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The LibAgent design contest is now over! The winning design was submitted by Alex Sirota. Thanks Alex! We also wish to thank all others who made submissions for this contest. We hope to integrate the new design into our main web site soon.

Index

Current submissions
Call for participation
Conformance test guidelines

Current submissions

  1. Alex Sirota, submitted Tue, 14 Mar 2000 01:31:27
  2. Maxim Iorsh, submitted Tue, 21 Mar 2000 23:39:15
  3. Ari Bader-Natal, submitted Mon, 27 Mar 2000 00:47:01
  4. Anda Singer, submitted Sat, 29 Apr 2000 12:42:30
  5. Alma Harzel, submitted Sat, 29 Apr 2000 14:20:08

Call for participation

So, you've been feeling unhappy about the way the LibAgent site looks for a while now. Here is your chance to change it!

This is a call for new designs for the LibAgent home page (and related pages). We will accept suggestions that implement the current functionality of the site while better suited to our goals (listed below). Please consider applying, or letting your web-designer friends know about it. If you are a LibAgent user, you already know what it's about. If not, check out http://libagent.cs.technion.ac.il/intro.html.

The ever-growing visibility of site makes us feel the quick and dirty design we pulled up several years ago needs major rework. We therefore challenge you, the LibAgent user (or anyone else interested) to come up with a better design. Here are some of the things we require the new design to be:

  • Fast loading; we don't want to make phone-line modem users wait for hours just to see a spiffy graphic. (We would also like to keep the load on our server low). It's hard to set a limit in KB, but make an effort not to upset 28.8 modems (that's about 2.5KB a second, if everything works fine).
  • Easy on small displays: many of our users use the library PCs, which may be small (14"). Again, it's hard to assign numbers, but anything that doesn't fit in a maximized browser window on a 800x600 display (without showing scrollbars, and without hiding the default tool bars!) is not good enough, and 640x480 viewing will be considered a plus.
  • Older HTML and browser compatible. That means no "flash" or the like, and no HTML tags that won't pass HTML conformance tools. Netscape and MSIE must both be able to show it flawlessly, with other browsers a plus (yes, even text browsers). Java is also not allowed. Since there's no real standard yet for Hebrew on the web, all text should be in English. See Conformance tests below for more details.
  • Cute and eye-pleasing. Feel free to come up with your icons (in any case, do not infringe copyright). In fact, feel free to send suggestions or graphics for a new icon for LibAgent, whether you have a full design in mind or not.
  • Contain the following links (as they're labeled in the current home-page):
    1. Add, Update, and Delete operations (If you choose to display one of these more prominently than the others, let it be "Add").
    2. "what is it all about?" (intro.html), "add a library", LibAgent news.
    3. links to major libraries' home-pages and to an ALEPH intro document.
    4. Statistics pages.
    5. A feedback link (ie, our email address)
    Alternatively, or additionally, you may suggest a design that replaces the three buttons Add, Update and Delete, by a single "login" field, taking a 9-digit Id, and a "Login" button.
  • In general, it should have whatever the current site has. But we're not adamant about it --- feel free to make your own judgment (eg. place the links to the university libraries in a new page that is linked from the main page).

    Post your entries on a publicly accessible web-site, and send us the URL by email to libagent@cs.technion.ac.il with the words DESIGN CONTEST in the subject. If you don't have access to a web-server, you can use any of the many free hosting services around the net (www.geocities.com, to name just one). If you really have trouble with this, email us and ask about getting the HTML files to us directly.

    We will post updates, your comments, and the list of current contenders (unless you ask us not to) at http://libagent.cs.technion.ac.il/design-contest.html

    The deadline for submission is midnight, April 29. We will announce our decision shortly afterwards.

    The prize will either be free libagent subscription for a full year, or our yearly libagent-related earnings combined --- take your pick.... Seriously now, your name and a link (ie, your email or your home-page) will appear in the credits page.

    About LibAgent:
    -- LibAgent is a free web-based service to help Israeli university students extend their library book loans. Among other awards, it won Haaretz' Captain Internet's "site of the week". It has been up for over 3 years now, and current enrollment tops 7000 users. In the last 8 months it had an estimated 35000 visits. This is your chance to put your name in a highly-visible place and add a widely-recognized site to your portfolio. We cannot offer cash prizes since LibAgent is entirely volunteer work.

    Conformance test guidelines

    Here is our way of checking for HTML conformance. You may use your own methods, but this how we will evaluate your submission, so you better pass this one with good grades.....

    1. Build your page/pages, place on web
    2. Go to http://www.netmechanic.com/toolbox/power_user.htm
    3. Enter the location of your pages and your email
    4. Under "what tools would you like to use?" check EVERY SINGLE OPTION
    5. For "How many pages?" check "20" (unless you're submitting just one page)
    6. "Get our free monthly newsletter?" --- that's up to you; it is not a requirement for the LibAgent contest...
    7. For "Extensions", select "supported by BOTH major browsers"
    8. For "test", check EVERY SINGLE OPTION
    9. For "Browser compatibility" type in:
      • MSIE 5 = 31%
      • MSIE 4 = 11%
      • MSIE 3 = 1%
      • NN 4 = 51%
      • NN 3 = 4%
      • NN 2 = 1%
    10. Check "ignore words in upper case". For "custom dictionary" use: http://libagent.cs.technion.ac.il/dictionary.txt. This is the list of words that will not be flagged as spelling errors. Feel free to come up with your own dictionary if you feel you have too; you can also email us suggestions to words you want us to put there.

    Wait for the results -- it usually takes a few minutes for the answer to arrive in email.

    Try and get 5 stars for all of your pages. If you get a "access denied for robots page" message that's usually OK (there are several parts of the site that we don't want crawlers to scan). Occasionally you'll get a "file not found" for links that test OK on your browser --- let them go (most probably the load time for the US-based tool was long and it gave up). Also note that this tool counts words in the private dictionary as possible typing errors (but does not display them in the list of mistyped words). If you feel this adversely affects your score, turn "spell check" off, but it is still your responsibility to produce error-free pages!

    Note: yes, we know the current site fails this test horribly. We feel ashamed. If it makes you feel better, we'll stand in the corner for a while. As we said, we're not web-designers. This is why we have this contest in the first place.