managing websites and maintaining standards

[Suzanne Reymer]

While this theoretical discussion of browsers and usability has been
interesting, I'd like to hear from those who manage organizational websites
as to how they cope with these issues in the real world.  One of my side
tasks is to manage the website for the Montana Library Association.  This
means I receive materials from many different sources in many different
formats: Word, Word Perfect and text docs, html and pdf files, PowerPoint
presentations, etc.  I see my task as  integrating these materials into our
website so that they're accessible, navigable and consistent in appearance
and usability.  They must work with the browsers most likely to be used by
the state's public, school, academic and special librarians: MSIE & Netscape
4+.

This fairly daunting task has been made even more challenging by the fact
that the state has decided that FrontPage is the html editor of choice.  My
question to others in similar positions is how do you make these things work
while remaining compliant with standards without converting everything to
text and/or manually stripping and inserting code?  I've discovered that
FrontPage's html view doesn't really let you write your own html, it will
override and change your code.  And conflicts between the formatting in Word
and FrontPage have rendered large sections of text unreadable in Netscape.
Any practical advice or ideas would be appreciated.

Suzanne

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Suzanne Reymer
Statewide Technology Librarian
Montana State Library
c/o Parmly Billings Library
510 N. Broadway
Billings, MT   59101
MT Toll free: (888) 826-0837
Phone: (406) 255-0729
Fax: (406) 255-0732
Email: sreymer at uswest.net
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Technology is so much fun but we can
drown in our technology. The fog of
information can drive out knowledge.
-Daniel Boorstin
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