The Web Developers Users' Group met on September 20, 2002, at 3:30 PM in the Parliamentary Room, PSU 313.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) presentation

Dan Will, an Missouri State student worker, gave a presentation on using Cascading Style Sheets for web page formatting. View the outline of his presentation.

Missouri State Web Style Guide accepted

Sara notified the group that the Missouri State Web Style Guide was approved by IT Council. The Web Style Guide, which includes requirements and recommendations for university unit, sponsored organization and central web sites, is available at the Web Services.

Counters

Sara mentioned that the counters on Missouri State web sites using the older Missouri State non-FrontPage web counter code no longer function. The counter application was causing the web server to crash and had to be removed. Instructions to add a FrontPage web counter are located at the Web Development Resource Center.

She also provided a brief overview on converting normal FrontPage hit counters to invisible hit counters that still collect site statistics. Detailed instructions for this process are available at Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - Q229900.

She also told the group that she could provide visitor statistics about specific sites on an as needed basis without requiring the site to use external or FrontPage counters. Email Sara Clark at webmaster@missouristate.edu or call her at 836-6105 for more information on requesting site usage statistics.

Photoshop group buy

Purchasing will now be grouping all Adobe software orders to gain the Adobe volume purchasing discount. They will hold the orders until certain purchase dates then send in larger orders. Each software package ordered for that volume purchase will count toward discount points. More discount points per volume order will result in larger discounts to the purchaser.

The dates these orders will be held for will be as follows:

• 11/22/2002
• 1/31/2003
• 4/11/2003
• 6/20/2003
• 8/15/2003
• 10/3/2003

UBUY's must be approved by these dates to be sent in with the volume purchase.

If you need your software to be ordered before the volume order dates, mark the UBUY as a rush order or call Purchasing to have it rushed through.

More information on the volume purchase program is available through the Adobe Transactional License Program web site. You may also contact Jim Taylor, 836-5226 or jrt021t@missouristate.edu, for more information about the volume purchase.

Plugins page

Sara mentioned that the new Missouri State Plugins page is now in place. The Web Browser Plugins site provides links to the most commonly required plugins for Missouri State web sites. Web developers may use these links to provide the necessary links for plugins for their site.

These links will be maintained by the Missouri State Web Coordinator so web developers will no longer need to update their plugin links when vendors move their files. Accessibility plugins are also available on the site to reduce the number of links that developers need to provide on their pages.

Notice of alternative meeting date and time

Future WDUG meetings will be on an alternating date and time schedule to allow more developers the opportunity to attend the meetings. The next WDUG meeting will be held on Thursday, October 24, 2002 at 10:00 AM.

Next meeting

The next WDUG meeting will be held in the Parliamentary Room, PSU 313, on October 24, 2002 at 10:00 AM.