This page describes something of writing for the Information Age, and may
be helpful for those preparing web pages for the first time, especially
when done in behalf of a government agency, or other public information
source.
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Notes About Terms Used
In this draft style sheet we make the following distinctions:
BROWSER - The software (usually Netscape, Internet Explorer
or Mosaic) that is used by your desktop computer to browse through the
web and display selected pages.
READER or SURFER or USER or VISITOR - The person
who
is searching for and reading web pages.
BOOKMARK - Used to refer both to internal MS WORD bookmarks
(which become anchors for internal transfers within the same document),
and
to Netscape bookmarks that keep track of URLs the surfer has visited (and
wants to keep track of). We try to use the term BOOKMARK/FAVORITE to distinguish
the latter. In a penultimate draft we will try to clean this up a little.
HYPERTEXT or HTML - is Hypertext markup language. It consists
of the contents of your page, in plain text that is "marked up" with tags
that will tell a hypertext viewer (such as a web browser) the structure
of what you have written. Structure (as will be seen below),
deals with whether a line is a heading, a sub-heading, an ordered or unordered
list item, etc.
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Planning for and Management of
On-line Information Exchange
The essence of Government-sponsored information exchange (or any public
information exchange) is participation and follow-up. If we merely want
to provide a bulletin board service on which to post information for readers,
we will have missed one of the truly great opportunities of the Information
Age. By planning to encourage the active participation of readers in an
information exchange, we can greatly improve our agency's stolid
image, while at the same time expanding the flow of good ideas for substantial
improvements in most of our activities and programs. Electronic information
flows should be based on interaction, hypertext linking, navigation, search
facilities, and connections to other online services and continuous updates.
These are the significant features which separate web pages intended for
information exchange, from those posted as brochureware.
In this context, when we plan the development of a website, we can benefit
from considering the kinds of conversations it will foster, the
kinds of follow-up it will require, and the kinds of changes it will encourage.
We also need to consider the related information (see the Linking
and Navigation section below), how it will all tie together, and the
impacts that will create. Remember, we are not the only publishers any
more. Others will publish related information, some of it helpful, some
unhelpful. At some point, all this information will be linked
together very conveniently so everyone can be fully informed as never
before. We need to be careful to consider how our information, linked
together with the other information, will help or hinder our reader
community's development. We need to be sure we have the resources, and
that we have done our homework so that we are able to provide the correct
and complete information, and in the timely manner which will be most helpful.
At the same time, in a government agency, we want to foster active participatory
democracy in ways that assure that the outcome will appropriately reflect
that participation. These matters will require careful forethought, planning
and integration in times of scarce resources. Government is behind the
curve in many areas of on-line information exchange. We need to be actively
engaged now
in developing the skills at every level and in every
department so that we are ready with an effective, planned and balanced
response (delivered by an experienced staff) when the electorate begins
using on-line means in significant numbers. We cannot afford to wait
until our residents demand these on-line services and facilities: the learning
curve is too steep, the demands reach into every corner of the enterprise
and into every level, and the equipment and networking infrastructure are
not, by any means, overnight placements.
The section "Before you start"
below (and the rest of this paper), contains additional planning and management
ideas to be considered.
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Writing for the Information Age
Writing for the Information Age, and more specifically for the World-Wide
Web and other on-line media, will require significant changes in writing
strategies for most authors. All authors need to know that readers view
on-line content very differently from the way they view print media. When
writing a letter, memo, report or other paper, a writer has traditionally
had complete control over how the material was presented on the paper and
at least some influence over the order in which it will likely be read.
S/he has a large degree of control over (or at least an understanding of)
the intended and likely audiences. S/he has also had the luxury of focusing
on a narrow segment of the subject matter, when needed.
In writing for an on-line
medium, and for web publishing in particular, writers need to keep in mind
at least the following:
On-line content readers do not read in the conventional sense, rather,
they scan or skim the material, searching for the particular material they
need right at the moment. See Jakob
Nielson's Alert
Box columns "How
Users Read on the Web" and his much more comprehensive "Writing
for the Web."
That the web (and the Internet generally) is a user-driven system in which
the user requests what s/he wants. It is therefore quite a departure from
the publisher-driven systems of print and broadcast media (and even less
formal publications) with which we are familiar. These are sometimes called
"user-pull" and "publisher-push" philosophies (see below).
A very different mind-set is required for most writers to switch from "publisher-push"
to "user-pull" in all respects of information exchange;
That you will have little control over many of the details of how the information
is presented to the reader (remember, the user controls fonts, font sizes,
screen size, what fits on a line, the presence and placement of graphic
images, etc.);
That your pages will reach a world-wide audience encompassing readers with
a very wide diversity of educational levels, cultures, heritages, beliefs
and traditions;
That you will have virtually no control over where the reader will start
reading the document, how much detail s/he will find useful or helpful,
or what fragements of your page s/he will use (and perhaps pass on to others);
That you will have no control over the copying of the document, the forums
in which it will be displayed or the associated comments/praises/criticisms/ridicule
with which it will appear in those forums; and
That you need to take time to link
your document to (and from) the related material to gain the significant
efficiencies of on-line information exchange, and to be seen as a helpful
information provider.
Remember that this world-wide system of interconnections only works if
all kinds of equipment and systems can be hooked up to it (both for input
and for output). As a writer, you can never fully anticipate who will see
your work. And you will absolutely never know what equipment every reader
has for viewing it. You know nothing of screen sizes, fonts or font sizes,
line widths, or the availability of color or graphics. You don't even know
if your reader is from a culture where writing is traditionally displayed
from left-to-right, or right-to-left. Hypertext, the language of the world-wide
web, is intended to take care of all the formatting and layout of your
document, using settings which are the preferences of the reader.
The genius of the hypertext model
is that you are providing the contents (as writers have always
provided); and you are also providing the structure, but
not the format or layout of the document. The
format and layout are the responsibility (and the preference) of the reader.
