Working together for standards The Web Standards Project


Michigan State University launched a redesign of its Web site, yesterday.

Designed and developed with best practices that follow Web Standards and Web Accessibiity, the university Web site looks good and validates to the XHTML strict doctype.

The redesign involved the teamwork of the MSU Libraries, Computing, and Technology and MSU University Relations.

Congratulations to everyone involved with the redesign!

Visit Michigan State University’s About the Site and Accessibility sections for more information.

Visit our WaSP Education Task Force section for information, resources, and interviews of others who have worked on redesigns or advocated change at their schools.

Your Replies

#1 On March 15th, 2006 8:56 am David Bailey replied:

Congratulations to Michigan State University on their great new website. As the webmaster of a British institution that has itself recently launched a standards compliant and accessible website, I know what a fun job it is to get the necessary buy-in from Vice Chancellors, Directors and Heads of Schools. Here’s hoping that the WaSP Education Task Force can persuade more educational bodies to follow suit.

#2 On April 7th, 2006 8:10 am Stephanie replied:

Congratualations to Michigan State University for putting together a fabulous website. Just ran the site thru the W3 validator and it passed with no problems. The people over there have alot to be proud of and this is just another great example from Michigan State University and I hope the none compliant schools look to this and see there school needs to be web standards compliant as well.

#3 On April 12th, 2006 1:25 pm Big Red replied:

I WOULD congratulate MSU on their nice redesign, IF it weren’t for the fact that the site is a complete rip-off of the design of Cornell.edu.

It is clearly stated on this page: http://www.cornell.edu/about/site/index.cfm, that Cornell’s current website design was established in 2004, but the similarities between cornell.edu and msu.edu are strikingly similar and there seems to be no credit given to Cornell for the idea or inspiration anywhere on MSU’s website, in fact this page seems to imply that the site is an original design, which is obviously not the case.

Bad form, MSU, bad form.

#4 On November 21st, 2006 10:05 pm TC346: Interactive Media I » Blog Archive » Plagarism or Inspired Design…You Decide replied:

[...] There have been rumblings about MSU’s new site design.  At first, the site was was praised by standards goups for the redesign, and heavily promoted in academic circles.  Now, some people around campus are starting to point out the striking similarities between the new  Michigan State University’s new redesign and Cornell University’s current site. [...]

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