ADS Web Site Updated

[Grant Barrett]

I've just this minute finished uploading the new pages for the American
Dialect Society web site.

There is still some content pending (such as the new officers list, more
information about PADS (like an index, if I can get a hold of one) and links
to members' pages). I'm also on the lookout for calls for papers: send them
to me as well as to Allan and I'll get them posted in a timely fashion.

Basic changes include:

-- Better underlying code and improved appearance. The design is a bit more
refined, the HTML more streamlined, and basic Cascading Style Sheets have
been added (to make it easier to control fonts), and a there's a general
reduction in the use of tables. I've viewed the pages in seven different
browsers on three different platforms and all the code I've used seems to
work everywhere, or at least fail elegantly when it doesn't. It looks best
on browsers released in the last two years, but it's readable and
inoffensive on older releases. It doesn't look half bad in text-based
browsers such as Lynx, either.

-- Fewer pages. I've consolidated some of the pages to make it easier to
maintain. In general, the same content is there, although I have given up on
ever having a proper FAQ. Some of the older content has expired, so I've
deleted it or updated it where necessary. I received only two responses in
reply to my post about textbooks, audiovisual materials, dictionaries, etc.,
so I was not able to really renovate those pages.

-- Additional content. I created a Books page, available from the
Publications link, that includes books by members that have been listed in
recent NADS, with the addition of a few from some of the older Reference
pages of the site. I've also added a "Language articles online" feature to
the front page, which takes me about 10 minutes to do once a week and helps
the site seem more alive. I will also be adding a "Links to members' sites"
category on the link page, and adding many other links that I find
interesting or relevant.

-- The ADS-L pages are a bit modified. I incorporated the code from the
LinguistList archive to allow for the full searches directly from the ADS
web site, saving the user one or two links in the process and giving the
LinguistList archive more prominence. I suspect that on many of the
occasions when someone said they couldn't find something in the archives
they knew should be there, and then I quickly found it, it was because they
were only searching in the old archives.

To be done:

Besides adding the pending content mentioned above, I am working on the old
archive search, attempting to re-export the records database so that email
addresses of senders are included (they were originally excluded to prevent
them from being harvest for spam; there are other ways to stop that now). I
also want to bring the Excite search engine pages into the new design just
for consistency's sake.

As always, if you have questions or comments, please let me know.

Grant Barrett
ADS Web Geek