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User requests, microformats

By request, I've removed hyphens from the quicklinks menu to make keyboard browsing easier.  In other words, you can find menu items starting with "A" by tabbing to the quicklinks menu and pressing the "A" key.  Sounds weird, but I find this useful and so does at least one of our users, besides it was a quick fix.

By the way, if you have a strong opinion about any of our pages, click the feedback link located at the bottom of each page on the SU web site.  Incidentally, we like it when you insult our mothers, so keep those messages coming.

The SU home page and "top-level" template now use hCard for organizational information in the footer.  hCard is what's known as a microformat, or a structured way to present semantic data within the xhtml of your web page.  Why is this important?  Because it's a grassroots attempt to make the web more semantic, so your software can get more out of web pages; things like contact info and calendar items.

Why should you care? Well it's pretty esoteric at the moment, but future web browsers could make use of microformats in useful ways.  Imagine if Internet Explorer had an "add to contacts" or "add to calendar" button that would find people and events on a web page and add it to Outlook for you or a "map this business" button that would render and print a map for you...okay, admittedly it is pretty nerdy and obscure, but it took 10 minutes, so I make no apologies.
Published Tuesday, February 06, 2007 2:04 PM by Joe Eastham

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About Joe Eastham

Joe Eastham arrived at Seattle University in August 2002 to work as a web developer and support technician for SU's Office of Information Technology. He joined the Marketing and Communications group in July 2003 and has been happily producing web content ever since. After earning a bachelor's degree from the Evergreen State College in 1995, Joe worked for local non-profit arts organizations. Later, he landed at PACCAR Inc., where he developed web sites, acquired a pocket protector, and fulfilled his lifelong dream to drive the big-rigs (not really.) An unrepentant geek, Joe survives on a steady diet of movies, comic books, weird fiction, and the occasional novel. He lives with his lovely wife and two dogs in the soggy tundra of Seattle's northern reaches.

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