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Some design decisions we have made, and why: We have kept the design of the pages simple, using minimal HTML markup. That's because many of the more advanced features of HTML are only supported by one or two browsers. We feel that the goal of our web pages is to be readable by anyone, anywhere, using any browser. If you find that there are tags on our pages that your browser does not support, please let us know. On the other hand, if you have an idea for a fancy interface, we're happy to listen, but we may disagree. The intended or expected audience for these pages are Spelman students majoring in computer science, who are looking for information about courses, research topics, reference materials, and so forth. Consequently, we don't want a jazzy-looking site, filled with eye candy to attract the casual surfer. There are many sites like that on the web, for good reason, and we have no criticism of such sites. However, their audience is different. We are striving for a simple, direct look, that conveys as much information per page as possible. We decided to eschew frames, partly because some browsers don't support them, and partly because frames make it hard to bookmark a particular page. Many web sites use frames exactly for that reason: they always want people entering through their portal, not going directly to some subsidiary page. However, we want to encourage just that. These pages are not intended to be read linearly, like a story; instead, they are to be dipped into for particular information. Consequently, we are avoiding the sequence design that is sometimes used in web sites. To allow access to many pages with few clicks, we have designed the pages to be broad, shallow trees. If each page averages ten links to pages that are below it in the tree, the site can easily allow access to a thousand pages in just three clicks. This means that many of the pages, particularly those higher in the tree, resemble lists or tables of contents. They may be less entertaining that way, but they index the information quicker. However, if you have suggestions for amusing or pithy quotes, or other ideas for making the pages more interesting without detracting from their primary mission, we're happy to hear from you. Credits The current Computer Science department web pages were designed and written by Scott D. Anderson. I also implemented Perl scripts for processing the pages, to ensure a uniform design, to create the complete listing of all pages, and to help produce tables of information.