My main activity this year has been to revise the Group's pages to fit in with the Society's new brand identity, which was introduced in June 2001. My initial efforts in July and August looked good in Internet Explorer but came out with very small text in Netscape browsers. After a long pause I have tried to rectify the problem over the last month or so. I may not have been able to earn my living from Fortran programming over the last year but I have learned a great deal about web browsers, style sheets and JavaScript! At least I can say that all the pages pass the W3C HTML 4.01 validator.
As in previous years the main non-cosmetic activity on the Group's web pages has centred around the AGM. The minutes of the last meeting went up in June 2001 together with summaries of the afternoon presentations and in April 2002 the agenda for this year's AGM went up, followed by the associated officer's reports in May. Other updates this session have included reports on the Specialist Groups Congress held in July 2001 and the reception held for the ISO WG5 delegates, also in July. In August 2001 there were 28 files for our pages, by May 2002 this has risen to 30.
In most cases I am supplied with polished "raw material" by David Muxworthy so that I have only to add the appropriate "tops" and "tails" before passing the files on to Carl Harris and Susannah Rogers at BCS HQ who actually put them on the BCS server.
At the bottom of each of the Group's pages there is a request for comments. In the four years I have been Web Editor I have received very few comments. The ones I have had have chiefly been pointing out mistakes I have missed or, more recently, browser support problems! Does this mean you are all happy with the information and layout of the pages or does it mean no one ever looks at them?
As I have indicated above I am indebted to David for providing so much of the information for our pages as HTML documents, greatly reducing the work I have to do. Also, despite our Chairman's kind remarks, it is David who keeps me up to date on changes to the links from our pages to external sites. Once more, thank you very much David.
Peter Crouch
12th May 2002.