Support for Official Brandeis Webpages
Usability for Web Publishers
Websites are useful for many purposes, but what if some people can't read your site? Web editors/designers need to do everything they can to make the Web easy to read and adjustable based on the users needs.
Making a website user friendly is not just making a nice navigation, but also adhering to such standards as Section 508.
There are numerous technologies involved, the main being HTML webpages that hold content and CSS files that contain the design. Structuring a website that keeps design out of the HTML files helps in organzation, maintanence and accessability.
This information was combined from various resources, such as Jakob Nielsen (a guru on usability).
- Page layouts and widths
- Fixed widths designs only look nice at the ideal width. On big monitors with high resolutions a 800px fixed width design would appear like a waste of space. On the other hand a 1024px fixed width design on a monitor with a 800px wide resolution would cause horizontal scrolling. Fluid designs allow for the site to adjust bases on monitor size, resolution and how big the user has the browser window open. It is key to take this into consideration when designing a website.
- Fluid layouts allow for the page to appear nicely at a variet of window widths.
- Text Size
- There is not text size that is perfect for everyone. Some people like viewing text small and others need to have it quite large to be read.
- The way to accomodate this is to write the code to be allow browser resizing functionality to work properly. That said, the default font size should still be something reasonable.
- Text as images
- Many times a design has text saved as an image. This allows for the text to have a font the user may not have on their computer. It also allows for the background to be complicated. Basically it is a way to make sure it looks the way you want it to look. Unfortunately there are numerous problems with this method. The main arguments against it are that text saved as images cannot be resized by the browsers normal text resizing, it adds significantly more bytes than text which can harm download speeds, and it cannot be quickly edited like text.
- Whenever possible use text as text and don't use images.
- Image alt tags
- Alt (alternate) tags defined in images add text to go with the image. This often is displayed when a user hovers the mouse over the image.
- It is important to describe images so people with visual impairment can experience graphical web content. Furthermore the neccesity is increased if the image is also a link (with images off, what is the text of the link--the alt tag).
- Image Size
- Images need to be appropriate for the Web. Some file formats (ie TIFF) are not meant for the Web. A thumbnail of an image should be a small file size and not just resized with HTML or CSS. Resizing the image does not change the file size that needs to be downloaded. If you want to show a larger image, why not link to it from the thumbnail?
- Make sure the image you are posting is an appropriate size for its use.
- Contrast
- Low contrast between text and background can make it difficult for the user to read the text. Check out a color scheme generator that has options to choose what vision impairements you want to account for.
- Make sure that text / background combinations do not make a website difficult to read.
- Non-Standard Links
- It is important to make it obvious what a link is on a page. It is common for links to be underlined, but not neccessary. Contrary, text that is not a link should not be underlined as it would be easily confused for a link. When possible, don't use technologies (ie javascript) that would break a link--approximately 10% of Web users do not have javascript functionality.
- Links should stand out. Regular text should not be underlined.
- Flash
- Newer technologies such as flash may look nice when viewed as it's meant to be, but they are not friendly. Flash does not work on all browsers or devices and causes many accessability issues. Animations (flash or even .gif files) are often viewed as useless.
- Keep the users in mind when designing a site.
- Content That's Not Written for the Web
- Content on the Web should be written for the Web.
- Pages should typically not have horizontal scrolling. Pages should not be excessively long. Text should be broken up into readable chunks.
- No Contact Information or Other Company Info
- In terms of the Web content, it is important to have a clear structure and easy to find information.
- Make sure the content the users need to find is easy for them to find. Site structure and navigation is key.
- Browser Incompatibility
- People use varying browsers on different operating systems. There are many monitor and resolution sizes. These can all affect how website looks to a user. You need to make sure it looks good in many environments, but understand there may be slight differences.
- Test thouroughly and understand the differences between browsers/operating systems/monitors/resolutions.
- PDFs
- PDFs are useful because they take minimal Web skills to get posted online and guarantee how a page looks more so than an HTML page. It should be kept in mind that not everyone likes opening up PDFs (in general it takes longer to load than a HTML page). When posting PDFs it is important to keep file size in mind. If possible make sure the text is saved as text within the PDF and not an image. A nice PDF would be under a megabyte (1mb).
- HTML is preferable to PDFs in many situations. A PDF is useful for a manual that may already exist in print form. When using PDFs, make sure that they are an appropriate file size for the Web.
