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In an effort to make all Guides consistent, we recommend you use the following template to create a research or course guide:
To work directly from this template:
The following Best Practices were developed in 2018 by Emily Christofides, User Experience Specialist.
Use the template:
Use the built-in editing features to maintain accessibility and help with maintenance:
Guides can serve different purposes, and it is important to indicate this purpose when you create a guide.
The pages on your guide - which appear as tabs across the top - hold various types of content boxes. They can be copied from another guide or made from scratch by clicking on the "+" icon to the right of existing tabs. The order of these pages can be changed by selecting "Pages" in the "Reorder/move" section of the "Page" dropdown menu. Limit the number to five or less.
To hide pages needing updates, go to the "Page" dropdown menu and select "Do not show on public guide" under "Visibility".
For page layout, use the pre-formatted column widths in order to provide responsive website content.
Boxes can be used for text, links, database lists, images, and more. To add a box, click on one of the "Add box" buttons. These boxes can be copies of ones from other guides or pages. To reorder boxes, select "Boxes" in the "Reorder/move" section of the "Page" dropdown menu. To reorder box contents, select "Content items" instead.
You can keep boxes hidden in a published guide by checking the "Draft mode" box in the "Edit box" widget.
This is the default box type. It can be used for various types of content.
Standard boxes are our recommended type to use.
Tabbed boxes allow you to consolidate information that would otherwise take up a lot of space on a page into a small area, mimicking in a box the tabs at the top of each page.
Gallery boxes will display multiple images with a scrolling display. Text may also be displayed as captions.
Gallery boxes can be created with the following steps:
Keep content items concise and limited in number.
The "Rich text" content type can be used for text, tables, lists, and images. Although text formatting can be changed, avoid changing font size or style. These changes may affect accessibility. Alt-text, padding, and borders can be added to images for screen-readers and appearances.
When adding images, we recommend that you set the percentage of the box width that you want the image to fill (e.g., "100%" under "width" to fill the box), so the image size will adjust based on screen size. Add or edit alt-test for the image by right-clicking it and selecting "Image Properties."
When adding links, use the "Link" content type, as opposed to writing HTML code
From W3 Techniques: "The objective of this technique is to limit the use of links or buttons that open new windows or tabs within Web content. In general, it is better not to open new windows and tabs since they can be disorienting for people, especially people who have difficulty perceiving visual content. However there are some situations where it is preferable from an accessibility perspective to open a new window or tab. Here are two such situations:
Opening a page containing context-sensitive information, such as help instructions, or an alternate means of completing a form, such as a calendar-based date picker, will significantly disrupt a multi-step workflow, such as filling in and submitting a form, if the page is opened in the same window or tab.
The user is logged into a secured area of a site, and following a link to a page outside of the secured area would terminate the user's logon. In this case opening external links in an external window allows the user to access such references while keeping their login active in the original window.
It is recommended that when links are opened to a new window, there is advance warning."
When adding databases, you can use the "Database" content type. Then, search for and select the appropriate database.
If you do not want the information to be updated automatically, use the "Link" content type instead.
Book images, titles, and descriptions can easily be added to LibGuides.
Add the "Rich text" content type, then move to the HTML section by clicking "Source". Add the code from the following document to the HTML section.
Changing the source code will affect the appearance of the alert. For example, the alert can be set as a success, info, warning, or danger alert by changing the class (i.e., replacing word "warning" in the code).
Below is an image showing the success, info, warning, and danger alerts, which are green, blue, yellow, and red.
Unpublished guides can only be viewed by editors, whereas private guides can only be viewed by people with the link.
When a guide is published, it will be listed on the "Research guides" page on the library website. This is not the case, however, if it is an internal or template guide.
Prior to publishing a guide, you can view a preview by selecting the "preview" button with an eye icon. It can be found next to the publication status dropdown menu.