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Central resource page vs instance specific links to doc readers

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From: Richard R. Hill
Date: Feb 28, 2011 6:18PM


All,

I have had some discussions with this group long ago on this topic… And can't find any of it! So…

By standard(s), for any document included in a website, there should be a link to appropriate readers or resources to allow visitors to be able to render/view the document. The most obvious example are PDF documents (others might include Word. Excel or QuickTime files). A strict interpretation of the standards would have links for the appropriate rendering/reading tool(s) appear on each page where the files occur. Perhaps even associated with each file. However, my preference would be to have a general website resources page available from a link on all pages that provides this information. This makes content maintenance easier for random editors using a Web CMS, saves on screen real estate and provides a central location on the site where new document readers can be added (or provide updated links to those already listed).

Examples:

The HUD site http://portal.hud.gov/portal/page/portal/HUD has a resource link in the footer http://www.hud.gov/assist/webpolicies.cfm

Ohlone College http://www.ohlone.edu/ has a link to http://www.ohlone.edu/ in the footer

USDA http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome has a footer link http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?navtype=FT&;navid=ACCESSIBILITY_STATEM

NIH Office of Extramural Research http://grants.nih.gov/grants/oer.htm has a link to "Help Odwloading Files" http://grants.nih.gov/grants/edocs.htm

So, I'm going to go with "this is an OK solution." Yes?
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Rick Hill, Web CMS Administrator
University Communications, UC Davis
(530) 752-9612
http://cms.ucdavis.edu
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