Today we sent a survey to all web contacts. We asked them to complete the survey themselves and to forward it to anyone within their unit who uses the CHSSWeb system or makes decisions about the content of sites in the system. We will use the results of this survey both to guide the redesign effort and to set our development agenda once the redesign is launched.
Last week we upgraded our core technologies to use the "asset pipeline." This switch will help us better organize our stylesheets, javascript and images. It will also help with caching those assets, which will speed up the site. It will also open up other technologies to us, including SASS and CoffeeScript. If you're interested in more details, we are happy to share.
We have completed a set of incremental changes to the current design. We are testing those changes now and will deploy them when they are complete. These changes will give the site a bit more of an up-to-date look and will include changes that some of you have been requesting. These changes are separate from this larger redesign process; they are meant to move us forward a bit while we engage in the longer redesign process.
If you are interested in more details, our design notes, plan and to-do list are on the CHSSWeb Help site. These are our internal notes, so they include technical details that may not interest you. But we want to be as open as possible during this process so we are making them available to you.
October 23, 2012
