Frequently Asked Questions

Why haven't you used the SFU colours?
The colours on the new web site are based on SFU colours but have been updated to help with a user friendly experience. Additionally, the side menu is an added colour intended to help with legibility. For the most part the colours on the updated and launched site now closely resemble SFU colours. For more information on colour selection and web colours, click here.

Why did you get rid of the rollover menus?
The rollover menus on the previous SFU home page were not compliant with current accessibility standards. As SFU is open and inclusive and as our policy is that we "will provide equal opportunity for full participation in all activities of the University community for all academically qualified individuals" our web sites fall into that realm.

While it isn't realistic to check and/or change all our 700,000+ pages to make them accessible we have tried to ensure that our main home page is compatible with the W3C guidelines. This also follows a new law that went into effect in the US mandating that all US federal government web sites provide access to the disabled. While no such law exists in Canada yet, should this come to pass here we will have already started complying with these standards.

For more information on why the current menus are not compliant with accessibility standards click here.

For more info on SFU's suggested standards and the W3C standards click here.

The road report link has become really hard to find and it's very useful in the winter time, can you please put it back?
The area marked "important information" will contain a link to the Road Report when the weather may affect driving conditions. The rest of the time the Road Report can be found at:
https://adminwb1.admin.sfu.ca/traffic/Road_Conditions.htm

How come you haven't extended this look to all the SFU pages, they're all so different and sometimes you can't even tell where you are?
The scope of this project was to replace the current home pages and sub pages linking from that page. There is no entity that controls the look and feel of all the SFU web sites (over 700,000 pages) although we will be providing templates of this new design should any departments wish to adopt it.

We have created a list of suggested web standards for SFU web Sites as well which can be found at: http://www.sfu.ca/mediapr/web_strategist/

Feedback and Next Steps:

In our initial testing phase we received lots of great feedback that ran the gamut from "I love it" to "I hate it". Looking at the mid range of that feedback we have focused on the most commonly occurring questions/feedback and sought to address it with some tweaking and modifications. These are listed below.

Once this site is live we will continue to solicit feedback until mid August when we will look at the feedback and decide if we need to do any more fixing and tweaking. If you are using the site and have feedback please use our feedback form to let us know your suggestions and ideas:

Feedback:

Not enough colour, doesn't accurately reflect SFU:
In response to this we have made the red and blue more vibrant - while maintaining them as web safe and not reverting to the non-SFU versions of the colour were on the previous version of the home page.

The font size is too small and not adjustable:
We have bumped the font size up a little in the body text. If you are finding the type is difficult to read, please notify us and let us know what operating system & browser you're using. erwebmaster@sfu.ca

Doesn't display properly in an 800x600 screen:
The size of the page is now narrower so while you may have to scroll vertically, you should no longer have to scroll horizontally with your browser window fully open. If you find this is not the case please notify us with your screen size, your operating system and browser and also how big you have your browser window set.

The SFU News Releases are not necessary on the sub pages:
Instead of the News Releases from the home page carrying through the sub pages the sub pages will now display interesting facts about SFU that will continually be updated and changed.

You need to create templates so other departments can carry on the new look and feel:
Shortly after the launch, templates will be made available in Dreamweaver for other departments should they wish to adopt this new look and feel. While we are not able to offer technical support for implementing these templates, LIDC has created them and can work with you to carry this look onto your site. Click here for more information.