It is the reader's equipment, network connection and circumstances which
largely determine how the material will be presented. Since the author
could never anticipate each case, there is great advantage in a system
which leaves these considerations to the reader, and provides the facilities
to satisfy his/her preferences. It is also consistent with the "user-pull"
(as opposed to "publisher-push") philosophy of the Information Age. It
is a great struggle for most authors to maintain the separation of these
two concepts when they start to write for the Information Age. It is also
difficult to always keep in mind that the reader's equipment may not permit
the display of any of the graphics you included in your document. Furthermore,
the whole thing is complicated when the publisher is selling something
or feels a strong responsibility to teach the reader. In that context,
of course, we all have a responsibility to teach and enlighten. It may
be helpful to see yourself, however, not as a grade-school teacher with
stick in hand, but more as a doting grandparent, offering your sound advice
to your students on their own terms, at their own pace and according to
their own preferences.
To over-simplify for a moment, the structure has to do
with the order of the presentation, what lines will show up as headings,
sub- headings, ordered and unordered lists, etc.; whereas the format
has
to do with what fits on a line, with fonts and font sizes and colors, whether
the graphics will appear at all, and if so, where they are positioned with
respect to the text, etc.
The whole question of the distinction between "structure" and "format"
is clouded by the fact that not everybody recognizes its importance. Those,
in particular, who have something to sell, and who want to impose their
format on the reader, often use measures which largely defeat the intent
of "reader-pull" hypertext. Each author must come to grips with where s/he
fits in the spectrum between fully "reader-pull" and the old "publisher-push."
In addition to the fact
that the reader's equipment is unknown to the author, there is a philosophical
component to this question of "reader-pull" vs. "publisher-push."
In
the Information Age, the power of selection has been transferred to readers
(and away from publishers) in fundamentally important ways. Readers are
empowered to seek after information from sources they trust and believe.
Publishers, on the other hand, see much stiffer competition as everybody
becomes a publisher in some sense, and as the traditional news media are
supplanted by the blogs. Much more, publishers need to earn
the
trust and confidence of their readers. The effects of this shift are to
democratize and empower readers in every stratum of society. Readers thus
become much more self-reliant in learning, for example. And publishers
who link together all the related material in convenient ways add value
to their offerings that readers will remember and seek out.
There are important implications in this "user pull" world for authors
and others. Whereas before authors were mainly concerned with creation
of (more-or-less complete) linear structures, this shift will require them
more and more to focus on smaller more modular structures which can be
pieced together into coherent information packages. In some cases, authors
will be involved in the packaging; in other cases, users will simply collect
and package the modules themselves (or provide value to other users by
so doing). In yet other cases, authors will make a shift from delivery
of packaged information (traditional authors) to delivery of information
access pathways (traditional librarians). All of these shifts will require
significant changes in the established mindsets of publishers, authors,
librarians and others. [See Telleen's paper "IntraNet
Methodology: Concepts and Rationale,"specifically, the section "Users,
Authors, Brokers and Publishers." See also their White
Papers and Info on Intranets and website development.]
"Whereas the communication process has in the past typically implied an
assumption that the message sender had more information than the message
receiver, now the relationship is effectively reversed."
.
"The one with control is not the one with the message but the one
with the mouse."
These quotes come from John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas, "From
Movable Type to Data Deluge," originally from the January 1999 edition
of "The World and I"
magazine for educators. This is a very insightful article dealing with
the similarities (and contrasts) between the development of the printing
press in the mid 1400s and that of the Internet in the latter 1900s. The
printing press allowed for the repeatability of putting the same information
in front of many readers relatively cheaply. Now the Internet not only
makes everybody a publisher, but allows for the customized repeatability
of information in substantially unlimited quantities over unlimited distances
in virtually no time--all of it under the control and initiative of the
reader, and at a microscopic fraction of the cost of books or other printed
matter. The printing press gave rise to European nationalism by focusing
attention on regional languages; but the Internet is fragmenting nationalism
and democratizing society by focusing attention on ideas and agendas that
transcend mere national boundaries.
Another aspect of "user pull" is that we want to cater to the user's need
to identify early whether this page contains what he wants or not. We
do that, in part, by "front-loading" the document with the big picture,
conclusions, etc., rather than the more traditional background and context.
These can come later, in the details of the page. By "front-loading" [see
"Writing like a Journalist" below] we also
pave the way for automated agents to scan the page reliably. Keep in mind
that blind people, those with low vision, etc., cannot scan the page visually
to capture the essence of it in that first instant. If this "big picture"
information is at the beginning, their agents, be they braile interpreters,
speech synthesizers, or what have you, will be able to provide (right at
the outset) the information their owners need. While the numbers of people
using agents is small at present, it will not be long until most of us
are using automated agents to seek out useful information while we sleep.
Pages already using this "front-loading" technique will not have to be
revised to receive proper attention when agents are on the prowl routinely.
Jim Sterne
of Target Marketing
had posted an article "Promote and Deliver" in the December 1998 issue
of CIO Web Business magazine which was aimed at web marketers. Although
his strong emphasis is marketing, the main thrust applies to all providers
of on-line information:
"give them what they want, or somebody else
will." In government, we might say "give them what they want, or
somebody will be elected who will."
Another article in the same issue,
"Have it Their Way" provided a similar emphasis. Both articles contain
a number of good hints about the convenience of on-line information displays,
particularly as they relate to the visitor's ease in reaching the customer
service department or help desk. If your "web server is dishing up pages
24/7, customers want to know why they can't reach a service rep at 2 a.m.
The Web never sleeps, so why should the customer service department?" In
all these cases, applicability to government, health, education and other
services is as obvious as it is to business.
Website Usability, Usability Design and Usability Engineering
are all terms that describe how useful, usable and convenient your website
is for visitors, the degree to which you have used User-centered Design
(UCD) in its creation and the degree to which you understand your visitors'
expectations, behaviors, and preferences. Keith
Instone has posted a collection of links and accompanying information
about human factors, user interface issues, and usable design specific
to the World Wide Web. His Usable
Web adds value to the links by providing descriptions, multiple organizational
schemes (by date, by site, by topic) and custom search engine queries."
