Two of the most well known University of Idaho websites, the uidaho.edu homepage and VandalWeb, received major overhauls in a move toward better mobile accessibility.
“With the significant increase in the use of mobile devices over the past few years, especially by students, the ability to access information and manage daily tasks over these devices is becoming an expectation,” said director of Management Information Systems Brian Borchers.
Although the changes to the two websites were not directly related, the general goals were similar. UI University Communications and Marketing made the changes to the homepage and Borchers said these changes are still in progress.
Borchers said the websites” code and appearance changed with the update.
“The underlying changes to the infrastructure have been completed and UCM is in the process of migrating web pages to this new page format,” he said.
When migration to the new infrastructure is complete, all pages will adjust to fit different sizes and types of devices.
As a major media outlet for the university, the home webpage receives regular updates, with the other most recent update occurring in 2012.
Information Technology Services (ITS) coordinated the VandalWeb changes in cooperation with UCM and the distributed Banner technical support teams, Borchers said.
Banner is UI”s vendor-provided enterprise resource planning application delivered by the company Ellucian. The application has two components, an administrative side and what Borchers calls a “self-service component” known as VandalWeb.
“The purpose of these changes was to modernize the underlying web technologies and update the look and feel to approximate that of the new Banner version,” Borchers said.
This final look, however, will be delivered and implemented over the next few years. This is only an interim step and is intended to minimize the differences between the old and new product components.
“The new version of Banner is being (developed) using responsible web design and a mobile-first” philosophy,” Borchers said.
Vandalweb has not received an update of this nature since 2004. Borchers said there have been a few issues reported to the UI Help Desk, but those issues have been easily resolved.
“Generally, feedback on the new look and feel of the interface have been positive,” he said.
Nishant Mohan can be reached at [email protected]