University Marketing in coordination with Human Resources, the UMass President’s office and PageUp launches redesign for the careers.umassd.edu site.
Template is now hosted and managed in-house to better support Human Resources in maintaining the careers.umassd.edu site regarding SEO, accessibility, and usability.
University Marketing partnered with Online & Continuing Education and the Registrar’s Office to integrate their Academic Calendars into a single user experience.
https://www.umassd.edu/academiccalendar/
University Marketing launches redesign of of Online & Continuing Education homepage:
https://www.umassd.edu/online/
In an ever-persistent effort to enhance the website experience for the end user, similar changes that had applied to the Program and Course searches have also now been applied to the Online Directory as well.
Previously, one’s only options were to search by a name or department and click the corresponding “Search” button. Now, users are provided a field where they can enter data, or they can select from a number of filters. Either choice will return results below immediately. The improved search function and additional filters is providing higher volume of expected results.
University Marketing is dedicated to improving umassd.edu website performance. We recently launched several improvements to umassd.edu image processing to ensure optimal web performance across all devices and regions.
Truly responsive images
Images have been visually responsive on umassd.edu for best display on all devices; they scale up/down. Images on umassd.edu are now set to crop down to the best-fit for that particular device. Simply put: mobile device loads an image much smaller than a desktop computer. The result is better performance on mobile devices that suffer from slow internet speeds due to data plan or signal strength.
Image optimization
Optimizing images is all about balancing file size and image quality. Images are now optimized and resized in Terminalfour without the need to rely on content editors’ knowledge of image-editing software or compression methods.
Modern formats
Most images on umassd.edu are now processed as WebP. Using WebP, we can serve smaller, richer images that make the web faster. [source] If you are using an older browser, we have jpg available to display as a fallback. This all happens without the need for our content editors to engage, just upload your single jpg image, same as before.
Content delivery
Most of umassd.edu assets are now served through a CDN (Content Delivery Network). CDN serves assets from a location nearer to the visitor, speeding up the site and improving the overall user experience. Globally distributed CDN servers ensure that regardless of where your site is hosted, its assets will be served from a location close to your visitors.
Lazy loading
University Marketing recently upgraded our lazy load engine [source – Vanilla Lazyload]. Lazyload speeds up your web application by deferring the loading of your below-the-fold images, animated SVGs, videos and iframes to when they enter the viewport. You may notice some images fade into view as you scroll down the page, that’s Lazyload!
Significant improvements have been made to the university’s program searches in the last month. Using an updated module, the search can now filter more quickly and efficiently and with more filter options than previously. In addition to the search within ALL programs, we currently have searches isolated to Undergraduate programs and STEM programs.
