Appearance

The SRATE Journal is iconic. The color and limited use of white text and graphics on the cover makes it easily identifiable. The challenge was to design a site reminiscent of the journal while being attractive, legible, and easily navigated online.

The opening page of the site was originally developed to mimic the paper journal's cover. In fact the links back to that page were called "Cover". Three major problems developed in this design. First, the opening page had so little information you always needed to click to find out what the site was about. Even if you new what the site was another click was needed to get anything done meaning a click was added to each users browsing experience on the site. Secondly, large amounts of white text on the purple background were difficult to read. Lastly, the monolithic purple slab was just not attractive.

The current design hopes to create a connection to the paper journal through the use of the purple headers and footers but also provide a legible format for information. While providing needed information, the design provides for adequate white space through use of a two column layout in the content area.

Mechanics

The site was developed on a Macintosh computer using Adobe Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Illustrator. The original design was done by Luka Cvrk but has been heavily modified by the developer. The site is completely CSS based with stylesheets controlling the look and layout of the pages. The search located on the Archives page uses the Google Search API. Color selection and color matching was done using the Kuler web site from Adobe. Modification of design was aided by the use of the Firebug Firefox add-on.

The site has been tested on Macs using Safari, Firefox and Webkit browsers and in Windows XP with Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Support

The journal receives support from Austin Peay State University in the form of software, hardware and supplies as well as serving the site from an APSU web server.