Website Focuses
When designing the OmniPage system, the UberBots website team had six main focus areas. They are:
Modular
Modularity is an important focus for the website because "it will be easier to fix bugs, keep compliance, keep uniformity, prevent errors, make editing easier, make coding simpler, and enhance the browsing experience" - Matt Howard, UberBots Forums. Having a modular website would replace the older system of individually coding pages from scratch. This system scatters code and makes it more difficult to program and maintain. When pages include modules, or building blocks, it is much easier to build and keep a quality website.
The OmniPage system uses modules to store and display content. Modules are building blocks for the website: a block of predefined code that serves a specific purpose. Different modules on the website keep content in a logical place and make for an overall better website and browsing experience.
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Integrated
The OmniPage system is integrated with many current technologies. First, the website is integrated with the UberBots Forums, which provide login credentials and simplified permissions for administrative functions. This concept increases efficiency by only having the website files deal with one set of credentials and user properties. This not only reduces coding on the programming end, but also means that people only have to remember one set of login information. This integration will also simplify the ability to link calendar events to forum posts, for easily accessible meeting minutes and other information and discussion regarding meetings and events.
The website is also integrated with other websites and technologies. It helps to create a better website by helping people stay connected and informed with team happenings (see here). Some technologies integrated into the OmniPage system include YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, RSS, and iCal.
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Compliant
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) provides standards for the web. It is important to comply with these standards because it makes for a better website. These standards define how the web should be, and the UberBots want their website to be as current as possible, without sacrificing quality in older browsers. The website should look and function well in all major browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer (at least version 7), Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Opera. Additionally, important technologies like RSS and iCal are important to have functioning, as they help enhance the browsing experience.
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Handicap Accessible
Having a handicap accessible website ensures that everybody can see and enjoy the content, even if they are blind, deaf, or vision impaired. There are some easy things that can be done to make an accessible website, including alternate text for images, variable text size on pages, and captions in videos and animations. Having an accessible website will help to make sure the maximum amount of people can get the message of the UberBots and FIRST.
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Transparent & Simple
Simplicity is an important aspect of a good website. It is important to have a sitemap. A sitemap helps users find the page they are looking for without too much trouble. It also helps search engines find pages on the site; this helps expose more people to resources on the site. Additionally, URLs of the site should be simple and easy to figure out. An example of this is the URL "uberbots.org/o/about/our_website." It is easy to figure out that this URL will lead to a page that talks about the website. Having simple URLs makes the site easier to navigate. Finally, the layout of the site should also be as informative as possible, but also as simple as possible. Keeping simplicity in the layouts makes sure that content is easy to find and can get all necessary information across to the end user.
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Visually Pleasing
Having an aesthetically pleasing website in the final focus of the OmniPage system. It is important to have a site that is nice to look at and enjoyable for the user to navigate through. Today, there are many websites that aren't visually pleasing, and many users feel like visiting those sites is unnecessarily difficult. The OmniPage system has the ability to be visually pleasing through the use of skins. Skins are a set of HTML files separate from other parts of the site. The skin files are what actually take the data from modules and output it to a page (for more information on skins, go here). The final output of the site should not be too cluttered and all content should be easily viewable in an easy to look at manor. Having a visually pleasing website could be the difference between an user returning to the site or not, so it's important to make sure the looks of the site work in its favor.
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