Future Technologies: Deployment Issues

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Future TechnologiesDeployment Issues

• Brian Kelly Email Address
• UK Web Focus B.Kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk
• UKOLN URL
• University of Bath http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/

UKOLN is funded by the Library and Information
Commission, the Joint Information Systems
Committee of the Higher Education Funding
Councils, as well as by project funding from the
JISCs Electronic Libraries Programme and the
European Union. UKOLN also receives support
from the University of Bath where it is based.
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Contents

• Introduction
• Barriers to Deployment
• Revisiting Data Formats
• HTML and XHTML
• CSS
• Where Are We Four Case Studies
• Entry Points
• Search Engines
• 404 error messages
• Web Gateways
• Metadata
• Browser Issues
• Content Management Systems
• Deployment Issues
• Conclusions

• Aims of Talk
• To consider barriers to deployment of new
  technologies
• To address implementation models for new
  technologies
• To look at case studies in a number of areas

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Barriers to Deployment

• What barriers can you think of?

4
Your Concerns

• I know that CSS, XML, HTTP/1.1, RDF, etc. are
  good ideas.
• But
• I don't want to be at the leading edge
• I want to be at the leading edge and have to
  convince by boss
• I want to stick with the Web circa 1996
• We've only got Netscape 3 browsers
• You can't do much in FrontPage 97

5
The Scale of the Problem

• Note Analysis aborted after 15,315 pages
• Off-site links not checked Analysis files over
  160Mb

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HTML ? XHMTL

• XHTML
• Future-proofs your HTML
• Has beneficial side-effectsltpgtclosed papalt/pgt
  - CSS rendered correctly
• Example of why you need valid HTML resources
• Deployment
• Much XHTML support provided by authoring tools
• ltbr / gt is a problem
• Problem with vi, Notepad, etc.
• Tidy utility for retrospective conversion see
  lthttp//www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/gt
• Caveats
• Still a Proposed Recommendation

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HTML ? CSS

• CSS
• Preferred way of defining document appearance
• Problems
• Netscape has very poor support of CSS
• Netscape and IE have incomplete support
• Deployment
• Should be used today
• For manually-created CSS consult list of safe CSS
  at lthttp//www.webreview.com/guides/style/gt
• Modern authoring tools may produce safe CSS
• User-agent negotiation may be used
• See also Core Style Sheets at lthttp//www.w3.org/S
  tyleSheets/Core/gt

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Case Studies

• "It can be dangerous and expensive to be at the
  leading edge. There are also dangers in being
  left behind"
• How is the UK HE community addressing
• Institutional Home Page
• Searching institutional web service
• 404 error messages
• Web gateways

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Case Study 1 Home Page

• View a tour of Yorkshire University home pages at
  lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/seminars
  /brad-web2000/web-tour/gt.
• What do you notice? How does Bradford compare?

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Case Study 2 Searching

• View a tour of Yorkshire University search
  interfaces at lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/ev
  ents/seminars/brad-web2000/web-tour-search/gt.

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Case Study 3 Gateways

• View a tour of Yorkshire University web gateways
  at lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/semin
  ars/brad-web2000/web-tour-gateway/gt.

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Case Study 4 Home Page

• View a tour of Yorkshire University home pages at
  lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/seminars
  /brad-web2000/web-tour-404/gt.

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Workshop

• "Institutional Web Management The Next Steps"
  workshop
• Held at Goldsmith College on 7-9 Sept 99
• Third in series of annual events aimed at
  institutional web managers
• Key themes
• Resourcing (John Slater),
• Personalisation (Joe Passmore, Ulster)
• E-Business (David Christmas, OU)
• Content Management (Stephen Emmott, KCL and
  others)
• Multimedia (Greg Newton-Ingham UEA and Michael
  Wilson, RAL)
• See workshop report (and links to materials) at
  lthttp//www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/web-focus/gt

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Metadata
Metadata Structured information for use by
applications HTML Unstructured information for
viewing by people

• Metadata is growing in importance
• Resource discovery
• Web site administration
• B2B (business to business) applications
• Dublin Core
• Standard for resource discovery metadata
• Not yet supported by search engine vendors
• Growing importance in specific communities (e.g.
  UK HE for national searching, HE Mall?)
• Metadata management an issue

