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Week 8
8-Week Shape Up Course
Week 8: Get a Second Opinion

Man smiling widely as he presents his new web page

Get a second opinion and then a third and yet a fourth. The more people that look at your page, the better. Examine your page closely yourself, and then ask for others’ comments. Also check out some web sites on what others want to see and do "see" on your page.

*Scrutinize it
Before you show your page to others, save yourself some criticism and scrutinize the page yourself.
  • Is the spelling correct?
  • Are your links correct?
  • Is your color scheme readable?
  • Could the information be organized better?
  • Do you have an e-mail link so that your readers can comment or ask for more information?

Now have various other people look at your page and give you lots of feedback. Don’t forget to include your departmental peers and students.

*Style Guides
There are some sites on the internet devoted to the "do’s and don’t do’s" of web pages and it’s a good idea
Do:
  • spell correctly
  • include link to main page
  • provide informative descriptions for links
  • use readable color schemes
Don't:
  • announce "Under Construction"
  • use meaningless graphics
  • have broken links
  • have content-free intro pages asking the user to "click here" to enter
to compare your page to their checklist.

David Siegel is considered one of the experts on the web when it comes to designing easy to read pages. You can find his Web Wonk page at http://www.dsiegel.com/tips/ and read about ergonomically correct web pages.

Every style guide will agree that you need to include a link back to your main page. If you have more than one page, a person could easily be directed to a secondary page from a search engine. You need to have a link back to the main page for people who are interested in more information.

*Handicap Accessible
You may not have thought very often about making your page handicap accessible for the blind, but there are some measures you can take to help their read aloud programs interpret your web page better.

First, see what your page looks like in a text-based browser and simply read it aloud. You can either logon to cuok and use the lynx browser by typing lynx at the dollar sign prompt, or go to Lynx-Me at http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~gerald/lynx-me.cgi. Enter your URL and his script will return your page as
The cure for [image]:
Use alternate text for your images. <IMG SRC="graphic.gif" WIDTH=# HEIGHT=# ALT="descriptive text of graphic">
it would look in a text-based browser.

If you have a lot of [image] show up in lynx, you haven’t set up alternate text for your images. This is a must for making your page accessible not just for the blind but also for people who browse with images turned off for faster access. If you have used a graphic for your e-mail link with no alternate text, a blind person would not know how to contact you.

For more information about making your pages accessible, try the Trace Center's Designing More Usable Webpages.


Page maintained by Julie A. Duncan, Information Designer.