About the RSCM website
Welcome to the website for the RSCM. There are notes here on accessibility, some technical notes for those who wish to know how the site is constructed, and a note about future enhancements and possible problems.
Use of the site is subject to disclaimer and copyright notices.
Accessibility
The links immediately above this text provide access to all pages of the site which can be found through just a few "clicks" and in one of two ways:
- Returning to the home page (through the "home" link above) provides you with further links to the main sections of the site. These are provided with drop-down menus that will take you to the mainly-accessed pages.
- Using the site map (link also located above) will give you a listing of all the public pages on the site.
As this site has been designed with full accessibility in mind, we hope that you will find that it works well with your favourite web browser – or however you access the internet. Minimal use has been made of tables.
Keyboard users will note that on inside pages of the site a press of the [Tab] key will highlight a link "Skip navigation"; when this is highlighted a press of the [Return] key will then take you to the beginning of the page content. (Of course if it's a short page you won't notice much difference; try something like the links page instead.)
Downloads
A number of the pages have links to download PDFs, Word™ docs, or audio and video files. These links will commonly look like this:
- download sample file
- download sample file
- listen to this podcast
To view the PDF file you will need a reader such as Adobe Reader freely available for download from Adobe Inc.
Audio files can either be listened to live by "streaming", using players such as Apple's QuickTime player (available for Windows or Macintosh; other players are also available), or they may be downloaded to your local machine for playing at a later time, either from the computer or your MP3 player.
Technical information
We are using PHP to preprocess the pages before they are sent to your browser. Amongst other features provided by PHP is the ability to "include" the header and footer (including JavaScript functions) you see on each page, and the updating of copyright and other dated notices. This helps for ease of maintenance so as to minimize work for our staff and enable us to work on the priorities of education and training. Additionally, variables have been used to save coding time. This coding is invisible to the end user, as the PHP coding is sent to the browser as pure (X)HTML.
Some JavaScript is used to improve functionality, including drop-down menus, the slideshow on the front page, and tabbed panels. However, all content should be readable for those who do not, or cannot, have JavaScript enabled.
The site should be accessible in all browsers and user-agents, having passed the W3C XHTML and CSS accessibility tests.
Future enhancements and current problems
If you experience any problems with the site please contact webmaster(at)rscm.com. Problems of which we are aware include:
- the sitemap is left-aligned in Opera, instead of centred as in FF and IE
- The picture gallery has a repeated thumbnail row indicator panel
User-friendly URLs
Since addresses to individual pages are both long and subject to change as the site is developed, we have introduced user-friendly web addresses (URLs). A server redirect automatically redirects requests for this simple URL to the eventual destination. For example, typing in "www.rscm.com/youngvoices" redirects invisibly to "http://www.rscm.com/education/youngVoicesFestival.php".
A list of these URLs follow, and you are encouraged to use these rather than the specfic page address both for ease of use and in order to save both your time and ours if the address changes. Additions will be made to the list from time to time.
Add the following to "www.rscm.com/":
| simple URL | destination |
|---|---|
| aboutus | About the RSCM |
| areas | Areas in the British Isles |
| areasyllabuses | Area singing award syllabuses |
| cmq | Church Music Quarterly |
| exsultet | A setting of the Exsultet |
| exultet | A setting of the Exsultet (variant spelling) |
| goldaward | Gold Singing Award |
| history | History of the RSCM |
| ireland | Ireland |
| mcw | Music for Common Worship |
| myc | Millennium Youth Choir |
| media | Media information |
| news | News from the RSCM |
| picturegallery | Picture Gallery for the media |
| psallam | Rehearsal notes for Psallam service book |
| scotland | Scotland |
| singingawards | Singing Awards |
| siteinfo | About this website (this page!) |
| sundaybysunday | Sunday by Sunday |
| vfl | Voice for Life |
| voiceforlife | Voice for Life |
| wales | Wales |
| youngvoices | Young Voices Festival |
Likewise, area webpages can be found by adding the name of the area (no spaces) to "www.rscm.com/". For example,
"www.rscm.com/riponandleeds" will find "http://www.rscm.com/uk_ireland/areas/29.php".