Keith posts a number of papers and links describing User-centered Design
Principles, a very good set of Topic Descriptions, and much more. He does
it mainly as a project of passion, he says. I found the quality to be consistently
high.
Jakob Nielson's
Alert
Box column "User-Supportive
Internet Architecture" provides some good discussion about the "ideology
of the Internet," and that it derives from a time now past. He points out
that we now need a "more utility-enhancing, human-centered ideology" with
more realistic assumptions and better facilities which emphasize convenience
to the user.
As a government entity,
our role as a publisher is to provide sound, accurate, timely and convenient
sources of information that are reliable and accessible
to everyone, and that are linked in such a way that most readers can navigate
quickly to what they want, finding only as much detail as they want at
that moment (easily skipping over detail needed at other times, or by other
readers), and that are linked
to the related material extensively. Remember, some readers will come
to your page wanting the information that starts at the beginning and covers
the "whole story" you have presented. Others will want only a fragment
of the information (sometimes a fragment that is not at all important to
your intent in writing the piece). As authors, our focus needs to be on
a convenient structure that lets readers quickly meet their needs.
If we do that (at the expense of spending very little time, effort and
other resources on defining specific formats),
then we will be serving our citizens in the best way, helping to foster
the openness and increased particpatory democracy we are all seeking.
A good web page for conveying information is read, not like a
novel, but like a map. Success is not measured by how many visitors it
attracts, but rather how many readers quickly find what they want. The
reader first needs to know if he has the right map (title and table of
contents); then he needs to be able to quickly reach the fragment he wants
today
(links
from descriptive table of contents). When he gets there, he needs to get
to some of the footnotes for the detail he wants
today.
Finally,
he needs links to related and background information available from others
that is outside the scope of your article. Both material with greater detail,
and material providing the overall context, philosophy, etc., are required.
You never know which way he is going. An excellent website dealing with
these aspects of web page creation is called "Good
Documents," originally created by Dan Bricklin of Trellix
Corporation [cookies (cookie
caution)]. Notice how the "Good
Documents" website is organized and presented. It contains sections
on philosophy, where/how to apply, samples, comments from others, related
sites and much more.
See Also: Purdue University's On-line
Writing Lab (OWL) and its very good index of Writing-Related Resources."
See also: "Editing
for the Web," by Thom Leib {lieb@towson.edu} .. [direct
e-mail] of Towson
University in Maryland. It is an excellent piece dealing with web writing
and journalism, page layout and design, jobs in web publishing, and much
more.
See also: "E-
write," by Marilynne Rudick and Leslie O'Flahavan, posting their writing
suggestions and course offerings along with a bunch of good examples of
on-line writing and e-mail messages. Their "Web
Writing" article hits all the main points to know in creating a good
website, and provides several current examples (with the reasons each was
chosen). They also publish a free newsletter. Lots of good stuff here,
especially for those new to writing for the on-line world.
See also: Penn State's World
Campus distance learning initiative offers a World
Campus 101 distance learning course (an excellent on-line course, free
to anybody with an Internet connection and a browser. As part of that course,
they post a short but very helpful page "General Tips on Writing" which
gives tips on outlining (or as they call it: pre-writing), thesis statements,
and the actual writing of an essay or paper. This is definitely a worthwhile
short list of suggestions for web page writers.
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Before you start
First, check with the maintainer of any web pages with which yours are
intended to be integrated. This will make the website look like a planned
whole.
.
It is worth taking time to formalize some definitions:
Define your purposes in establishing an on-line presence. Satisfy yourself
that they can be integrated with the overall website's purposes.
Define the benefits you wish to achieve. Satisfy yourselves that you have
a plan which will deliver those results, and that the required resources
are available now, and in the future.
Define your audiences. Satisfy yourselves that you understand the implications
of participation in an interactive
exchange with those audiences (and a variety of other visitors) in
an on-line medium. The Yale
C/AIM Web Style Guideidentifies several classes of audiences and
their preferences.
.
Be satisfied (particularly
department administrators) that you have the resources and the commitment
to maintain all of the pages which you publish on the web. We are probably
better off never to have published a page than to tell our visitors (either
with stale or incomplete information, or with inoperative links) that we
were unable to keep it current, relevant, complete and useful. This question
is not nearly as simple as just removing stale pages, either. See "Changing
and Deleting Pages" below. Moreover, maintaining the currency of the
information is a relatively small part of the costs of the care and feeding
of on-line information exchange systems. Remember that in the on-line world,
visitors expect to provide feedback. When they send you a message (or a
query or a suggestion) it will often be after they have read your web page,
and they will often want to know about things you deliberately left out
because you were not yet ready to define them. They will be expecting a
complete and thoughtful answer (usually in less time than you have to develop
a good one); and sometimes they will also let you know that the information
should have been provided on the web page initially. The point here is
about being prepared to tell the whole
story, and then doing it.
.
Think in terms of making
web page creation and maintenance a part of most jobs in your department.
While initially you may wish to start with one person doing this activity,
you will quickly want to make it a routine part of every job that creates
and maintains the information your department issues. Having A do B's web
pages makes no more sense than having A write B's letters or FAXes, or
make their phone calls. Web page creation and maintenance requires only
the training to use another text editor (one that is very similar to WORD,
at that); and only the person responsbile will develop the real ownership
that is required to keep it current,
link
it to and from the related information, etc.
Remember, it is the interactivity of the exchanged information and the
linkages to the related information that distinguish helpful web pages
from mere brochureware.
