Evaluating Websites

The articles on evaluating websites gave a lot of insight on evaluating web sites, and what criteria to use when doing evaluations. From the various sites, it is clear that authorship, currency of the site, objectivity, meeting the intended purpose, supporting their purpose, and using external references are important things to consider when evaluating sites.

This first site that picked to evaluate this week is the Nazareth Area High School web site, hs.nazarethasd.org. I found a lot of problems with this site. First off, the site is not made for monitors using 800X600 resolutions and therefore a visitor, even when using a much higher resolution, must scroll horizontally and vertically view this site. Secondly, there is very little important information that is given on the page without having to scroll; plus a visitor has to page-down 6 times to get to the bottom of the site. The main page also way too many links, and too much unneeded information – it’s just much too cluttered. There is some contrast, but it’s not used effectively; in fact, it’s really difficult to see the contrast since you need to page-down several times to view the page. There’s also no uniformity to the frame used on the left side of the page; some links try to keep the frame to navigate the site, but others are completely different. I also found couple of links that don’t work.

The good things are: that it shows who the authors are (but it doesn’t tell how to contact them); it is pretty current (shows the end of school is here and it makes-note of the 4th of July); and it’s geared towards parents and students.

The other site that I reviewed was the Lower Nazareth Elementary website, lne.nazarethasd.org. This is a much better site than the High School site, but it still has some major issues. It too is not geared towards the 800X600 resolution and therefore one still needs to scroll to get to the pertinent information. One major problem that I found was that when viewing the main page in Firefox, the menus didn’t work. I found the navigation bars a nice feature, but it should really how which submenu you are on when using the menu. Also, many of the links don’t show where the hyperlinks go.

The good things that I found with this site were that it was easy to find who does the site, and how to contact the person. I also liked the use of chalkboard, the graphics, some of the flash animation. It is also up-to-date, and it is definitely geared towards elementary students and their parents.

As far as applying this information to my site, I think that I plan on learning from their mistakes -- especially when it comes to the High School website. I plan on going with a simpler design with not much clutter; and I’ll try to use better contrasts. From the Lower Nazareth Elementary site, I learned that I like the navigation menu and I might use something similar on my site – however, I’ll ensure that it works in IE, firefox, opera, and safari.

Chapters 7 and 8

Chapters 7 and 8 are all about designing a site that looks nice and is easy to navigate.

Interface design is a very important part of your webpage. It can make or break your web site. The interface is how your site looks, and how to navigate the site, and how one interacts with it. To have a nice interface, one needs to have a plan on how their site should look – and start simple and build from there. It’s a common mistake to over-think or over-do the design, so sometimes simple is better.

When designing a web site, one needs to ensure that the site is viewable by many different types of browsers and screen sizes. The site should use a 800X600 resolution, and it’s imperative that the site fits on the screen, horizontally. If you can’t get it doesn’t fit vertically, just ensure that all of the important information is displayed on the web page without having to scroll.

Use good design and styles to make navigation of the site fun and easy. The site should be easy to navigate between the pages quickly and easily with-out confusing the visitor.

Some Dos:

Make it easy to navigate
Use fonts that are easy to ready
Use contracts effectively. Fonts, graphics, and backgrounds should match.

Some Don'ts:

Don’t make the site too cluttered
Don’t over design
Don’t use large graphics that take long to download/view
Ensure you don’t have to scroll the frames
Don’t over-do the frames.

Chapters 9,10 & 12

Chapter 9 was a good review on color and the differences between CMYK (printing) and RGB (monitors/video).It’s very important to use the RGB mode when posting on the web or when the image is being view on a TV/LCD/monitor. Also, CMYK is a reflective color model and RGB is not.

Some things to keep in mind when creating web pages:

1. Use color effectively by using creating contrasts – however this may take a little experience to master this.
2. Use indexing when manipulating images to save space.
3. Don’t over do it when using images. Use a good combination of ppi and color quality to post to your web page. Usually images should be between 72 or 96 ppi and should be able to display in a browser-safe color – although many newer monitors support more than an 8-bit display.
4. If possible, crop images to reduce image size.
   
5. For photo images, use the .jpg format and play with quality to see what works best.
6. For banners or pictures with flat colors, use the .gif format to save the image, and also play with the quality to see what looks the best without having a huge file.

Chapter 10 went over the different file types to use on web pages, and what the advantages and disadvantages were. It discussed the importance of using the right image and how important it was to know about files sizes and how it impacts the viewing of a web page. It also gave good tips on how to make a web page better by:

• using anti-aliasing for better/smoother images
• adding thumbnails, so the person doesn’t have to download a larger image if they don’t want to
• using image maps (a graphic with links on it) so that people with a slow internet connection can navigate the site easily
• adding alternate labels to show graphics will be displayed (also helpful for people with slow internet connections

Note: A common mistake by people is to take digital pictures with a high mega pixel camera, and then to send it to a friend or post it to a web site before compressing the image. This is not good practice, since in many cases email filters will block these large image files. And if the picture is posted to a website or blog, it could take a long time for someone to view the picture. It is good practice to compress the image to a size that will allow the person to view the image in a timely manner, while still getting a "quality" image that looks good.

Chapter 12 went over how important it is to ensure that your web site is easy to read and legible. This is all done by choosing the proper type of font, font size, a font that is cross -platform, and knowing how the web page will appear on various browsers and OSs.

Cascading Style Sheets is quite interesting, and although I'm not sure that I completely understand it, it seems like it's very powerful. I believe that it's used by web designer to easily apply formatting to an entire web site or just individual pages on a web site. I guess it's kind of like a template. It can apply default browser styles, imported styles, linked styles, embedded styles, and inline styles. This form of "programming" can really simplify the tweaking of a web page.