Nothing makes as web designers blood curl more than hearing someone remark, “it looks too 1990’s”. Talk about an arrow through the heart. Enter our CAS login page. Over the last couple of months I have been refining the look and behavior of the CAS login page to give it a modern look and also create a stronger visual association with CSU, Chico.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit, when we developed these pages last year there was some heavy 37signals influence that carried through (bright colors, larger type, etc). However, we had a good justification for those decisions. CAS was launch simultaneously with the new Portal so we wanted to grab the attention of everyone clicking through the login. Now, after a year with the new Portal, it was time to make things a little more subtle and increase the connection with the campus.
To strengthen the bond with the universities online brand we adapted a similar background gradient which also helped contrast the white background of the login form. In addition, we included the Chico signature header and grey seal combination from the universities web template system. With the previous version, the only references to CSU, Chico were the Wildcat logo and text Wildcat Login.
Other changes include a crude pop-up div that explains what the username actually is. In addition, we added support phone numbers for Students and Faculty/Staff incase users have problems.
Hopefully the new design will roll out next week after graduation. For the time being, I’ll be tweaking the design and continuously running browser tests.
Without further-ado, CAS Version 2.
