About this Site
Main Content
Technologies Used
This site is based on a custom content management system written in object-oriented PHP 5. It also uses XML on the server side for various purposes.
The source code sent to visitors' browsers is pure XHTML 1.0 Strict, and is intended to be valid sitewide.
Visual styles are achieved using CSS 2.1. Again, every effort has been made to ensure that the CSS source code is valid according to W3C specifications.
Certain interactive behaviors are implemented using ECMAScript (more commonly known as JavaScript); however, non-scripting solutions have been sought out wherever possible to avoid causing accessibility problems. One notable open-source ECMAScript solution used on this site is TinyMCE.
A number of semantic "microformats" have been implemented where applicable, including hCard, hCalendar, and rel-tag.
Where deemed appropriate, we have also published web feeds for various types of content, especially announcements. These feeds are published in the Atom 1.0 syndication format (RFC 4287). To benefit from these feeds you will need to use an aggregator that understands the Atom 1.0 format.
The site is hosted on an Apache webserver operated by UNT's Central Web Support.
Accessibility
In developing this site, we have made every effort to ensure that the content made available here is accessible to all visitors, regardless of the capabilities of those visitors' browsers.
As such, we don't require that you view our site in any particular browser or with any additional non-standard technologies.
However, your experience of our website will be better overall if you use a web browser that complies well with the XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 specifications published by the World Wide Web Consortium. The W3C has published a list of CSS-capable browsers here; our webmaster's recommendation is Mozilla Firefox.
Your experience of our site will also be improved somewhat if your browser supports the latest version of ECMAScript (JavaScript). This is not, however, a requirement; all content on our site is accessible regardless of the scripting support of your browser.
Navigation Tools
Standard hierarchical navigation menus have been implemented on every page of the site; these menus are tied to a single data source, which means that their links should be highly accurate even when content moves to a new location on the site.
Visually speaking, the menus are designed to help you see where you currently are on the site relative to other content. Color cues are provided to indicate when a particular link would take you to a different section of the site; these cues are tied to the office colors always displayed in the right-hand sidebar.
In addition to the main navigation menus, a tag-based navigation system is also available from most pages; for more information on this new feature, please visit the main tags page.
