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

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

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

Redesigned date chart

Focus group web 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

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