Web Printing Continue on Web Usability

Web PrintingContinue on Web Usability • It is a good idea that web sites can provide a printing version and browsing version for the same document.

Content Design • Content is the most important thing on a web site. • Guidelines for the web content: • Concise, scannable, and suitable for online viewing. • Besides confirming essay writing standard, web content writing has its own distinctive style. • Split the content into multiple pages and connect them by links, but each page should still contain a complete topic. • Make the important contents and links to be the first things we see on the screen when the page is first loaded. • Use well-designed headings.

Page Contents Example: Highlight keywords and make text scannable Use bulleted list Keep paragraphs short and concise Use subheadings Navigational links

Page Title • Use good page title. • Syntax: <head><title>My Page Title<title><head> • Page title should be kept between 40 to 60 characters, but still explains the contents well. • Different pages use different page titles. • Page title words should be precise and meaningful, and put the most important word in the front of the title.

Web Text and Documentation • Visibility of web text • Make the text stands out with the surroundings. • Limit the usage of background patterns. • Use fonts that even vision-impaired people can view. • Do not move the text around. • Online documentation: • Make it easy to navigate to different parts of the document. • Use examples to clarify the ideas. • Provide clear step by step instructions if necessary. • Be concise and simple to use. Java 2 online documentation Navigational Features SortedList Example

Multimedia on the Web • Indicated the file size when it required more download time than the standard. • Use still pictures and summaries to help understand what the multimedia objects are about • Minimize graphics generally on every page. If graphics are necessary, use less on the top level pages and relegate the rest to lower level pages. • Use different techniques to reduce the image size: cropping and scaling. NASA Multimedia Site Scaled-down still pictures Summaries Download size

Animation • Minimize the use of animation • Animation should be used for certain amount of time and stop • Criterions for use of animation: • Show continuity in transitions • Indicate the dimensionality in transition • Illustrate change over time • Multiplex the display • Enrich graphical representation • Visualize 3D structure • Attract attention This animation illustrates the building of ChemPen3D molecular model over time

3D Graphic and Audio • 3D on the web • Difficult and hard to use • Error-prone, confusing and poor display • Not supported by commonly used hardware and software • Use 3D graphic when you need to demonstrate a physical object in its solid form • Use of audio on the web • Provide commentary and help • Music promotion • Pronunciation teaching, sound effect for a new event Pronunciation help provided on dict.cn

Web Video • Problems associated with online videos • Poor quality. • Long download time. • Subtitles need special care on the web • Always provide a higher quality clip for download rather than just a streaming video • Most video clips should be less than one minute length • Put up some still pictures, text summary along with a clip that is a condense and shorter version of the original longer video • Segment it into different chapters when a long video must be put on the web, and provide menu, summaries and thumbnails of different segments for user control

References: • Designing Web Usability. Jakob Nielsen. New Riders, Berkeley, California. U.S.A. 2000. • http://www.chempensoftware.com • http://www.nasa.org • http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/ • http://www.useit.com • http://sports.yahoo.com • http://www.ieee.org • http://us.dict.cn

Web Printing Continue on Web Usability