intodimensions.com

Here’s an article with some interesting things about web design in higher education.

This post started with me looking at the web page of one school in Horry County and quickly grew into something much larger than what was originally intended. Most of the things I point out here are minor things that could be fixed quickly, but they shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Oh, how messed up it can get sometimes. Take a look at Conway Elementary School’s web site. At least at the time of writing this it’s just a mess of various characters (screenshot). So what went so wrong? Well if you look closely you can spot the words “Microsoft Publisher” there in all the mess. My bet would be that’s at least a contributing factor.

And also look at Pee Dee Elementary. Look at the source code for that page (screenshot) - notice anything? Hint - is there anything missing at the start of the code?

Let’s continue with South Conway Elementary (screenshot). Looks pretty nice, right? Try to highlight the text under the picture of the school - the one that starts with “The mission of South Conway Elementary…” Surprise! It’s saved as a picture. So is the address and phone number information. So what do they do if they would happen to change phone number?

Off we go to Waccamaw Elementary. Look at the code (screenshot). What font is it they’re using? What if I was on a computer that didn’t have “Comic Sans MS”?

What about Homewood Elementary? Again, look at the code, this time the last bit of the code (screenshot). A similar thing has happened over at Socastee Elementary (screenshot).

Aynor High School’s web site, I’m sad to say, has a number of issues. What’s that at the top left of the home page? (screenshot) That picture hasn’t been very nicely treated. Look at the code (screenshot). What’s the title of the page? St James Middle School also has the title problem (screenshot). If we hang around Aynor for a bit and look at Aynor Middle School (screenshot). That’s a pretty nice picture of the school, I think. But doesn’t it load pretty slow? What’s up with that? Try saving the picture. It turns out it’s a 1Mb 1600×697 pixel whopper of a picture (original) but the code is set to display it at 391 x 167 pixels (same is true for St James Middle School where the actual picture is 1632×1232 (original), but the code is set to 408×308, and Green Sea Floyds Elementary where the picture is 2560×1920 (original) but the code is set to 476×295) ). Did someone do this intentionally? Probably not. Look at the code (screenshot). The page is saved from a Word-document. The same sad fact is true for Myrtle Beach Primary (screenshot), St James Elementary (screenshot), and Loris Elementary (screenshot). Loris Elementary, however, manages to display the picture that Aynor High School messed up pretty bad.

When going to Socastee High School’s site, I was at first impressed. It looks good and seems well organized. But looking closer at the top right, it clearly doesn’t display right in Firefox (screenshot). This is funny since the site declares “This site is best viewed at an 800×600 resolution in Netscape”. I would have thought that if it is best viewed in Netscape, it would work fine in Firefox. So let’s try Internet Explorer (screenshot). No, it doesn’t work there either.

Digital Web Magazine:

Web designers have been led to believe that they’re restricted to doing what they’ve always done and should leave the information architecture to the information architects. This does not have to happen.

It’s true that IA and web design is often attempted to be defined and it’s not always easy to see the similarities and differences. This article does a good job in my opinion to discuss those issues.

CIO.com:

Information architects, like myself, spend their days organizing huge messy blobs of information (e.g., most of today’s web sites) so users can find what they need more easily, and so site owners can manage their information more efficiently. Information architects, it’s embarrassing to admit, get excited about things like taxonomies, search engines, site indices, and content maintenance policies. And more than anything, we natter on about how successful sites are the result of planning before implementing, leading us to create site “blueprints” just like real “bricks-and-mortar” architects do.

So you might be surprised to read I am now going to criticize a site for being over-architected. Frankly, I’m surprised too. And this is a site I actually enjoy. But Brint.com, “the Premier Business and Technology Portal and Global Community Network for E-Business, Information, Technology, and Knowledge Management,” makes my head spin with too much of a good thing. Have a look at the site’s main page and you’ll see what I mean.

Okay so the article is really from 2000 but Brint.com hasn’t changed that much since then. It’s an interesting article and what Rosenfeld is talking about can be applied even today for many sites.

Boxesandarrows.com:

In April 2004, Boxes and Arrows sent a set of questions to Steve Krug for an interview to be published in the June edition. What we didn’t know at the time was that Steve is a notoriously slow and methodical writer. Eleven months later, to our great delight, this interview turned up. Thanks Steve!

Take a look at Apple.com’s look over the years.

Want to learn JavaScript? Go to the JavaScript Diaries.

This looks like an interesting alternative to animated GIFs and Flash.

I’ve written before about Google’s automatic news presentation and this morning I noticed something strange again. This time it was concerning the story about MSN’s South Korean web site being hacked some days ago:

So what’s strange here? Well, I’ve never seen South Korea shortened to “SKorea”, but perhaps that’s just something I’ve missed. Then if you look closely at the blue picture of MSN’s site it actually says “MSN.fr” as in MSN’s French site not the South Korean (which is msn.co.kr).

A List Apart has a pretty good guide to designing web pages for small devices like PDAs.

If you’re a WordPress user, Alex King provides a plugin that automatically formats your site to suit small screens. I put it to work on my site and you can see the mobile version if you like.