Best Practice: Forms

Google Forms offers one of the best ways to collect information using a Web form.

Submissions are stored automatically in a shared, online spreadsheet (a Google Doc). You can also set up the form to trigger emails whenever a submission is collected.

In addition, you can share access to the submissions spreadsheet with other USFSP faculty, staff or students, just like any other Google Doc. Then these folks can view the submissions that your form has collected. In addition, you can add columns in the spreadsheet for your own notes without interrupting the colletion of data.

Note: you should never collect sensitive information such as credit cards or social security numbers. This would violate USF System policies, notably information technology policies.

To create your form:

1. Login to Google Docs with your USFSP accout and choose Create New > Form.
2. Make sure you uncheck "Require University of South Florida sign-in to view this form" if you do not want to restrict access to the form. This is important; you should do this now before you save the document.
3. Save the document.
4. Add your questions and answers.
5. Choose a theme; the theme "Simply Grey" seems to conflict the least with the USFSP Web site colors.
6. Choose More Actions > Embed to get the required code.
7. In Contribute, go to Insert>HTML Snippet and paste in the code. You might edit the code a bit so the width is set to 760.

Once your form is live, you can see the results by going to Google Docs. Your results spreadsheet will appear as one of your shared documents.

You can also see your results in graphical form -- choose Form > Show Summary of Responses.

If you need to adjust the questions or answers, choose Form > Edit Form.
While in this edit mode, you can also customize the confirmation page (the page visitors see after they click submit) by selecting More actions > Edit confirmation.

You can also set up automatic email receipts to the submitter. Please ask Michel Fougeres, Strategic Web Developer & Project Lead, for more information about how to set these up.

See http://docs.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=15166 for additional help.

Best Practice: Photo credits

Location and formatting of the credit line

A photo credit line is encouraged below photographs featured in the content area of a Web page.

Text format is preferred, for ADA accessibility; it does not need to be placed into the image file itself. No watermark is needed. In situations where a thumbnail image can be clicked to open up a larger version, the caption need only appear beneath the larger image.

Ideally, the credit appears immediately after a caption that explains the contents of the photo.

Structure

• Photos by USFSP students, staff or faculty:
  The word "Photo" should be followed by "USFSP/" and the name of the photographer, with no space after the slash.
  • Example of photo credit following caption:
    Harbor Hall | Photo: USFSP/Jane Doe
    
    
• Photos by non-USFSP groups:
  The word "Photo" should be followed by the photographer's identification, with no space after the slash.
  There is no restriction on using personal name, a URL or a company name to identify the photographer, but there should be no hyperlink to any website or email address.
  • Example of photo credit following caption:
    Ground breaking ceremony | Photo: JohnDoe.com

The caption and credit can also be used to create the image's "ALT" attribute for ADA accessibility.

Example

• Construction Updates

Best Practice: Style Guide

What's the correct spelling: email or e-mail? What about website or Web site?

The USF Editorial Guide to Style & Usage is the standard we suggest for all Web pages.

Best Practice: usfsp.edu

We suggest the use of usfsp.edu when you reference a (non-Library) web page, in print or email, or over the phone. It's the shortest and easiest Web site address to remember.

For example, instead of: http://www.stpt.usf.edu/cob you can use http://www.usfsp.edu/cob

Don't forget that "index.htm" or "index.html" is also optional. For example, you can shorten: http://www.stpt.usf.edu/facultysenate/index.htm to just: http://www.usfsp.edu/FacultySenate