Improvements to AEF web site

23rd September, 2009

The ‘A-Z’ section of our web site has been changed.

The ‘A-Z’ is AEF’s online databank where detailed information on various aspects of aviation and the environment can be found. There are 14 subject categories and some of these are further divided into sub-categories.

When the site was set up, material could be entered on the A-Z as either ‘news’ items or ‘articles’. The idea was that news items would be short and topical while articles would be longer and longer lasting. There were separate lists for news and articles, each in chronological order.

In practice we have found the distinction between news and articles to be very blurred. We often put up detailed information with a news story and the separate listings for news and articles meant that visitors may have missed the lastest information. We have therefore combined news and articles into a single list of items.

After the list of news/articles we now show a list of ‘documents’. These are files such as Word and PDF documents associated with the subject category.

The documents have always been accessible via links from news/articles, but now visitors can look at them direct. But be mindful – documents in isolation can be misleading. All the documents we load onto the site have an associated news/article item. That item links to the document and provides important context.

As mentioned above, some A-Z categories (the biggest ones) have sub-categories. Where this occurs, all documents belonging to that category are listed after the news/articles for the full category. Sub-category listings do not show any documents, even though they there may be documents relevant to that sub-category.