About us RCL 20 Projects Colour Selector Library
Projects
Contracting
Paola Kathuria
Frank Wales
Clients with several projects
the-racehorse.com
BBC
CRASH
Oxford University Press (1997-2005)
Redesign of OED Online
Redesign of OED marketing site
General & technical consultancy
Redesign of OED Online Help
OED Online Tour
OED marketing site
OED Online prototype
@ Limitless Innovations (2000-2003)
Berry Bros. & Rudd
Cardata
One World Telecom
Scott Morrison Photography
Sysao
Gratis & personal projects
Paolability Jewellery
Windsor Half Marathon
Psychology of Programming Interest Group
InetUK Usenet FAQ
Other sites by Paola
@ Limitless (1995-1999)
SilverPlatter Health & Safety Publishing
Institute of Physics Publishing
EU & UK ISP surveys
New Millennium Experience
Moorfields Eye Hospital
totally-essential.com
Cybersport
Ace Records
Embassy of Japan
Reuters Insurance Information Services
Carsource
IBM Global Networks
Barclays Bank BarclayNet
Sainsbury's Wine Direct
@ Zengrange (1984-1990)
HP-41 Emulator for HP-48
Technical services

General & technical consultancy ~ Oxford University Press

Tasks

Project team web site 1997

Suggested features for OED Online 1997

Mail-handling system 1998

Information presentation 1999

Focus group web site 1997

Project team BBS 1998

Software architecture 1997

Requirements reviews 1999

Hosting guidance 1998

ITT review 1998

Proposal reviews 1999

"Browser-safe" palette 1999

Beta reviews 2000

Server logs 2000

Paola Kathuria & Frank Wales

2000 @ Limitless Innovations

1997-1999 @ Limitless

In early 1997, Oxford University Press (OUP) invited Limitless to help them put the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online.

We worked with OUP as general and technical advisers for the OED Online project; we provided both long-term advice and support to the development team, and helped OUP with a variety of design and deployment tasks during the design phase of the project.

Project team web site

[Project team site]

To assist the project team, we set up restricted-access mailing lists, and a project web site. We set up the web site which was maintained by OUP. [1997]

Suggested features for OED Online

Following the research and development of a functional prototype of OED Online, we documented a list of 53 ideas and technical issues to consider in the online service. These included a Word of the Day on the promotional site and graphical representations of dictionary statistics. [1997]

Mail-handling system

[Mail-handling system]

Limitless developed a web-based mail-handling system for the OED Online project team. The team consisted of people from several departments and different countries. The mail management system allowed messages to be archived so that they could be listed, searched and displayed using a web browser. We wrote all the Perl scripts and we designed the front-end. [1998]

Information presentation

We were asked to consider the design of the date chart - OED entries include quotations illustrating usage over time. The earliest quotation and spread of quotations is of interest to scholars.

There was a tabular representation of the dates in the original OED 2 online prototype. We considered alternative representations and went for a bar-chart version. We moved the "axis", simplified the labels and bottom-aligned the quotation years so that they gave the appearance of a bar-chart.

Although OUP later tried variations of the new date chart, OED Online used our redesigned date chart until 2010. [1999]

[Original date chart format]

Original date chart

[New date chart]

Redesigned date chart

Focus group web site

[Workshop attendees site]

An OED Online demo (functional prototype) was taken to various universities across in the USA in a series of focus group workshops. OUP asked for a web site for the workshop attendees. We designed and built the web site for use by attendees of the focus groups.

The workshop site included an LML bulletin board system (BBS) and mail-handling system. As with the project team site, we designed the front-end of these by creating a set of page templates and graphics, adopting a similar style as the project team site. [1997]

Project team BBS

[BBS buttons]

Limitless had developed a customisable system for building bulletin boards. We designed the front-end of the BBS by designing a set of page templates with graphics. [1998]

Software architecture

We wrote a white paper discussing software architectural issues in building a scalable online service. [1997]

Requirements reviews

We reviewed the user-interface in the requirements document for OED Online. We also reviewed the requirements document for the redeveloped CD-ROM version of OED 2. [1999]

Hosting ITT Notes Contents

Introduction

Dos and don'ts of ITTs

Infrastructural issues

Beyond the initial service

Appendix: hosting for the hurried

Hosting guidance

We provided guidance on the issues surrounding hosting services. [1998]

ITT review

We reviewed the draft Invitation to Tender (ITT) to be sent out to companies to develop and host OED Online. We were also asked to review the graphic design to be included as screenshots in the ITT document. [1998]

Proposal reviews

We reviewed the proposals sent to OUP by the potential site developers. [1999]

"Browser-safe" palette

We provided advice and recommendations on the use of the "browser-safe" palette - we were also asked to check and adjust images from the design company. [1999]

Beta reviews

We reviewed the user-interfaces of the first and second OED Online beta versions. [2000]

Server logs

We ran a half-day session at OUP on web site logs, the problems with log analysers and how to interpret site stats. [2000]

OED Online was launched in March 2000.