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PBS/KCET:  Chasing the Sun

www.pbs.org/
chasingthesun

 

 
"Chasing the Sun" is a four-part documentary series about the history of commercial aviation produced by KCET for national broadcast on PBS. The companion website expands upon and extends the material in the program by providing extensive text, images, video clips from the show and archival video about historically significant airplanes, innovators and aviation companies. kapow's challenge was to take this extensive content and present it to users in a visually-appealing, easily-navigable manner. In addition to the main website, kapow produced a toolkit that allows local PBS affiliates to produce "Chasing the Sun" mini-sites that share the national site's look-and-feel but are part of the local station's website

Site features include:
 

A decade-by-decade timeline of the 20th century that highlights significant events in aviation history. Text in the timeline is hyperlinked to relevant pages elsewhere on the site.
 

Over thirty-five profiles of significant innovators, aircraft and aviation-related companies mentioned in the series. Each profile features text, images, video clips and links to related websites. Phrases in the text are hyperlinked to related "Chasing the Sun profiles where appropriate.
 

A Web Routes section that offers users a guide to aviation-related websites.
 

A Resources section that presents lesson plans that support the series as well as links to all the external websites mentioned on the site, organized by topic.
 

Online postcards that users can send to their friends. The postcards serve to promote both the website and the show.
 

Information about the series including episode descriptions, biographies of the filmmakers and credits.
 

A toolkit that local stations can use to produce "Chasing the Sun" mini-sites on their own websites. The toolkit includes online postcards and sections for "Ask the Expert," "Local Aviation Resources," and "Local Aviation History."
 

A back-end publishing tool that created the website pages from information stored in a database. The publishing tool allowed the client to add material to the site without touching the html, it automatically linked phrases in website text to other pages of the site and it complied and organized the list of external websites mentioned on the site.

 

 

 
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