About the New CSE Website

A new version of the CSE Website was installed on 30 June, 2003. These pages serve as an entry point to all information created and maintained by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. This redesign was done mainly to help you use the site faster and to more easily accomplish what you came here for. There were several secondary goals as well:

  • The new design uses Cascading Style Sheets to format the information instead of relying so heavily on tables. As a result the pages load faster than the older site.
  • Providing easier access to this site for the disabled has been a high priority. The main pages have all been certified by the authoritative sites related to such matters. This was a legal requirement, and the other primary reason why this redesign was undertaken.
  • The site has a cleaner look that is more consistent with other UTA sites.
  • Both printing and page viewing now adjust the text to fit the viewing window. This allows better use of larger monitors and high resolution while still supporting other resolutions.

Navigating The Site

  • Snapshot of the New CSE Site Links in the left column (section 1) are organized by information categories. For ease of use, visitors will see many categories that are commonly found at other department web sites.
  • Links in the top bar (section 2) are organized by constituents (why you are here).
  • The main content (section 3) resides in the middle, to the right of section 1.
  • The page footer (section 4) contains links to required legal notices, website help and the home page. An email link to webmaster@cse.uta.edu is provided for you to submit comments and a Feedback Form is also provided. On all pages there are links to "Find People," and "Contact Us," which have also been moved to this section.
  • We've added a search box on every page (section 1), which finds words and phrases on all the CSE website pages through a service provided by Google:
    • To enter a query, just type in a few descriptive words and hit the 'enter' key (or click on the Search button) for a list of relevant web pages.
    • Google uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search.
    • Google also assigns higher relevance to pages in which your query terms appear near each other.
  • Links to information about the latest happenings in the department have been provided on the Home Page (section 5). This section also contains links to the most frequently accessed pages on the website.

General Design Principles

  • Access to information is improved through a simple, unified graphic design, predictable positioning of navigational elements, and logical organization.
  • To enhance navigability, multiple paths are provided to the same information where appropriate.
  • Because many off-campus visitors have relatively slow connections, multimedia content and applet programs are used sparingly.
  • Browser or platform-specific features are avoided to ensure the widest accessibility and compatibility.
  • For ease of maintenance, both in content and presentation, style sheets are incorporated and database-driven approaches are used.
  • The new design was guided by rules of general accessibility as required by the State of Texas.
  • The new design also strives to follow guidelines established by the Web Accessibility Initiative, which promotes a high degree of usability for people with disabilities.
- CSE@UTA Web Team