UVic gets an online facelift

The main UVic Web site is getting a fresh look.

The current site is nearly two-years-old and showing its age, says Rogier Gruys, who heads the UVic Web site team in communications services. "It's functional, but there are a lot of things that should be improved. The current site was intended as an interim solution while we worked on a larger redesign."

With 12,000 visits a day, the UVic Web site is one of the most used resources on campus. The new site looks similar to the current one, but is more user-friendly and has brighter colours and more design elements.

"Because our users are so accustomed to the current layout, we wanted to maintain the basic navigation to ease the transition," says designer Beth Doman. "We greatly increased the choices on the homepage, but were very careful to keep it clean and concise."

The most obvious change is a bright yellow bar across the top of the new homepage. The bar offers links to resources for UVic's main audiences.

Secondary pages have been improved, as well. A new A-Z index links to all units on campus, building information, a map, and directory information. Most pages have been completely redesigned to make it easier to find important information.
There have also been improvements behind the scenes. Web programmer Dave Wolowicz has rewritten all the code to ensure that it complies with global Web standards.

"The new site has less code, so it downloads faster than the current site. Yet it has a lot of additional features to make it more user-friendly," says Wolowicz. "We've also added features to make it more accessible for users with disabilities. It's important that all users can access our site, regardless of their browser or operating system."

Wolowicz has tested the new site extensively with users. "We made a lot of changes to the initial design based on user feedback," he says.

A draft of the new site is available at www.uvic.ca/test. "We encourage everyone to try it out and get familiar with it before we launch it in early May," says Gruys. "We welcome any feedback, because a Web site is never ‘finished.' We'll continue to tweak the site, even after we launch it," he says.