24 November, 2005

The long short version

Sometimes it's rather frustrating to do web design for a university.  Academics can be so prolix and self-important....

I've prepared a template for holding pages, one per facet of a new inter-departmental initiative. I requested copy text from the departments, clearly specifying that there's space for up to 200 words, and providing a mock-up to indicate where text will appear & how it'll be formatted (wrapped around an image at the bottom-left of the page).

One department complied, and has a pretty good page.
Another provided 694 words, "all essential". The page looks awful, and the image is well below the second scroll i.e. 1¾ screens down at 1024x768. It's a standard template; the pages have to match, so I can't only customise one, and I don't have time anyway.

And who'll be blamed? Go on, guess.

[Update 15:25: I mentioned it to my boss, who summarily dumped 487 words!]