VSDC web pages

Goals

We design the website so you can quickly get the information you want and be involved with VSDC, for the benefit of yourself and the community.

Such functionality should be available to first-time and repeat visitors, using whatever browser, device, and connection they have or prefer, rendered with the preferences they set.

When we say "the information you want", we mean what you'd want if you knew it existed and understood its value.

To attain those goals, we consider visual appearance, information content, and internal code.

Consider volunteering to maintain our website to help us accomplish our goals.

Visual Appearance

Fonts and colors are specified only minimally by this website, so that your own personal preferences, set via settings in your browser, are not overridden. You can easily adjust font size, style, and color in most browsers. You can also select colors for the background and links.

Line widths here usually are allowed to span the entire width of your browser window, rather than a fraction of that or a specific width. With large screens, any smaller width can be chosen by reducing the width of the window, without having any wasted margin space within it. Small screens don't require horizontal scrolling. Paper usage is reduced when pages are printed (same reason the menu bar at the top of each page is not printed on paper). Vertical scrolling required is minimized. More of the bigger picture is shown at one time. And, content doubles as summaries, allowing people to find what they want quicker.

Text instead of graphics is used to present information in order to reduce download times, help search engines categorize us, ease copying selective content, and assist those with visual impairments. We don't depend on graphics for information or navigation, because not everyone is able to see graphics.

We make no effort to visually entertain website visitors, nor to adhere to convention without good reason. Those aspects can distract from more important issues, so we strive for visual simplicity.

We adjust vertical spacing and add section separators to help convey the structure of information.

Very old browsers might not render some formatting, but the pages will still be readable and usable.

Double spaces between sentences are better than single spaces, but there's no good, simple way to do that properly in web pages.

Information Content

We try to provide objective, unbiased information without manipulative wording. We disclose when we get anything, such as money or links, in exchange for anything we put on our website.

The amount of text is minimized to highlight more important information and to reveal the bigger picture. Some ways we try to provide as much information using the least number of characters is: by selective wording, by not repeating information, by omitting subjective descriptions, and by including links to information instead of including the information itself.

Links related to references (places, books, organizations) are provided when we can find them to save you time and to inform you. We try to have each list of links to resources on a subject complete but not too short or long, so we choose subjects that are just specific enough.

We organize pages and their contents in ways that facilitate using them.

Grammar sometimes is not conventional, but instead is what seems better, the way it should be.

We try to anticipate relevant questions and possible confusion, and resolve them on this website.

The focus and content of this website differs from our printed newsletter.

Internal Code

Pages are made to be usable by people with any device, browser, connection, and disability. For example, pages are usable even if your browser handles only text, no graphics, or if your screen size is very small such as on a wireless phone, or if you have a slow connection to the Internet, or if you use an automated screen reader to hear instead of see the pages. In other words, the website does not require certain browsers, fast connections, large screens, good vision, or extra software. More information is available from the W3C, including their Web Accessibility Initiative and Ubiquitous Web projects.

HTML is used to define the structure and purpose of text and graphics in a document such as a web page. The HTML in the pages on this website conforms to the latest HTML standard, XHTML 1, which is the HTML subset that defines document structure, not style. Browsers use the HTML in a document to render its content for you as appropriate for the device you are using whenever applicable style is specified neither by you nor the document. Pages here are valid XHTML 1.0 Strict. (The subsequent XHTML 1.1 has mistakes defining entities for < and &.)

Style is defined using standard CSS, so that you can override the style by using your own CSS. HTML and CSS code can be validated against standards.

Client-side scripts are not used, except a few pages use JavaScript (price calculator and business map). Proprietary software and plug-ins are not used, except a few pages intended only to be printed are in PDF. We generally avoid those technologies, because not every browser can handle them.

Cookies, information saved on your computer, are neither created nor used by this website, but they might be by graphics specified on this website but accessed from other websites, and by pages you go to using links on this website. For example, we participate in a few affiliate programs by other websites which use cookies.

Meta data, information in each document about the document, but not shown to the casual visitor, includes: HTML version, character encoding, modification date, and creation tool.

Behind the scenes, the menu on each page is inserted automatically by our server via SSI. The program that sends contact form submissions to coordinators is TFMail. And, we use XSLT with our event notices.

Create and Maintain

Creating our web pages is done mainly using software that comes with most computers: a text editor. HTML is manually entered so that we have total control over what is in our pages. To ease maintenance, we find ways to decrease the time and effort required, and facilitate cooperative maintenance, via information, systems, and coding.

The website is maintained and improved entirely by volunteer effort. We pay only for use of the server, its software, and its connection to the Internet.

There are six reasons why anything on the website is the way you see it: We guessed what people prefer. It's based on issues we think are important. We lack effort. It's the way it was. It reduces maintenance time and effort. Your browser shows pages differently. Page appearance varies due to many factors with each visitor, so we might not know about problems with a page viewed with your particular configuration.

Comments and suggestions are welcome. We also welcome offers from volunteers to help maintain and improve the website. Some tasks don't require knowing how to create web pages. For example, we need help researching information and improving notices.

You can contact VSDC's webmaster through VSDC or with the following form.