named "cs_design_contest".
- The main page will be named : "index." (php, html, htm ....)
- A brief README file may be created to point out and explain your choices, refering to each category.
- You will "provide" a tar'd file of all the material in your cs_design_contest to officially enter the contest. The untar'd file must work from any location.