News

Substantive changes to the website (structural or formatting changes, new resources, incorporation of new material, or other items) will be presented here in chronological order, with the newest changes first.

2020, July 13--An experimental and rather incomplete multi-access key was developed for all taxa in our region using SAIKS, a javascript- and CSS-based program. It can now be accessed through the bottom-most dropdown item under the "Keys" menu. It needs a bit of work, but in most cases it should return one or a few taxa by selecting a small number of character states. This page specifically has not yet been made "responsive" to fit easily into smaller screens, but it will be shortly.

2020, July 4--A CSS flexbox structure has been adopted for the website. Additionally, a number of fundamental changes have been implemented in the process to move the website to a fully "responsive" state. So far, this has involved three broad sets of changes to format for common screen sizes of laptop and desktop computers with horizontal screen configurations, tablets with vertical screen configurations, and cellphones with vertical screen configurations. More changes will be made in the near future to improve readability and functionality.

2020, June 27--During the last two weeks, a few changes were made to the website to enhance its useability and visual appeal, and to prepare it for modification to a responsive format. The homepage navigation bar was moved to the left side. Also, new fonts–"Libre Baskerville" for header and navigation bar, and "Source Sans Pro" for all other text–replaced the standard "Times New Roman" for improved readability. Headers, subheaders and text paragraphs were also tagged and modified in the style sheet. Rem Burwell and Sam Lockhart worked with Harvey Ballard to complete a manuscript to typify 25 names and basionyms and clarify the use of six unfamiliar names, that was incorporated into the larger "Studies in the vascular flora of the southeastern United States. VI" manuscript just submitted by Alan Weakley and his crew of southeastern botanists to the Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas. The final typification information will be adjusted in the website shortly. A revision of the Violaceae of the southeastern United States, using the current taxonomic concepts in this website, was just completed by Harvey Ballard, Bruce Sorrie, and Alan Weakley, and will soon replace the older treatment in the imminent next edition of Weakley's "Flora of the southeastern United States".

 

Authored by Harvey Ballard on 26 June, 2020; last updated on 13 July, 2020.