Web Site Creation and Evaluation
Things to think about when you create your own Web-site
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Choices to make |
Why? |
Advice |
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Frames No Frames |
Older browsers cannot view frames |
Experiment with both |
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Short amount of text per page Long amount of text |
Viewers tend not to scroll down |
One to two screen-fulls per page |
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Text colour |
Viewers must be able to read it Green on red background is difficult to read |
Light (white) shows up on dark Dark (black, blue) shows up on light (white, yellow) |
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Background colour |
Colours are brighter on Macs than on PCs |
Avoid very bright colours |
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Graphics No Graphics Graphic format |
Graphics take longer to load Graphics make the web attractive |
Use a picture gallery Use decorative page dividers Use low resolution to keep size down Use GIF images |
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Alternative text |
For browsers which do not show graphics or have them turned off |
Give a short description of the picture |
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Sounds No sounds |
Sound files are usually large |
Try to create your own recording |
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Links outside the site (remote links) No links |
Viewers may be distracted from your site Viewers love to visit sites you recommend |
Check that the links work |
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Links within the site |
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Link each page to the Home page at least |
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Animation No animation Animation format |
It may be annoying Older browsers cannot view animation |
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Meta tags No meta tags |
Search engines find these |
Edit the HTML code Within the <HEAD> tag insert <META NAME=”description” CONTENT=”This site has information on mathematics”> or <META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”algebra, mathematics”> |
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Publicise Not publicise |
‘Unpublicised’ web-sites may not be seen by search engines You could submit your site to a search engine |
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Author identified Author not identified |
Do you wish to be known as the author? |
Do not put personal details on the Net |
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Authenticity of information References No references |
Are you providing accurate, verifiable information? |
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Site history |
Information can go out-of-date |
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e-mail contact No contact |
Do you wish to be contactable? |
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Copyright awareness |
There are laws about copyright |
Do not use material produced by others as if it was your own Get relevant permissions |
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Download time awareness |
Viewers will not wait for slow downloads generally |
Keep pages short |
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Variation of browser awareness |
How will the site look on Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator or other browser? |
Try to use different browsers to view your own site |
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State the purpose of your web-site Not state the purpose |
Personal site? Educational? Fictional? Factual? Promotional? |
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Build off-line Build on-line |
Web creation tools are often provided online but it takes time and time costs money to stay on-line! |
Try some site-builders e.g at http://www.tripod.lycos.com/build |
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Use specialized web-creator package Use non-specialised package |
Good sites can be created using relatively simple text-editors such as Microsoft Word or similar |
Use the ‘Save as Web-page’ or ‘Create as Web-page’ option and then check it on your browser |
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Site design and structure Page linkage Page layout |
Consistency of page lay-out helps viewers |
‘Storyboard’ your site Plan the links Decide on your template or use one provided by a ‘wizard’ |
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Have a look at |
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Look at other pages for Evaluation tips |
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Page created by Neil Hallinan Reviewed: 14 Nov 2001