About This Site
This site is one of several that together form DANTE's new web presence. Our aim in developing it has been to provide an intuitive, accessible and enjoyable experience for site visitors.
The new web presence is intended eventually to fully replace DANTE’s previous web site. However, due to the size and complexity of the old site, this is an on-going process that may not be complete for some time yet. Please bear with us!
Architecture
We have divided the web presence into separate sites – one for DANTE, and one for each of the projects DANTE is currently managing. We hope this will help you to find the information you need more quickly and easily.
The DANTE site is intended to act as a hub. It provides information about DANTE itself, as well as overviews of its projects. More detailed project information is provided in the individual project sites.
There is much content on DANTE’s old site that has yet to be transferred to the new sites. Much of this is out of date and all needs reviewing. This is a time consuming process that we want to get right – our aim is to ensure that the new web presence does not suffer from the same problems that many of you will have experienced with the old one! Until this process is complete, however - and possibly well after this point is reached - the old site will remain available. We are aware that the old site's content is valuable, and will not simply "throw" information away, even once the transfer of information to the new site is complete.
Information Presentation
Many of you will notice that links to related topics are no longer provided within the text of a page. Links to related content, where relevant, are now provided in separate panels on the right hand side of the page. This may take some time to become accustomed to, but keeps text clean and easy to read, which we hope you will find beneficial.
Searching
Both simple and advanced search facilities are provided throughout the new web presence. On the DANTE site, these allow you to search the entire web presence. From within each project site, the search is confined to that site only.
Private Areas
Some content within the new web presence is available only to registered users, who are primarily partners in the various projects managed by DANTE. If you have been given a user account, please log in to ensure you have access to the full range of content available to you. If you do not have an account but feel you should have, please apply for one via the link in the login panel on every page. Please be aware that we may make some enquiries within your organisation in response to requests for new user accounts, as a result of which it may sometimes take a few days for a requested account to be activated. This is a security precaution and we would ask for your understanding in this matter.
Please note that, unlike the old site, there are no longer dedicated areas specifically for individual user groups. Rather, content is linked in the appropriate places according to its context. Hence when you log in, the site will look just as before, but you will occasionally see additional links that are not visible to visitors who are not logged in.
Standards Compliance
To help ensure the site is accessible to all our users we have endeavoured to comply with current industry standards. In particular, we have sought to adhere to the World Wide Web Consortium’s standards for valid XHTML and CSS, and the Web Accessibility Initiative’s ‘Level A’ accessibility standard. Our aim is to make the sites accessible in particular to those visitors who use assistive technologies. If you are such a user, please do let us know if you experience any difficulties.
If you are using an older or non-standards-compliant browser, the site layout may not appear as intended. However, we hope that the content should remain accessible and usable.
- If you are using an older browser that does not support CSS at all, or if you have a newer browser but have switched off its support for style sheets, you should see the content with no layout – it should remain readable and links should continue to work.
- If you are using an older browser that is only partially standards-compliant, the site may look very messy and may even be unusable. We recommend you either disable style sheets or upgrade to a fully standards-compliant browser.
- Our target browsers in developing the site have been Mozilla 1.3+ and Internet Explorer 5.5+
If you are using a standards-compliant browser and experience difficulties, please let us know.
Ongoing Development
We see the launch of this new web presence as the first step of an ongoing process. Our aim is to continually expand and develop the content and functionality of our sites. We will also be periodically reviewing usability and accessibility.
We are confident that our new sites represent a significant improvement on our previous one. However, we are also conscious that there is always room for improvement, as well as constraints on time and resources. No web site is ever completely finished!
Please help us to improve the sites and prioritise our activities, by giving us your feedback and telling us what you would like to see. A feedback form is provided for this purpose.
And Finally…
Thank you for visiting! We hope you find this site useful, informative and enjoyable.
The DANTE web team.
