Daily Pioneer News

PLATTEVILLE - The University of Wisconsin-Platteville always tries to stay on the cutting edge of technology, and this fall University World Wide Web Coordinator Dan Frommelt will share just a little of what he knows about web design with some of the best webmasters in the country.

Frommelt has been selected to give a speech on web design at the WebDevShare national webmasters conference at Indiana University in October. Frommelt, who has been working in the University of Wisconsin-Platteville Web Development office for more than five years, will give a presentation on cascading style sheets (CSS), a web design tool used to control the style of a web document.

CSS reduces the amount of code needed to produce an attractive web site. Because many web sites repeat design schemes throughout individual pages, by using CSS web developers can link individual pages to a single file that tells the web browser what colors, typefaces and styles to use throughout.

"It gives you faster, cleaner layout," Frommelt said.

It also helps web developers by giving them more flexibility. Changing a web site's design can be accomplished by recoding a single file that all related web pages are linked to.

"If we need a change we can do it really quick," Frommelt said.

Frommelt has implemented CSS in the University's design template. Separate layout schemes have been developed for the Pioneer Farm, the UWP music program and the Pioneer Student Center using CSS, and his team is working on a mardi gras theme to be used on the homecoming page. Printer-friendly and text-only options, developed with CSS, are available for all University web pages.

UWP student Sean Sieg, a lead designer on the University's web development team, will accompany Frommelt to the conference attended by web designers from a host of universities nationwide. Frommelt was nominated for the presentation through his experience with the Campus Web Council of Wisconsin, a group that brings together web designers from all UW campuses.

Though Frommelt will give a presentation on this effective web tool to an audience of experienced designers, CSS isn't anything new to the web design world.

"It (CSS) has been around for a few years, just not well adopted," Frommelt said. But at UWP, it's had a "dramatic" effect on the University's web design scheme, he said.