Changes to myUMBC for August 6, 2010

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 23:28:32 -0400

This one is a doozy... As we approach the final week before launch, we're putting the finishing touches on lots of little things around the site. Most of the changes are subtle ones that you probably wouldn't notice unless we pointed them out... so here we go:

Spotlight minis - On the Start page there are three little rectangles that will hold what we call "spotlight minis". Spotlights have become insanely popular. So much so, that when the really really big stuff happens on campus, its hard to get the word out. Spotlight minis provide a way for institutional news and events to get a little bit more visibility. Who gets to have a spotlight mini? Well, that decision is made by a blue-ribbon panel of university representatives.

Feedback - Your thoughts and opinions are very important to us, so we've added a new Feedback button at the bottom of the page to let you quickly and easily send us what you love and hate about the new myUMBC. We can never get enough feedback.

Group Categories - Now each group can define a set of categories that it can use to organize the content created inside of the group.

YOUR Favorites - Yesterday we enabled the new Favorites menu, well today imported everyone's favorites from the old myUMBC into the new one. Be sure to check your links though, as something may not work any more as we've done some web shuffling.

Comment Notifications - You should now receive an email when someone comments on your content. A great way to stay on top of what people are saying. We're working on a mechanism to allow you to get notifications about comments anyone else's content, but that's probably a few weeks out.

RSS, XML, and iCal feeds OUT of myUMBC - We've talked in recent days of being able to get content into myUMBC. But we've also spent a lot of time making it easy to also get content out. In the bottom-right corner of many pages, there will be links to get a feed of myUMBC content in several popular formats.

Weather on Start - The weather is now available in the upper-right corner of the start page.

About the Team and Acknowledgements - myUMBC is the result of a lot of work by many dedicated people throughout the university. So we posted a page featuring them all. Also, we've posted a page showing some of the technologies that have made the new myUMBC possible. A little geeky, but some might find it interesting.

Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug that was causing some content to show in places it shouldn't.

Made it so everyone can now choose to hide their role switcher. Before we fixed it, once one person turned it off, no one else good. We had a good laugh at this one.

Various typos and tweaks.

So we were pretty busy today, but had a blast. Its fun watching this site come together. I hope everyone is liking what they're seeing.

- Collier