Changes to myUMBC for August 16, 2010

Thanks for all of the feedback so far, we're listening and doing the best we can to make everybody happy. Its not easy, but we're trying.

We couldn't do too much today as we spent most of the day responding to emails and phone calls, but we squeezed some stuff in:

• Appearance Settings - This is by far the most consistently received comment, so we figured we'd fix this one fast.  Sure, yellow isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it is one of our school colors... and yes, the yellow we were using for our school color isn't the "official" yellow, but had we used the official yellow, eyes would be bleeding... seriously.  So, we built an appearance settings page for you.  Its under your name, just where it was before.  We picked some colors you can use that we thought were tolerable.  However, if you still think our sense of style is lacking, you can pick your own color too.  So there, everyone wins.
• FYI, the official yellow is #FFCC00.  Try it out and then send us a note thanking us for not using it. 😉
• Alphabetize your Favorites - If you've gone star-clicking-crazy and created a huge mess of favorites, there is now a button to alphabetize them for you on the Favorites page.
• Bug fixes and tweaks
• The login banner on topic pages is a bit more prominent.  This is important because many links now require you to be logged in.
• We removed the "myUMBC is new, send us feedback" banner from framed pages to save a little room for people with smaller screens.
• Links in the Alerts dashboard should not load in the proper window.
• Menus should be reliable and less likely to hang around after you're done with them.

A Special Request from the myUMBC Team

I always try and stress how important feedback is to us.  It is. It drives everything we do.  Every feature and every change was prompted by feedback of some kind.  myUMBC serves an extremely diverse user-base and we'd be foolish to think we'd make everybody happy with any change.  We are people, just like you, we work hard, we try our best, and for everything we've done that you like, we've probably done something else you don't.  We love to hear from you, even if its negative.  All we ask is that you be patient and try things out before you pass judgement, be specific as possible about any problems you may experience, and be respectful of the fact that there is a human being on the other side of the feedback box that cares a great deal about making myUMBC better for everyone.

Can't wait to hear from you all,

- Collier