COMP3092 Group 4

usability

2005-10-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

The link below gives a list of questions to be asked about a website when assessing the usability. These relate to the site content, site design and the links it incorporates. When the questions have been asked and research gathered a report is generated (this is a 4/5 page summary about the sites usability).

http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/640000/633476/p307-spool.pdf?key1=633476&key2=0090759211&coll=GUIDE&dl=ACM&CFID=57720446&CFTOKEN=84373101

Claire Weyman

Website Accessibility

2005-10-17T10:46:00.000-07:00

Web accessibility refers to the practice of making pages on the Internet accessible to all users, especially those with disabilities.

For example, graphics-intensive pages may be virtually useless to those without high-speed Internet connections. Deaf people, meanwhile, may have difficulty fully understanding pages with audio components, and images without explanatory captions may make web pages difficult for visually impaired users to understand.

When Tim Berners-Lee created the groundwork for the World Wide Web, he expected it to become a community with access for all persons from all levels and parts of society. However, disabled web users still face significant challenges in accessing general-audience web sites. In response to this, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has specified three tiers of guidelines for creating accessible sites: Level A (the most basic accessibility), Level AA, and Level AAA.

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website_accessibility

You can also test websites for accessibility on this website: - http://webxact.watchfire.com/

Regards,
Ian

Seperating Design from Content

2005-10-10T09:53:00.000-07:00

There are a number of advantages of seperating design from content.

One advantage is that it allows you to play with your design until you find something you are happy with without changing any of the content or losing what you have already written.

It also allows you to display the same content in a number of different ways. For example you may want a more exciting and interesting layout for a child user but then for an adult user you may wish to use a more proffesional looking design.

By seperating design from content it can also make it easier to update frequently. It also should allow the pages to load faster and allow you to create pages that can be displayed in all browsers.

David Reid

2005-10-09T03:04:00.000-07:00

Separating design and content is extremely important when creating a website. It is important that the content is easy to read and understand. It is vital that the content is directed at a particular target audience and that the langauge used is unstandable by this audience. Separating the content from the design also enables the web publisher to easily change and update the content without disrupting or changing the design layout of the page.

Likewise the design has to be appealing and suit the content. A design that draws the reader away from the content is a bad design because the concentration of the reader on the content is not at its highest.

www.alistapart.com/stories/separation is a website where the writer is not so sure that the separation of design from content is so important.

Towards the bottom of www.mcu.org.uk/articles/w3capproach.html there is a paragraph explaining how to make the content understandable and navigable.

Michael Cohen, a webmaster and president of an Internet and Design company writes on www.alistapart.com/articles/separationdilemma/ about the dilemma that web designers face to do with content and design (structure).

Many thanks to Miss Weyheyman for publishing her material. After an unexplained absence for the first session it was vital for her to contribute towards the group work.

Regards,
Ian Bateman

What are the advantages and disadvantages of separating design from content?

2005-10-08T10:41:00.000-07:00

What are the advantages and disadvantages of separating design from content?

Using web standards to design websites gives certain advantages, these include allowing the websites to be:
-faster loading
-optimized for search engines
-easier to update
-cheaper in bandwidth cost
-prepared for flawless redesigns in the future
-attractive in all modern browsers
-accessible for people with disabilities or impaired vision

www.alfega.com/expertise/howdesign.htm offers an explanation about “chunking” and the separation of website areas into manageable chunks. This means that when it is time to update, maintain or add to the website this can be done so in spearate chunks and not necessarily by a single person.

I have found an explanation on www.freepatentsonline.com/6199082.html about a multimedia publishing system where the format and content are separated and uploaded to a server by a publisher. This implies that it is an advantage to separate design and content and you can see it is a definite advantage in this case.

“The format used by publishers remains reasonably constant over time, contrasted with the content which changes on a regular basis. As content changes on a regular basis, the publisher uploads only the new content to the server. When clients or customers access the server's content, the server downloads the format and content to the user's computer. Subsequent downloads of content transmits only the content since the format is cached on the customer's computer after the first download. If the publisher desires to change the format at a subsequent time, the next download of content by the customer downloads both the new layout format and the new content. This publication scheme minimizes the transmission of data in bandwidth limited environments.”

Hope this is useful start for the rest of the group to build upon with their research. It appears there are many more advantages than disadvantages to seprating design and content.

Claire Weyman

First post

2005-09-26T02:12:00.000-07:00

Just a post to get us started