[WEB4LIB] Library pages on a PDA

[Thomas Keays]

On 13 Jul 2001, it was written:
> The instructions for viewing our Palm pages can be found at
> http://www.hsl.unc.edu/pda/hslpda.cfm  Any comments/suggestions 
> would be greatly appreciated.
> B. Lynn Eades

It looks like a nice set of pages -- works great on my Palm.  I think 
this is a worthwhile service for library sites.  I've been trying to 
make this a SUL web group agenda item off and on for over a year.

A tip: You can use this url to open up a AvantGo channel for your 
homepage.  Your users will still have to alter the maximum channel 
size and the link depth as per your instructions on your palm page.  
There might even be a way to code this extra information straight 
into the url. I haven't explored it. 

https://avantgo.com/mydevice/autoadd.html?url=http%3A//www.hsl.unc.edu
/pda/pdahome.htm&title=Health%20Sciences%20Library%20%28UNC-CH%29

BTW, your pages have a current actual size of 7K -- your recommended 
size of 250K is way overkill.  I set mine at 30K maximum channel size 
for now.  AvantGo balks and may not load the pages at all when the 
total maximum channel sizes (added total for all your pages) exceeds 
the scratch space available on your device.  Since I have only 2 M of 
memory total (maxed out in programs and datebook stuff), I tend to 
keep the channel size for each AvantGo item at the barest minimum.  
If I had an 8 M device with lots of available flash memory, I might 
not care so much. 

A suggestion: even though the link depth is only 3 deep, you should 
put navigation links back up to the top level and to the previous 
level.  Using the Library Classes page (a third level page) as an 
example, you could construct a navigation scheme like the following:

<a href="pdahome.htm">Health Sciences Library Home</a>/<a 
href="hslpdaserv.htm">Library Services</a>/Library Classes

You could also put <<Next and Previous>> links to go from page to 
page within a given category.

BTW, the Library Classes page
http://www.hsl.unc.edu/pda/hslpdaclasses.htm
is laid out in a two column table.  AvantGo in the Palm renders the 
second column after the first.  You might want to remove the table 
since it is not properly rendered and adds unnecessary coding to the 
page.

Thanks for the inspiration!



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Thomas Keays / Science Librarian, Syracuse University
Email: htkeays at library.syr.edu 
Home: http://libwww.syr.edu/information/scitechlib/htkeays/
Phone: 315-443-2160 / Fax: 315-443-5549
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