The Ocean Optics Web Book is a continually developing community resource for optical oceanography. Their website is the key component to their mission, which is to have a web-based, dynamically growing, community resource that addresses both the education and reference needs of the broad optical oceanography and ocean color remote sensing communities and that will be freely accessible to all.
Ocean Optics Web Book needed to rebuild their site that was using an outdated and broken CMS to a new CMS called Concrete 5. The most important part of the project was building a custom plugin that would render LATEX code for complicated mathematical expressions into HTML that would be easily readable in regular web browsers but also ones that require adaptive technology for the visually impaired.
Ocean Optics Web Book’s new website operates like an open textbook or reference material that is sectioned off by chapter. Integral to its showcased information was the ability to use mathematical and scientific special characters, full resolution graphics and resources that linked to appropriate sources and publications. Pulling the site together was a search bar which allows the user to find exactly what they are looking for.