Updated Design
The basic design of the websites is the same as the original framework, there are some enhancements to the design that make for a cleaner appearance and address some issues we've seen.
- Dropdown menus - The navigation bar is in the same place as before, but the sub-pages drop down vertically when you hover over them rather than with a click. This makes the menus more responsive feeling and matches the college website. This change also allows you to have a "landing page" as the home option for each of the sections.
- Thinner header, wider pages - The top of every page now takes up less vertical space and the body of the pages are wider. All this gives more focus to the content of each page and pushes the navigation and site titles out of the way.
- Redesigned Featured image text - The text box on featured images has been moved to the bottom of the image to expose more of the center area of featured images.
- Animated buttons - A feature called micro-animations adds small touches such as sliding arrows on buttons to add more action to the pages.
- Accessible colors - Many of the orange buttons and text elements have been replaced with a more readable and accessible blue color. Illini orange is still a part of our design, but is now used as an accent color.
- Directory menu name change - Based on popular request, the name of the Directory menu will be changed to People. All the content and the URLs will remain the same.
Improved Editor Experience
- Streamlined adding process - There are two improvements to make adding new content quicker and more straight forward:
- Redesigned Add Content page that brings the most commonly used items to the front.
- Quick Add buttons for adding Fancy Page, News, and Spotlight content
- New drop-down Editor toolbar - The familiar black and white bars are still at the top of the page, but now you can access the options inside them directly rather than clicking into the menus.
- Simplified editing forms - The editing forms have been cleaned up and help text made simpler. The new Content Page content type (see below) also adds enhanced paragraph tools that give you more formatting options and allow you to collapse each paragraph for easier editing.
- Schedulable Featured Images - You can now set a start and end date for when featured images will show on your home page
- Easier link creation - When adding internal links in rich text sections, you can now type in the name of the page you want to link to and Drupal will find and maintain the URL for you.
- Predefined image sizes - When adding images to pages, you will now be able to set them to Small, Large, or have the option to choose from several standard sizes.
New and Improved Content and Paragraph Types
- Two New Content Types
- Content Page combines the best of Basic Page and Fancy Page into a new Content Type that also includes simplified paragraph tools (see above). Fancy and Basic pages will still be editable, but all new standard content will be created as a Content Page.
- Icon Row Item answers a need expressed by many departments to use the Career Path icons for other content. This content type allows you to add icons to the front page and link them to any content on or off the site. You can either choose from pre-loaded icons or work with ATLAS Web to create and upload custom icons.
- One New Paragraph Type
- Call To Action is a common component in websites encouraging your audience to take some action and now you can add them to your site without zero coding. Call To Action items can be displayed in sets of 1, 2, or 3 and will resize to fit the screen. You can add images, text and links to each item. Call To Action replaces the Colored Text Block paragraph type.
- Two Improved Paragraph Types
- Menu Blocks can now be created in rows of 2 or 3 and will be resized to fill the entire width of the content area.
- Rich Text 2.0 combines the Image with Header, 2 Column, and Rich Text paragraph types from version 1 and allows you to more easily pick and choose the options to use on each Rich Text block.
Known Issues
- Two column text showing in a single column
- Highlighted course listings display needs cleanup
- Some sites’ directory listing images are not aligned correctly.
- Margins on some embedded images needs to be increased
- Related topic buttons text is not visible when hovered.
- Need to remove list of names and netids visible at the bottom of News and Spotlight pages