AEM 2021 Recap & Outlook 2022

Improvements were made to the main dropdown navigation. These include improvements to the typography, interaction design and the ability to expand and see additional subpages of the third level.

In addition, a new subnavigation concept was introduced with four options for display: default (Fig. 1), small image (Fig. 2) or large image display (Fig. 3), as well as an option to collapse the subnavigation.

Typography improvements included the general adjustment of font curves, padding between components, line height, icons and interaction design. Corporate design colours were added to links and interactions.

It is now also possible for authors to set a colour theme (Fig. 5) for an entire website, as well as configure a colour theme for specific pages. Examples of elements taking on color are link lists and the highlight box to emphasize important content (Fig 6).

The news alert has been redesigned to a more modern and airier look and feel with a more attractive image size (Fig.7).

• New protected page Podcast component to embed Podigee podcasts
• Internal protected page linkchecker which indicates broken or non-published pages, documents or images
• Better usability for the homepage protected page organisational box
  
• Better backend distinction of inherited and non-inherited protected page context areas
• protected page Lead text component update
  
• Frontend accessibility improvements
• Employees of ETH Zurich can now save their preferred author name, including variants, in their ETH profile to show on their person page.

• 2 Adobe service pack releases for general updates and better security
  
• News channel structure maintenance & cleanup
• 13 enhancement and bug fix releases, mostly without service interruption
• Adaptations of the event calendar to the completely renewed interface and extension of the display options

Since the beginning of 2021, the web team has been offering regular Q&A Zoom sessions on Friday afternoons. Authors can log into a Zoom session and ask their questions about AEM and get useful tips and guidance on how to work in AEM. See manual main page for dates.

The requirements collected in surveys and workshops were integrated into a WTO call for papers in Spring 2021. This tender had to be canceled after a first round and was re-published successfully this fall. The final decision for the future provider and web analytics tools is expected to take place in January. Roll-out of the new solution and corresponding services is currently planned for late summer 2022.

The new project "Barrier-Free at ETH Zurich" has taken off. Corporate communications is responsible for Sub-project 11 "Ensure accessible communication". Learn more about creating accessible web content in one of our courses.

The room information application has reached its end-of-life. In 2022, the old application will be shut down and the information will be integrated in AEM with additional features and a design that follows the events calendar, which is appreciated for its intuitive user interface (Fig. 8).

The search application for AEM websites has been completely redesigned and optimized for better usability and accessiblity.The new features of the design are:

• an initial overlay which keeps track of your recent searches, provides top quick links for students and ETH members, as well as links to four of the top applications searched for at ETH (Fig.9).
  
• a secondary overlay provides a variety of suggested results based on the user's input (Fig. 10).
• new location page for location links in contact information (Fig. 11).
• a search results page which displays results separated by type for easy distinction (Fig. 12).
  
• quick filters to narrow down a search by only one result type.

The news channel article page will have three template design options (Fig. 13): a default, image, and blog style. The default article page provides a new fresh design with an optional medium size image component built into the template just below the lead text. The image article has a lead header image spanning the width of the wide page above the article title and lead text. The blog style template, to be used only for blog articles, features an author's picture over a coloured label containing the title of the article and tags.

The new corporate web design is heading towards the use of only the wide page template in the future. With that change, all components are being optimally adapted for the wide page and in addition, a new Newsfeed component will be added in the system. This newsfeed component will have a new fresh design that is geared for use on the wide page and will only display news configured with images. It will have three base image sizes and two display types (Fig. 14).

The legacy Newsfeed component will get a slight makeover in order to adapt to the new corporate design changes. This component will remain in the system to allow existing authors who created news with no images or images less than suitable for the new newsfeed to continue using the component as needed (Fig. 15).

Simplifying our template structure and reducing maintenance is also part of the design refresh project. Therefore the options for the wide page template will be enhanced and new specific components will be created, whereas the Standard Universal Content Page template will be deprecated and no further development will be done here. This decision is based on a long-term wish of our authors who prefer the wide page layout to present their content and to have all options and components available and optimized for this template.

It is planned to replace Oracle Infinity with a new web analytics tool and an tag management system in late summer 2022. This new solution is to be accompanied by a range of training courses and self-training resources. 

The sub-project "accessible communication" is entering its next round, and our efforts to make AEM websites more accessible and user-friendly will intensify in the coming years. Even though we are already at a pretty good level in terms of accessibility, we still remain challenged as new features and also new accessibility requirements are continuously added.