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See also our page of help for
HTML, especially the section on creating
a web page. There is a reference there to Eric Tilton's paper "Composing
Good HTML," particularly its section "Document Style Considerations"
provides some interesting insights about the use of HTML to provide a device-independent
way of describing information. Tilton emphasizes the importance of marking
up a document so that your information is labeled as what it is instead
of as how it should be displayed. [Paradoxically, the page does not have
a table of contents (!)]. The point here is that HTML is intended to describe
the structure of your page, not how it should be presented to
your reader. You could profitably spend a week or two just looking around
at HTML primers and style sheets, and forming opinions about what constitutes
a good web page, and how it should be constructed for the best presentation
on your reader's screen or paper (recognizing that you have only limited
control of that aspect of its ultimate use).
.
Jakob Nielson
has some terse advice for writing for the Web: "Be
Succinct! (writing
for the Web)." He adds other insights about nested headings, and writing
in "coherent chunks," too.
.
Jakob Nielson
also has some very good advice about Cascading Style Sheets. His paper
"Effective
Use of Style Sheets" describes a few dos and don'ts and provides links
to related resources.
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Picking web pages to begin with
Define the overall hierarchy of your pages. Decide in advance, what pages
you will publish, where they will fit, how they will relate to each other
and to the pages published by other departments. Consider the kinds of
interactivity they will foster, and be sure you (and others?) are prepared
with follow-up material and resources that will provide a credible response
to queries, etc. When new pages are added, it will then be clear where
they go, what they should be linked to (and from) and how the follow-up
will be handled.
.
Define how each selected page fits with your purposes, benefits to be achieved
and audiences to be reached (see "Before
you Start" above), and how it fits with the related material. Refine
the foregoing as needed to keep pace with developments, changes in strategy,
etc. This will help everyone to stay on-side, and add to the overall coherence
of your developing website.
.
Select web pages whose content is fairly stable and which have long term
interest to others. Documents which need to be updated every week will
attract a lot of maintenance effort, and can be easily justified when they
are already being updated for other purposes. Documents which give rise
to questions and encourage feedback will require appropriate resources
to handle the feedback effectively. To begin, some departments with limited
resources will want to generate a web presence which tells their story
with a minimum of on-going maintenance and follow-up.
.
Try hard to integrate the preparation of web pages into the established
work flows in place of existing or separate paper-based procedures.
One department, for example, now posts Agendas and Minutes of their meetings
on the web. They no longer separately prepare hard copy of these documents
for distribution. Rather, they prepare these documents for posting on the
web, and print copies from the web only as necessary for hard copy
distribution. In the longer term, they can simply advise users that these
documents are on the web, and that they can print the information from
that source if it is needed in hard copy. More and more, as we post information
on-line, we will need to consider reducing the costs of also preparing
separate paper-based editions of the same information. By making the web
pages so they can be printed by the users as an option, we may be able
to smooth the way for future reductions of these costs. In some cases,
of course, we will be able to eliminate the separate paper-based costs
as soon as the information is made available on-line. That would be the
ideal.
.
Avoid picking pages which are likely to suffer from neglect. We are quite
a bit better off with no web page on a subject than we are with a stale
or out-dated one. In the on-line world, the neglect shown by an enterprise
is more noticeable and significant than it might be in other less-immediate
contexts.
.
Pick pages where you can tell
the whole story. If you only have time and resources to present the end-point
of some subject (particularly an advanced subject), it will generate a
lot of questions, answering which will keep you busier than if you had
written the whole story in the first place. And if you choose to ignore
questions, you put the City's name and goodwill in jeopardy. It is always
a good question to ask: "Will this page generate a lot of questions?" If
it will, consider expanding it to reduce the incidence of questions, or
publishing it in some other medium where there is substantially lower expectation
of interaction between readers and authors.
A corollary to the "whole story" dictum, by the way, has to do with your
pages about the Internet and the Information Age. When writing on these
and related subjects, be sure to start a the beginning and deal with the
subject thoroughly. The popular Internet is only a few years old, and its
usage is growing at a rapid pace. What that means is that, on the average,
fully half your audience has been on-line only a few years or less; and
fully three- quarters has less than ~5 years' experience. Take a moment
to give them the benefit of your good suggestions. (Then, use lots of headings
and a good table of contents so the more experienced ones can still find
what they want quickly).
.
Consider selecting information that will expand participatory democracy
rather than suppressing the need for interaction, follow-up and response.
The facilities of the Information Age provide us with very significant
opportunities to expand "customer listening" and active participation by
the electorate in everything we do. Let's plan to be among the first to
seize these opportunities for the development and improvement of our community.
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Style Conventions and Standards
In this draft we offer guidance and suggestions for new web authors. The
page is neither definitive nor authoritative. Some items are more important
than others. Some are essential; others are preferences; still others are
in between. Guidance is offered with the "why's and wherefore's" to the
extent of the author's current understanding, with references to a few
convenient sources, with the assumed bias of a government information source
and under the overall guidance of the entity's purposes in mounting an
on-line presence. Additional information about the intent and applicability
of these guidelines may be found in the Preface
to this page.
As questions are encountered which are not answered here, new authors
are encouraged to suggest that both the questions and their answers be
added. This will benefit all future beginners.
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Graphics:
We are still in the stone age of graphics (and audio/video) transmission
and the compression techniques which will ultimately help us onto the information
highway with pictures, sounds and movies. Plain text has been compressed
adequately since the beginning; but a great deal of work remains to be
done for graphics, sound and video. Until the new compression techniques
for graphics, sound and video develop somewhere past the bronze age, we
are going to be stuck with extraordinarily large file sizes (and long load
times) to convey very little information. For now, in order to compensate
for these virtually unmanageable file sizes (and their long load times),
we need to use graphics, sounds and videos sparingly, and only where they
really deliver for us. For documents being distributed to readers of all
sorts, valid cases of pages with large graphic images appear to be relatively
few and far between.
.
