The time has finally come to begin piecing together the work that the class has been doing over the course of the rest of this semester. The goal of this week was to begin integrating the research, analysis, and product of the efforts of my colleagues into a web format that is easily digestible to the palate of teh internets. This will require a certain amount of contextualization of the class's projects. Where there is no product to present, I will format the web page in order to begin finalizing the format for the final web page in lieu of work that is still being completed. http://geographyofthewesternfront.weebly.com/
Organizing the Content:
There are a couple of tricks to organizing a fine web page. For example, it needs to flow well, but be comprised of small text. Trying to cram too much into a single web page can cause the audience to have more difficulty navigating the site, and having more than five or six lines of text presented to the intent audience in one paragraph will tend to loose an audience. Keeping web organization in mind, the existing site has been reorganized.
History:
 |
| figure 1 The original design only called for a single history page to contextualize the work of the class, however as the history section grew it became clear that this would be inadequate. |
Where previously one small section that overviewed the history of the Battles of the Somme and Verdun existed, now there are three pages. After writing the text for the first page (The Somme), I realized that adding Verdun to the page as well would result in a bloated page with two distinguished focuses (fig 1). A wise man once remarked "Better to whole-ass one thing than half-ass two things," and drawing from this philosophy the page has been divided into two parts (fig 2) that discuss the battles in detail. Furthermore, a general "history" splash page has been add, that needs to be added to, which will provide information to the audience about the first half of World War One, leading into the conflicts covered in the more detailed pages.
 |
| figure 2 A more organized web site will provide users with an experience that is more tailored, note the tabbed navigation. |
Another trick that I had to figure out was how to embed the web geographic components of the work of some students. A couple have developed interactive maps in ArcGIS Online, and one in the beta Google Tour Builder. Unfrotunately, I have not been able to work out the tour builder embedding, and to teh best of my research, noone else has either. Ultimately, its reliance upon the Google Earth software may preclude me from directly embedding this element to the website. However, I have discovered how to link images to sites in Weebly (a simple process of using the template provided by the site). This will be used to access Zach Orr's work (fig 3).
 |
| figure 3 This screenshot of the tour is about good enough for end users to think it IS the application anyway. They'll click on it and be redirected right to the site. |
Goals for next week:
The sources page needs to be reorganized, and the sources themselves standardized. It was one thing to reformat all of the text and organize the content, however in order to provide a professionally organized link to sources used in our research the class will need to decide on a format to present the audience for further reading.
Of paramount importance to the project is contextualizing the content, which is best done in an introduction to teh presentation of the relevant material. I am going to have to come up with better introductions to the students' work if this website is going to be of any use to teh public.
Embed some ARC MAPS!! I've done this before, now I just need to get it onto weebly. I am confident that this can be done, unlike the google maps.
