Proposed changes to the existing Commonwealth of Virginia Web Standard:
In early January, Secretary of Technology Chopra announced two important Web initiatives: enterprise Google search functionality and a new common banner for posting at the top of all executive branch agency Web sites. To accomplish these objectives, revisions are necessary to the Commonwealth Web policies, standards and guidelines (PSG’s). Today, the suggested revisions and common top banner have been posted to ORCA, for your review and comment during the next 30 days.
The major changes include:
The agency banner space will be expanded from the current 50 pixel height to 100 pixels; agencies will be able to use banners between 50-100 pixels.
A new common top banner (50 pixels) will be deployed across state Web sites including the state portal, Virginia.gov. The intent is to provide enterprise Google search and helpful enterprise navigational aids to assist citizen users.
"Contact Us" and "Web Policy" links move to the bottom of sites.
The common banner will be posted above the agency banner of each site. It will contain a link to the state portal, Virginia.gov, as well as enterprise links including Online Services, State Web site list, and the Governor’s site. The “Skip to Content” link will be hidden within the code of the common banner to allow screen reader access at the beginning of each page.
Also included is an enterprise link to Virginia Interactive’s “Live Help” feature. Agencies do NOT have to provide any support for this feature. Virginia Interactive will provide all staffing for this service.
Finally, the common banner will contain the enterprise search feature which will allow users to access the Google search functionality across all state sites. Agency search boxes should contain the text “Search this site” to differentiate between statewide and agency search.
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3 comments:
Interesting changes. So is the plan for the banner addition to just be a graphical addition to the exiting agency banner? Or a frame? Is there a mock up of the new enterprise banner (they want to put a lot of stuff there)? Anyone have any thoughts on it?
I've seen the mockup, and it looks like Virginia.gov had a heavy hand in it, as the presentation of the Virginia.gov logo is what fuels everything else. If you look at the page on a laptop or a monitor less than 19 inches, the double banner takes up a good third of the screen real estate. That's a lot of space. Plus having two seaches on top of each other is pretty goofy. Do these folks do any focus groups or user studies at all?
Anyone notice how VITA's webpages now have the W3C logos for valid XHTML and CSS on their pages, but they fail the XHTML and CSS checks when you run the validators?
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