Start by keeping graphics to a manageable size:
The foremost thing to always remember about graphics is that some of your
readers will not have the equipment to display graphics at all. Those readers
will see the text "[image]" in their document where you have included the
most extravagantly-concocted graphic images. At some point, you always
need to proofread your page without the images to see how it will look,
and to visualize the kind of impression it will make. Keep in mind, also,
that the most experienced and sophisticated web users often use a non-graphics
browser when searching for information in order to eliminate the backgrounds
and to expedite the loading times (especially when they are experiencing
network delays). In such cases the graphics are never loaded with
the text. [Remember the value of publishing pages which are seen as valuable
by the Professor Emeritus
... this may be one of your good opportunities to make a favorable impression,
and gain the significant benefits.
:-) ]
Graphics pretty up a page; but we need to be seen to be helpful to the
web surfer with a slow connection, a busy network or a less-than-current
browser. Probably a few Kb of images is plenty for a web page. [I know,
it's too low: let's negotiate]. Keep in mind that it is the load times
associated with these large files which will quickly exhaust the patience
of your visitors. One rule of thumb is that you will lose 20% of your remaining
audience for every 10 seconds of loading time required by your pages. At
a standard 28.8 Kbaud modem speed, 10 seconds only allows you 25-30 Kb
of content per page. Add the file size of your page to the sum of the sizes
of all the graphic images, and make a comparison. If your visitor is working
when the network is busy--when is the last time you saw your modem running
at rated speed?--double the load times for a start (and then be aware that
three-quarters of Internet users are running 28.8 Kbaud or slower modems).
It doesn't leave you much room for graphics if you want to say something
and still retain, say, at least three-quarters of your readers. Graphics
are simply your biggest enemy. Be sure they deliver in benefits everything
that they cost.
Jakob Nielsen
has posted interesting findings about how much users pay attention to photos
on your website. His "Photos
as Content" blurb points out that his eyetracking studies have shown
that some types of pictures are simply ignored, while the ones that are
deemed relevant to the content are scrutinized. If the ignored graphics
contribute significantly to the loading time, they serve only to drive
away some of your viewers. There is clearly no point in that.
If you can tastefully use the same graphic image more than once, or on
several of your pages, do so. Most browsers maintain internal copies of
the graphics rather than requesting them anew from the web server. Thus,
these graphics can be displayed the second and subsequent times substantially
for free. Since it is the URL of the image that the browser stores and
checks, the second reference to a graphic image is fetched from the desktop
computer's memory even if the request is issued from a different page.
Assure that you use the Alt="text description" parameter on all images
(especially those with text in them). Remember that many users deliberately
turn off images so they can obtain information more quickly. If your image
provides information, or helps with navigation, then the "Alt=" option
is mandatory, of course. When you include the Alt="text description" parameter,
the browser without graphics capability is programmed to pick up your "text
description" and display it in place of the graphic image. If the browser
has graphics capability, then the "text description" is ignored (unless
the graphic image is unavailable, garbled or turned off).
.
After making your page presentable without the graphics, review again the
costs of including them and satisfy yourself that the value they add is
justified (both by the delay to readers who wait them out, and by the loss
of readers who are unwilling to wait).
.
Warn your readers of large pages, weather its the graphics or other content
that makes them large. Any file over 20-30 Kb should contain a warning
at least at the links where it might first be selected. Keep in mind, however,
that if you put a size warning on every link to a page, you are creating
a maintenance headache every time the page grows by another 10 Kb.
.
Jakob Nielsen
posts a page entitled "Response
Times: The Three Important Limits," which contains some interesting
commentary (a three minute read) about response times generally, with specific
notes about graphics impact on web page response times, and what it means
in loss of readers.
[Return to Table of Contents for this
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Use of Advanced HTML:
Be very cautious of your use of "advanced" HTML features, especially forms,
frames, etc. Forms require cgi-scripts running on the server; and tables
and frames can look pretty if you are viewing them with an advanced browser.
To somebody who visits your page with an older browser, the contents of
tables are displayed as a shambles (not merely unreadable). In some cases
you can make out what might be intended; in most cases, it is totally incomprehensible.
As a government agency, we have an obligation to provide our information
so that a reader can see it via any commonly-used access arrangement (perhaps
all access arrangements).
.
When you use frames, for example,
a reader cannot bookmark
the page he ultimately reaches (rather, only the frame from which it was
accessed). That can be a significant annoyance to readers wishing to return
to a useful page, or to refer others to it directly. And keeping a visitor
from setting a convenient bookmark contravenes the open and "user
pull" philosophies that government is encouraging. Frames also create
difficulties in printing web pages, especially for new Internet users.
The essence of the flaw in the implemention of frames is that the viewing
context and the navigation context become disjointed. Viewers, however,
expect them to coincide as they do in non-frames implementations. Again,
as a government agency we need to be good Internet citizens and provide
our information in readable and accessible form at all times, and to support
an open, full "user pull"
implementation. What this means, I think, is that we should not use frames;
and we need to be cautious about forms other than e-mail forms.
Dr.
Jakob Nielsen, Distinguished Engineer for Strategic Technology at SunSoft
(the software planet of Sun Microsystems), and accessibility expert, hosts
a
page about frames, in which he says "just say no." He lists
the top several dozen reasons why the current frames implementations are
more of a plague to be avoided than a nifty feature to put to useful work.
He also cites his "Top
Ten Mistakes in Web Design," which new web page creators might like
to consider reviewing. [NOTE: as of 30 May 1999, Jakob has also
posted "The
Top Ten
New
Mistakes of Web Design"].
.
See also "Why
Frames Are Not Supported at MIT" for an excellent discussion of why
and how the use of frames reduces the audience that can be reached by your
web offerings.
.
Tables are sometimes used in which page widths become customized to certain
screen sizes and screen resolutions. Remember, these are defined by the
visitor and his/her equipment. If frames are required, then they need to
be tested with a large variety of screen sizes, resolution settings, etc.,
to be sure they make sense when displayed at all optional settings. Remember,
also, that users will not scroll horizontally more than once or twice to
read your page. If your page extends off the edge of a visitor's screen,
virtually everyone will click off to somewhere else, after a line or two,
no matter how wonderful your content.
