All about our site...

(or, more than you want to know)

Goal

Sticking with the team motto, this site has been built to maximize user-friendliness, minimize code, keep everything simple, and reflect the team identity, all while still meeting the criteria set forth by the FIRST website requirements.

Technology

This site was built by hand using TextPad and Taco HTML Edit. All pictures on this site, except sponsor logos, are part of the team's robot or of the team and were edited using nothing more than MS Paint and cropped/resized using iPhoto and MS Office Picture Manager. Most pictures were taken using an Olympus C-730UZ 3.2MP digital camera. The team logo was designed by Brian Claggett. The entire site is laid out and styled using validated CSS. Strict XHTML is used for the content markup, however the site does not validate due to using the target attribute for external links. PHP is used for the contact form. This site has not utilized any type of spell checker. All the inline links are integrated into our site to encourage exploration and on the technical side, because Wikipedia's style has become so popular. No tables were harmed in the making of this website.

Browser Support

We have tested and approved this site in the most popular browsers used today. (We assume that you are using the latest and greatest version of your browser of choice, however.) The site is best viewed in Firefox, Opera, Safari (Mac OS), or Internet Explorer version 6.

Accessibility

Every attempt has been made to make this site a pleasurable experience for all visitors. Special consideration has been taken for any users that use text-only browsers, choose to not load images, increase or decrease text sizes, require content to be read aloud, or use a small browser format. Specifically, we have incorporated text links and use the alt attribute for all images. We also load the background images using CSS, which really means the images are truly in the background and will not be seen when a page is printed or heard when a page is read aloud. For blind users, a text reader can read our site aloud. For color blind users, our site has contrasting colors for you as well, as can be seen through the virtual eyes of Vischeck. For deaf users, all sounds are described on the page where they appear (there aren't many). For other disabilities, attention has been paid to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines put forth by the World Wide Web Consortium. Let us know if we can make this site more accessable and user-friendly.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Maani.us for creating the XML/SWF Slideshow that we used for our picture slideshows. Another thanks to Visibone for their incredibly useful reference materials. This website would not be here in its current state if it wasn't for these fine people.

Regrets

We have been asked (as per the rules and regulations, pp. 30-32) to pop up a new window for externally linked websites, such as our sponsors. This saddens us as the Strict XHTML standards remove this ability, it breaks the back and history functions of web browsers, and the user relinquishes control of their web experience. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Author

Credit goes to TU graduate student Melanie Smith (meltu05 at gmail dot com) for designing and implementing this site as well as Tara Flannigan, Nancy Claggett, and Ben Herring from Jenks High School for contributing content.