Cascade Style Guide - Overview

Much thought and work were put into the design and look of the Cascade templates and blocks used for The College of Agriculture (CoA) and Indiana State Extension sites and sub-sites.

For example:

• The Purdue Style Guide is based on a lighter choice of color pallet, fonts, branding, and overall visual identity based on Purdue's latest re-brand and style guides.
• Design choices included a primary focus on a responsive "mobile-first" design, which enables web content to display on all devices both big and small.

View page examples to see a visual representation of the homepages for The CoA and Extension which includes most of the Cascade "Block" reusable content sections.

BLOCK GUIDE

page EXAMPLES

tips on arranging page content

Cascade is similar to any word processor software (Microsoft Word) in that basic grammar and text placement follow known standards.

For example:

• Align your textual content to the left side of every Cascade content editor and on any page, event, or news article. This helps your readers scan your content quickly - especially if you use headings. Centered text disrupts the natural flow of reading from left to right and only used when a block's heading is necessary to break and grab their attention.
• Use headings correctly and in the proper order. We have guide on why headings are important to help you better understand what heading are and how to use them properly.
• Use landing pages to get Google searches and readers to you deeper site content. Then use sub-pages to provide deeper and longer information to not overwhelm them and allow them to consume content at their own pace in a logical manner.
• Break or "chunk" content your page content into multiple content editors in needed. This will help you stay organized and make it easier to edit large amounts of content on a page later.
• Don't overuse bold and italic font styles as this means nothing stands out to readers. Also, don't use underlined text on a web page as readers will think this is a URL link they can click.
• Understand if you copy and paste text from any software on your computer that may also copy the fonts and style code from that application into Cascade. However, you can use Cascade's content editor to clear these formats from copied text.
• Used numbered and unnumbered lists to list steps of listed items on a page. This helps readers understand what they can and need to do.

FAQ

• Q: How do I clear text formatting in the Cascade WYSIWYG content editor?
  A: Try this tip if you are having issues copying and pasting text content into a WYSIWYG editor from another source on your computer such as Microsoft Word.
  
  
  • Copy your text from your word processor software source.
  • Choose Edit from the top menu of the WYSIWYG editor and then Paste as text.
  • This will ensure your copied text will not contain fonts or formats from your source.
  
  You can also highlight any formatted text in a WYSIWYG editor and clear formats by:
  
  
  • Highlight some or all of the text in your WYSIWYG editor.
  • Choose Format from the top menu of the WYSIWYG editor then Formats and then Clear Formatting.
  • You can choose Blocks from this same sub-menu and choose Paragraph to ensure proper paragraph based formatting.