.
Frames are also sometimes used by authors who want to use one frame (usually
in a bar to the left, or a strip at the top) to list navigation options,
and to display the page selected by the visitor in a frame to the right
or below. This can seem to work well when the content is displayed in the
planned frame set. When a visitor finishes with the content page, the navigation
options are all handy in the other frame. The visitor simply picks a new
option, which then replaces the content in the other frame. But it is
far
from useful when the content page is displayed by itself.
Each web page needs to be designed to also stand alone. Shortly after your
pages are posted on the web, the search engines will find them and enter
them into their databases. This allows a great many more visitors to find
your information, and is presumably what you want. It will only list the
page with your frame set in it among all the other pages, however. If a
search engine user picks one of your content pages, it will be displayed
on his/her browser by itself.* In that case, there are no navigation
options if they have all been located in another frame. Be sure each
page contains links to all the related and parent pages so that visitors
can easily see what else you have to offer. And in any case, be sure your
links work, and all your content makes sense whether or not the page is
loaded within your frame set.
* - At a local government server,
5 or 6% of visitors arrive at any given page via home pages. 94 or 95%
of our visitors go directly to the page as it was referred to them, either
by a colleague or a search engine.
These problems are but a small part of the many difficulties encountered
when authors try to specify format and layout along with structure and
content. Remember that the web is a "user
pull" medium, and that format is a preference
of the user (suitable to his equipment, line speed, settings for his/her
other software, etc.). See "Writing
for the Information Age," above.
.
The <center> HTML tag is an advanced tag (believe it or not). Since
part of the HTML design calls for browsers to ignore tags they do not understand,
your line will be left-justified by those browsers. If your document looks
equally good (or at least passable) when your centered lines are left-justified,
then that advanced tag might be considered acceptable. Others, which result
in a garbled display, might not.
[Return to Table of Contents for this
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Avoid Specifying Formats:
Don't try to force your preferred layout on the reader. Remember that this
is a user-driven medium, not a publisher-driven one; and you have no idea
what equipment or systems the reader is using. One of the significant developments
of the Information Age is the movement away from the "we know what is best
for you" mentality of publishers. Help your reader to get what s/he wants
quickly and with a minimum of fuss and bother--and certainly with the absence
of annoyance. Remember, web visitors are on a mission to find specific
information; everything else is a distraction. Take advantage of the hypertext
model: design for its strengths rather than fighting its weaknesses. A
good preface and table of contents go a long way in this area. See also
"Writing for the Information Age"
above.
.
See Jakob Nielsen's
page "The
Difference Between Web Design and GUI Design," where he points out
that "designing for the Web is different from designing traditional software
user interfaces. Mainly, the designer has to give up full control and share
responsibility for the User Interface with users and their client hardware/software."
.
Preformatted Text: HTML does not generally recognize blanks other
than to delimit words (either blank spaces or blank lines). This can be
disconcerting to new web authors. For the really tough situations which
require it, there is an exception to "user-pull" format control. It is
called "preformatted text." When an HTML author specifies preformatted
text, the lines are displayed just as they have been written, in a fixed-width
font (usually Courier, and usually with 10 character per inch horizontal
pitch), and with the lines determined by the author. This is one way to
present what might otherwise be presented in a small table, for example.
These few lines are examples of preformatted text.
When you use it, keep in mind that you know nothing
of the line widths of the equipment the reader is
using. For that reason, if you keep your line widths
around 65 characters or less, your message will be
displayed such that most readers will see it much as
you have written it. (These lines are around 55
characters wide, by the way). Below is a small table.
Customer Year Amount Telephone Code
Fergussen, S 1983 900 555-4321 z
Jones, Jayson G 1997 1,234 555-1234 y-89
Smythe, Quincy 2000 1,100 555-6666
Preformatted text was provided because all of the earliest equipment was
purely character-oriented, with no provision to change the fonts. Most
of this equipment was based on an 80-character line width, but with part
of that width taken up with line numbers, other control characters, line
feeds, etc. One by-product of all this is that in a pinch, a web author
can insert a single line with a single blank character in preformatted
text, and use it in place of what would be an extra carriage return on
a typewriter.
[Return to Table of Contents for this
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Keeping Web Pages Accessible For Everyone (including those with slow lines and/or non-graphics browsers):
Just as universal access is a central government role in global information
exchange generally, web page accessibility
is at the kernel of government
web page publishing. We are in the information business, far from the entertainment
business. We need to be publishing content which everybody--and this includes
all of our constituencies, especially the local electorate--can access
with reasonable convenience: not just those with the fastest lines, the
latest browsers, the hottest plug-ins and the most up-to-date access mechanisms.
Our information needs to be reliable, friendly and helpful; and it needs
to encourage interactivity. The sections on "Graphics"
and "Use of Advanced HTML" cover two
important aspects of accessibility. The section "Avoid
Specifying Formats" adds a philosophical view; and "Encourage
Feedback" deals with openness and fostering participatory democracy.
It is this combination that adds up to good accessibility.
Below are some further considerations, including page publishing which
is intended for visitors with personal disabilities.
Be careful of background colors. They might look lovely on your monitor;
but there is no adequate substitute for testing them on a variety of screens,
or just sticking with plain old white.
One website had what they thought was a very cleverly thought out (and
tested) light grey background, only to be informed by a visitor with a
very slightly degraded monitor that it came out grey all right on his monitor,
but it had black cross-hatching to achieve the effect on a white field!
The
visitor said that viewing their web pages was about like trying to read
the phone book through a screen door. [ :-) ]. We want to avoid that
kind of cleverness like the plague.
.
Remember that the universe of web visitors is growing at somewhere around
100% per year. This means that, on average, half of your visitors have
been on-line less than a year. Many of them will find it very helpful if
you start at the beginning and tell the whole story. This growth rate also
means, however, that more and more of your visitors are old hands. Studies
have shown that the novelty of web surfing, particularly for information
content seekers, wears off quickly. Animated graphics (called variously
"dancing baloney" and "bouncing irritants") that sometimes appeal to new
users can be an annoying distraction to a serious visitor looking for solid
content (and hoping to find something quickly; see Jim
Sterne's "Flash
is Trash" article.