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Metadata Example

• The Exploit Interactive web magazine uses Dublin
  Core metadata to provide enhanced searching
  locally.
• The metadata can also be used by third party
  applications

You are unlikely to be motivated to use metadata
(for example) unless there is are clear
benefits. This enhanced search service will
encourage information providers to provide the
metadata
http//www.exploit-lib.org/
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Metadata Example (2)

• Exploit Interactive uses ASP to manage
  server-side includes. As well as including
  standard navigational aids, the SSIs transform
  the metadata

dc-metadata.ssi
article.asp
ltmeta content"DC.description" value
"ltdescription gt" ltmeta content"description"
value "ltdescription gt"
Title"foo" Description "xxx" .. lt! include
dc-metadata.ssi)gt
article.htm
lt! include article.htmgt .. lt! include footer.ssi)gt
Stored in neutral format, which helps reuse
Storing metadata in neutral format and
transforming it will enable it be transformed
into new formats (e.g. RDF)
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Browser Issues

• The web was designed to be evolvable and
  backwards compatible
• Unfortunately this isn't the case, due to
• Proprietary extensions which do not coexist with
  standards
• Authoring tools which make it easy to propagate
  proprietary extensions and poor markup (cf. MS
  Word)
• Pace of web development
• Browser bugs
• Difficulties in getting rid of (flawed) old
  browsers

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Browser Issues

• Issues
• Should organisations adopt a browser management
  policy (cf. operating systems, word processors,
  etc.)?
• Which browser / browser version to choose?
• What about specialist browsers (PDAs, Lynx,
  Opera, etc)?
• Need for browser management kit to minimise
  maintenance
• Talk by Brett Burridge on this topic. See
  lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshop
  s/webmaster-sep1999/materials/browser-management/
  gt

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Browser Issues

• Even with a browser policy, you still have to
  consider support for other browsers (esp. for
  public web site)
• Client-Side Browser sniffing
• Javascript in all HTML pages
• Maintenance problem
• Server-Side Browser sniffing
• In server-side language (e.g. ASP / PHP/FI)
• Could be used to deliver safe CSS (e.g. see
  ltwww.disinhe.ac.ukgt in Netscape and IE)
• Protocol Developments
• Support for PDAs, WebTVs, etc
• Transparent Content Negotiation and CC/PP
• One for the future

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Content Management Systems

• Approaches such as external CSS files, SSI for
  managing reusable fragment, etc. are useful
• But
• Still a file-oriented view
• Help manage a web site aimed at human use
• May be difficult to manage server and client-side
  code
• Content management systems
• May have a database or object-oriented view
• May help manage a web site which can be
  re-purposed
• Likely to have backend XML data store and use
  XSL to transform to HTML / CSS

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Deployment Issues

• More sophisticated deployment techniques can be
  adopted to overcome deficiencies in simple model

Original Model
Web server simply sends file to client File
contains redundant information (for old browsers)
plus client interrogation support
HTML resource
Web server
Sophisticated Model
HTML / XML / databaseresource
IntelligentWeb server
Backendprocessing
Client proxy
Server proxy
Is it time to move on from using authoring tools
to manage files to content managements systems
which manage objects and enable resources to be
re-purposed?
22
Cultural Issues

• University "culture" may influence directions of
  web developments
• How did you address need for Help Desk tracking
  software
• Make decisions internally or liase with other
  institutions?
• Buy an off-the-shelf shrink-wrapped package
• Write an MS Access database application
• Take a C compiler and Linux server

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What Next For Bradford?
Conservative Stay as you are. If so, make this a
deliberate approach, and be aware of strength and
weaknesses
Change (2) Introduce new innovations. Make use of
open source solutions and home-grown approaches
Change (1) Introduce new innovations. Make use of
off-the-shelf solutions

• What should you do next?

A Fourth Way Are there alternative approaches?
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Collaboration

• You can't do it all on your own

Events Annual Institutional Web Management
workshops
Mailing lists web-support website-info-mgt
Working Together
Regional Events Yorkshire (and beyond?) events?
JISC JTAP projects and reports JISC reports
Other Institutions Relevant web resources
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Conclusions

• To conclude
• Standards are important
• Implementation requires much thought
• More sophisticated architectures can help avoid
  human errors in managing web sites
• You will need to decide on an open-sources vs.
  shrink-wrapped solution
• You can't to it all on your own