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A-Z Dynamic Listing

A new feature to the Drew University website is the A-Z listing.  Although it required a bit more planning and development, we decided to create a database-driven A-Z web application in order to supply the best ease-of-use for the end-user, as well as easier link tracking for the administrator.

The basic interface shows what letter you're currently looking at, displays navigation links to select a letter, and a "suggest a link" feedback form.  Each set of links is loaded dynamically using AJAX in order to minimize the amount of time users spend waiting for page loads.  The "suggest a link" form also uses AJAX in order to keep the user on the page even after having submitted data.

On the administrative side, the administrator is presented with a listing of all the links, as well as "aliases."  Aliases allow us to have multiple listings for a single object (i.e. "sports", "athletics", "rangers athletics", etc ...) that all use the same URL.

Because of this, we can update the URL for all links in the A-Z listing simultaneously by changing the parent's URL.

For more information, please see the Drew University A to Z Listing at http://www.drew.edu/atoz.aspx.