Jakob
Nielsen, who studies web page usability, posts a page describing "The
Increasing Conservatism of Web Users," and reporting on the rapid slowing
of innovation by Internet users. "Just give it to us plain and simple,"
says their feedback. Many do not want to be continually installing the
latest plug-ins and upgrading their browsers to the latest versions. His
chart showing that rates of uptake of new browser versions in 1997 are
at scarcely half the rates from 1995 and 1996 is portentous.
.
"Branding and Usability," is covered in an article posted by Jakob
Nielsen entitled "Corporate
Usability Maturity: Stages 1-4." In the article, Nielsen identifies
the first four stages of accessibility or usability development as follows:
The "Web Accessibility Issues" page previously posted under the Americans
with Disabilities Act - Information and Resources at UC Santa Cruz website
pointed out that "recent guidance by the Department of Justice clearly
states that ADA requirements apply to Internet web pages. In a response
to an inquiry dated September 9, 1996, the DOJ states:
Entities subject to Title II or III of the ADA must provide effective communication
to individuals with disabilities, and covered entities that use the Internet
to provide information regarding their programs, goods or services must
be prepared to offer those communications through accessible means. Such
entities may provide web page information in text format that is accessible
to screen reading devices that are used by people with visual impairments,
and they may also offer alternative accessible formats that are identified
in a screen-readable format on a web page."
.
As mentioned in the Graphics section above,
always warn your readers of large pages, weather its the graphics or other
content that makes them large. Any file over 20- 30 Kb should contain a
warning at least in the links where it might first be selected. Keep in
mind, however, that if you put a size warning on every link to an expanding
page, you are creating a maintenance headache every time the page grows
by another 10 Kb.
The Web Accessibility
Initiative (WAI) points out "The power of the Web is in its universality.
Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect." -
a quote from Tim Berners-Lee,
W3C
Director and inventor of the World Wide Web. They also post
"WAI Accessibility
Guidelines: Page Authoring," a comprehensive checklist of accessibility
items, and "WAI
Reference List on Web Accessibility," a comprehensive list of links
to design and development guidelines, research projects, white papers,
tools and utilities, conferences and other resources all dealing with web
page accessibility. In January 2000 they posted an extensive page of "Policies
Relating to Web Accessibility," the index
to which contains links to accessibility initiatives by country for about
a dozen countries (and by region or legislative topic, mainly in the U.S.),
and will be expanded to include more as they become available.
.
The Treasury
Board of Canada has posted a "Common
Look and Feel (CLF)" initiative with a substantial "Accessibility"
section. This section points out that "Some Canadians rely on assistive
technologies such as text readers, audio players and voice activated devices
to overcome the barriers presented by standard technologies. Others may
be limited by their own technology. But old browsers, non-standard operating
systems, slow connections, small screens or text-only screens should not
stand in the way of obtaining information that is available to others."
The Government
of Canada Internet Guide contains helpful sections for departments
planning and setting up an Internet presence. The guide contains lots of
rationale and general principles which would apply to any Internet website.
Their "Universal Accessibility" section states "It is every Canadian's
right to receive government information or service in a form that can be
used, and it is the Government of Canada's obligation to provide it." The
Treasury
Board's "Government
On-line" page provides links to components of their connectivity initiative.
Their "Results
for Canadians: A Management Framework for the Government of Canada"
paper (Table
of Contents only) provides additional insight.
.
The other side (at least the reader's side) of this accessibility question
has to do with helping the reader get quickly to the information s/he wants.
That
is what s/he is spending his/her scarce attention to get. A lively and
(... er) "attention-grabbing" article "We've Got to Pay Attention!" was
written on this subject by Tom Davenport, formerly a professor of management
information systems at Boston UniversitySchool
of Management and director of the Andersen Consulting Institute for
Strategic Change. Tom makes the point that I.T. professionals are very
adept at providing
information
(and lately providing easy access
to
it, enterprise-wide). But we have not been very good at assuring (or even
paying attention-sorry) that it gets attended to. Tom's point is that it's
the attention that is in short supply. We are flooded with information;
and I.T. professionals (including web page authors) need to start focusing
more on making sure that the important stuff gets attended to ... or displayed
in a way that it garners the necessary attention. The article is a great
three-minute read. Subsequently, Davenport posted another Think Tank article
(CIO Magazine, issue of 1 Sept 1999), "The
Eyes Have It," in which he identifies ten principles which "will help
you to attract and keep your customers' attention."
To attract eyeballs, one must think about evolutionary appeal;
Eyeballs get bored easily;
Eyeballs alone aren't worth much;
Know your eyeballs;
Not all eyeballs are created equal;
If you can't measure eyeballs, you can't manage them;
Eyeball-catching technologies compete with eyeball-saving tools;
Once an eyeball leaves you, it's hard to get it back;
Automated searching is anti-eyeball; and
If you want eyeballs, you've got to pay for them.
.
In addition to paying attention to the reading and learning styles of your
visitors, you also need to know some of the fundamentals about how they
learn to use their computers better (... or not). It will help you quite
a bit when you are contemplating adding a feature or navigation strategy
that is unlikely to be found on other web pages. An excellent paper on
this subject, "Paradox
of the Active User" will likely surprise you on several fronts. It
is about 20 pages in Adobe Acrobat format, but well worth the read. And
if you are an active user yourself, you will likely see yourself several
times in their findings. Anyhow, here are a few quotes from the paper:
"people have considerable trouble learning to use computers"
"Their paramount goal is throughput. ... It reduces their motivation to
spend any time just learning about the system, so that when situations
appear that could be more effectively handled by new procedures, they are
likely to stick with the procedures they already know, regardless of their
efficacy."
