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Encyclopedia of British Columbia

Mugo partner since 2001

Encyclopedia of BC is the source of readable and authoritative information on the significant BC people, places, and things. Originally a bestselling book, the encyclopedia is now available exclusively online, with over 4,000 entries and enhanced by images, maps, charts, tables, and sound and video clips.

KnowBC.com

KnowBC.com is the home of the Encyclopedia of BC -- the source of readable and authoritative information on the significant BC people, places, and things. Originally a bestselling book, the encyclopedia is now available exclusively online, with over 4,000 entries and enhanced by images, maps, charts, tables, and sound and video clips. KnowBC.com is also the home of 5 other west coast online books.

Mugo Web created a framework based on eZ Publish so that editors could manage all of the books on a single eZ Publish instance. Migration work for the Encyclopedia of BC involved creating a logical structure into which previously hand-coded and updated articles could be automatically imported.

Among the key features of the new KnowBC.com are dynamic, content-rich layouts with eZ Flow, intuitive and powerful searching with eZ Find, and a whole raft of single sign-on scripts to handle seamless logins from schools and universities.

Case Study

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Mobile view of the Chinook Arch website, with the catalogue search highlighted

Making keyboard navigation more accessible with JavaScript ‘focus traps’

Tabbing through a web page can be a frustrating experience. The user tabs to access a menu, but with the keyboard's next tap, they’ve moved on to another page element and have to retrace their steps to access the desired content.

For users who rely on keyboard navigation, this can be a major accessibility roadblock. And for other site visitors, it’s just poor UX.

Fortunately, you can implement a fairly straightforward function in JavaScript called a “focus trap” to ensure users don’t leave the page area they’re in without intending to do so.

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a gear labeled CMS surrounded by an array of cleaning tools

Cleaning up unused CSS and JS files from WordPress pages

WordPress can be a great option for easy website development, but because of the rapid evolution of the CMS, it can lead to inefficient code and slow loading pages. We'll show you how to clean up unused CSS and JS from pages to improve site-wide performance. 

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illustration of a reCAPTCHA screen, withe question marks in place of text, and robots obscuring the photos for identification.

Making Google reCAPTCHA v2 play nice with browser form validation

CAPTCHA is an essential need on online forms, but to be blunt, the UX sucks. Without the implementation tips (helpfully detailed below), Google’s otherwise reliable reCAPTCHA service implemented “as-is” doesn’t actually provide any browser validation. The user will have to wait for it to make a time-consuming round trip to the server. It’s a problem for anyone and becomes compounded for users with accessibility needs.

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a woman in a wheelchair using a computer superimposed over different digital windows

Creating accessible links to help users discover your site’s content treasures

Links are among a website's most valuable components. They connect (that’s what the word “link” means, after all) different pages and resources, helping site visitors find the content they are looking for. Well-planned and formatted links are like a detailed, intuitive treasure map that sends visitors to the right destination.

Links are also critical for making your website accessible to visitors with visual or other impairments. A link that lacks important information can prevent some visitors from accessing all the treasures a website holds. Or even worse, it can send users to completely undesirable content and discourage them from exploring all your site has to offer.

In this post, I’ll discuss how to present links in various contexts, clearly explaining how they can create and inform powerful relationships between different pages and assets.

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