Those of you familiar with our previous web site will recognize that we have been doing a lot of work redeveloping the Victoria School web site, and we thought it would be helpful to point some of the highlights, and describe some of the ideas behind the changes.

Navigation & Layout

• We have revised the navigation by providing fewer "top level" menus (the old site had 17 menus) and more "drop-down" menus; the main menus define broad areas of interest (Vic News, About Vic, Vic Programs, Vic Life and Vic Partners) and reduce the number of choices a visitor to the site has to make when looking for information. Research has shown that this navigation design will improve the accessibility of the site as a whole, and ensure that visitors do not become frustrated when searching for information.
• The layout of the site uses two columns for the main content on all but the Home Page. A wide column contains the main content for a given page; a narrow column on the right can be used for various purposes. This allows the Home Page to have a specific "role" on the site, and also allows content to be displayed on other pages in the most readable form.
• In the drop-down menus, a link name followed by an ellipsis (...) indicates a link that goes to a separate web site that will open in a new window.

Home Page

• The site has been designed with a focus on the Home Page. Our goal is to encourage visitors to bookmark the Home Page, because it is where they will find key current information. It also helps to reduce visual clutter on the rest of the site.
• On the Home Page we have provided a Bookmark Page link (on the right hand side, just above the Search field): just click on the link to add the site to your favourites/bookmarks. Please note that this does not work with all browsers.
• The Home Page is different to all the other pages on the site in a number of ways:
  • It is the only page on the site that shows three columns of information.
  • While there is a thumbnail calendar on every page, the Home Page is the only page that shows upcoming events.
  • When we are conducting polls, they will only be shown on the Home Page.

Registration and Course Information

• Detailed information about registering a student at Vic is provided for each level of the school, with numerous links to resources from Vic and from elsewhere.
• Detailed course information is available for all High School courses, and is also supported by links to PDF documents and outside resources as appropriate.

Calendar

• A small thumbnail calendar now appears on every page underneath the Victoria School logo.
• The current day is highlighted in the calendar with a small red box. Others days for which there are events are shown in blue. Clicking on any highlighted date will open a larger calendar for that day, from where the calendar can be viewed in a variety of ways. For example, if you want to see only events that relate to Senior High activities, you can do so.
• Clicking on an individual entry in monthly view will open a pop-up window with details of the event; in many cases the pop-up window will provide more information about a specific calendar entry.
• In order to reduce visual clutter on the calendar, events that are longer than 2 days are shown with start and end dates only.
• Event icons are as follows:

single day event

start of a multi-day event

end of a multi-day event

Slideshows

• The top of every page features a slideshow. On most pages the images are from every aspect of school life... however, on many pages the images are specific to to the content, so you will see shots of theatre productions, for example, on the Theatre page.

Links & Downloads

• All links to external web sites will open in a new window: simply close that window to return to this site.
• Similarly, all links to documents stored on this site will open in a new window; depending on how your computer is configured, documents will either open automatically or may be stored on your local drive.
• All documents are in PDF format. These days, PDFs are readable by all computers, but in the event that you cannot read a PDF document, a "reader" program is available for free from Adobe, and can be downloaded here.

Other Information

• The site will of course be updated regularly. One immediate update will be the Gallery, which we will add to the new site as soon as possible.