ROME: 1st January 2006 -- What has begun on Sunday,
in the Gregorian Calendar, 1st January 2006 is also known as the years
5766-67 in the Hebrew calendar, 1426-27 in the Islamic calendar.
On 14th January it will be Mahayana, the Buddhist New Year, and on
January 29th, the Chinese 'Year of the Dog' commences. This year
has been designated as the International Year of Deserts and
Desertification, and is also known as the Rembrandt (400th anniversary)
and Mozart (250th) year. But for a certain 'Julian' calendar it
is austraLasia 1373 and the beginning of the new Bosconet. Happy
New Year!
Bosconet, the website of the East Asia Oceania
region, is undergoing a complete overhaul to bring it into line with
current web standards and to ensure its efficiency. You may see
the first phase now on www.bosconet.aust.com. A word or two on what is
happening and where the process is going.
Contemporary web standards recommend an almost
complete separation of content from presentation. What this
means, effectively, is that if you look at the source code of any of
the overhauled pages in Bosconet, you will see only a minimum of html
code - the rest is content. What you don't see is the file
containing all the presentation code (called a style sheet). The
advantage of this is significant: Pages are lighter, there is no
repetition of formatting details on each page. These are held in
a single file. With a minor change to that file, the 'look' of
Bosconet can change entirely. By the time the overhaul is
complete, you may even be able to make your own choice of presentation
from several on offer. There is more consistency throughout for
pages linked to the style sheet.
I did not know this until I started, but I know it
now - there are in excess of 1,000 pages in Bosconet! I have so
converted around 20 of them! However, the process now of
converting the remaining pages is much quicker, and certainly you could
expect that around 10 a day will switch over from now on.
The pages that have been converted are the main 'top
level' pages on the Bosconet site 'tree': this means the home page,
obviously, and the main Salesian sector pages - formation, youth
ministry, communications, and so on. I have included the EAO
central page amongst the top pages and two sub pages to this, the
Brothers 2006 Assembly and the Youth Ministry 2006 meeting. What
this means in practical terms is that if you click on the brown links
on the home page navigation bar you reach converted pages. Blue
links will take you to unconverted pages. All converted pages
will have their own common navigation bar, usually on the left hand
side of the page other than the home page and the austraLasia pages.
The theme was inspired by a characteristic
geographical feature of our region....ocean and sandy beaches. It
also fits in with the deserts and desertification international
theme. I could hardly claim to have achieved any Rembrandt
dimensions with the featured 'gif' on each page. Any artists out
there with suggestions for other themes? Practical suggestions by
way of useful images?
You may need to reload on first visiting, if you
still get the 'old' Bosconet on your screen. Oh, and by the way,
it has been built to handle as many browsers as I could think of,
including varying screen resolutions. It has also been
constructed in such a way that a 'sight challenged' individual could
'read' it using acoustic software. You could technically receive
it on a PDA and still be able to read it, or on a screen reader.
That's the sort of thing that current web standards are all
about. Access for all. If any of these features fail,
please let me know. I would appreciate knowing of failed links,
too - with 1,000 pages to think of there just have to be failed
links. You can help me fix them up. I just need to know
what link didn't work on what page. Happy
viewing/reading/listening!
_______________________
AustraLasia is an email
service
for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions
as an
agency for ANS based in Rome. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml
