Comments on writing good web pages

Frank E. Ritter

3 November 1997, revised 8 feb 2000

Some Factors

Speed
Colour
Esthetics
Audience
Media: sound, clips, others
Printability
There are many more, see Preece and references
Choosing factors to optimize is what makes this a question of design

Some Tactics

Put up URLs
Sign your work
Keep the site up to date because *you* use it
Be prepared for multiple browsers
Support movement between pages
Provide a map
Support search engines (as appropriate!)
Choose appropriate fonts
Keep fonts clear, viewable, and small in number
Avoid as many known errors as possible
Develop a theory of use
http://www.useit.com/alertbox - tons of examples

Examples

Psychological Soar Tutorial and U. of Nottingham Soar site and a GNU site

Three minimalistic designs

MacSpotLight first page drastically revised since '97.

MacSpotLight Main page , but catches you, which is naught.

The Web Enquirer a currently non-active site

Online books page a big site, showing some attempts to keep things organized

Cognitive architectures an online book/reference aid with search and multiple links

Pirelli awards too slow to load (or abscent)

Peter Lonsdale's set of annotated examples

References

Print

Communications of the ACM, August 1995, 38(8)

Kommers, P. A. M., Grabinger, S., & Dunlap, J. C. (Eds.). (1996). Hypermedia learning environments. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum.

McDonald, S., & Stevenson, R. J. (1996). Disorientation in hypertext: The effects of three text structures on navigation performance. Applied Ergonomics, 27(1), 61-68.

McKnight C., Dillon A. & Richardson J. (Eds) (1993) Hypertext: A psychological perspective.

Shum, S. B. (1996). The missing link: Hypermedia usability research & The Web. SIGCHI Bulletin, 28(4), 68-75.

Turau, V., What practices are being adopted on the Web? IEEE Computer 31(5) (1998), 106-108.

Notes differences between university and commercial sites in terms of image size and html code complexity.

Special issue on web usability (IJHCS vol. 47/1)

URLs about the web, its usage and creating material for it

Alert box: Current Issues in Web Usability, a newsletter by Jakob Nielsen

Color on the Web by Lynda Weinman

SIGCHI Bulletin

Introduction to programming HTML

CERN's guide to writing html

Page with additional pointers

Lynch and Horton at Yale (recently purchased by Microsoft to go with Cambridge)

Notes from Temple U.

Notes from CMU (also not owned by Microsoft)

10 commandments of HTML

webreview.com/pub/at/Usability_Matters a pleasent set of pointers and comments.

Why the web has not been influenced by HCI (?!)

The U. of Nottingham's web guidelines