"These paradoxes are not defects in human learning to be remediated. They
are fundamental properties of learning."
"Learners at every level of experience try to avoid reading [about how
the software works]."
"When a domain expert tries to use a tool designed specifically to support
his or her work activities, the orientation is to do real work, not to
read descriptions and instructions, or to practice step-by-step exercises."
"We found that many users were not discovering and using functions which
could have made their jobs easier."
"We have no reason to believe that users will take the time and effort
to find and consult human experts any more than they would [read] a reference
manual."
.
The Cyberspace
Policy Research Group at the University
of Arizona posts research findings concerning the effectiveness, openness
and accessibility of websites of public organizations. "Our research is
intended to establish, first, the reasons for the expansion of the Web
into public organizations (diffusion/configuration research using modified
event history analysis) and, second, the organizational effectiveness and
accountability consequences of this expansion for policy issues in general
and in specific."
.
The University of Delaware web team has posted their development
notes for a recent website overhaul they undertook. It has a substantial
accessibility focus.
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Subject Taxonomy:
Be careful of imposing your understanding of the subject's taxonomy on
your reader. This is subtle. In a book, you often impose your taxonomy
on your reader, especially in an introductory book. Part of what you are
teaching your reader has to do with the classification of the information
you are presenting. A web page is different. Here are some points to consider:
The web is much more immediate than a book or any printed material. [It
is somewhat akin to the difference between a letter and e-mail. In e-mail,
you are less formal, and you communicate in sentences rather than groups
of paragraphs. Part of what drives the difference is the immediacy of e-mail.
This same principle applies to the Web.]
The Web surfer is often as conversant as you are (maybe even more so) with
the subject matter you are presenting. In that case s/he has his/her own
well-developed internal taxonomy of the subject matter. S/he will feel
imposed upon if s/he has to learn your taxonomy in order to find things.
[Remember, this is a user-driven medium; we don't ever want to impose anything
on anybody--that's an "old guard" technique. We want to stay far away
from
being painted with that brush.]
Help the reader who has a well-developed sense of the taxonomy of the subject
to get what s/he wants. Use key word synonyms (especially in opening sentences)
to broaden the audience who can understand and follow your work quickly.
Most web readers are in a hurry; want to point and click (not to scroll);
and are reluctant to wade through any introductory or explanatory material
(no matter how well presented, and no matter how necessary you think
it might be, unfortunately).
Try to envision how both
a novice to the subject and a professor emeritus will feel about your page
in the early moments after their arrival at your web page. Pamper the novice
who has not yet learned that s/he has not yet mastered the entire field.
Show the professors and the more experienced users that they can rely on
your page in their references to others. Remember: part of your job is
to teach; another part is to inform quickly, reliably and efficiently.
[A
very significant benefit that comes from impressing the professor emeritus
with your page, by the way, is the citations he will give to his colleagues.
These can be more valuable than a bundle of space in a search engine or
other data base. It is worth remembering; and the credibility of the City
(and hence the rest of our website) depends on this good will in significant
ways.]
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Writing like a Journalist:
Consider writing like a newspaper Journalist (a good one). Tell the whole
story in the Title. Then tell the whole story in the Preface, including
your intent for the page (but in only one or two sentences). Then
tell the whole story in the first paragraph. Then tell the whole story
in the rest of the page. Each time you create interest and add significant
detail.
Sympathize with the readers who want to know very early in their
search whether or not this page is worth pursuing. Resist the temptation
to keep them hanging (or to discourage them too early). It is a delicate
balance, but definitely worth cultivating.
Keep the paragraphs short, and leave lots of internal bookmarks (point
is toward the end of the Navigation section, below).
Use lots of nested headings, and put them all in the Table of Contents.
If you do it right, some readers can get the overview they want by just
reading your Table of Contents.
"How
to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines," by Jakob
Nielsen (web design and usability guru) explains that table of contents
headings, titles and e-mail subject lines "need to be pearls of clarity:
you get 40-60 characters to explain your macrocontent. Unless the title
or subject make it absolutely clear what the page or email is about, users
will never open it." On-line headings are different from print headings
because they are often displayed out-of-context, such as in lists of articles,
results from a search query, in-box lists, etc., says Nielsen. Considering
a headline on the sports page of a newspaper, for example, a great deal
can be inferred at a glance from that context. Not so in many on-line situations
(most of which are not of the author's making, incidentally). Many experienced
e-mail users have so much mail, they delete messages if they cannot immediately
recognize and make sense of them. Keep information content to the left,
less important content to the right (in case it is truncated somewhere).
[Return to Table of Contents for this
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Writing for the General Reader:
Keep in mind also that your page may be read by persons with completely
different cultural and educational backgrounds from yours. Some idioms
may be confusing, or even insulting to some readers, for example. When
portions of your page are copied by those who did not understand them,
the content may be praised or panned; and you may even be held up to ridicule
in some circumstances (sometimes without a hint of justification). Occasionally
information is copied to forums that you do not even know about, and with
comments which you will never have the opportunity to rebut. And all of
that will affect the City's image too. The point here is that careful planning
of document content is essential to successful web publishing.
.
Consider writing for a reading age about the end of elementary school or
early Junior High school. Provide definitions for new terms; and provide
a table of contents and other internal navigation
links that allow advanced readers to by-pass the introductory material.
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Writing for the Reader who Scans:
Experienced users have learned to scan web pages, rather than read
them. In the first instance they are often very busy, and are looking for
an answer to a specific question. And in the second instance, they are
looking for credibility before they take anything you say very seriously.
.
Using bold or italics or other changes in type faces will
help them to see the significant information on your pages quickly.
.
Lots of scanners use the first few words of a paragraph to decide whether
to read the remainder. Therefore, you need to keep your paragraphs to a
single idea, and you need to make that first sentence accurate and complete.
.
Suppress the impulse to write only the point-form overview of your
paper, however. Include it at the top, for sure. But you are catering to
the reader who scans in part to let him know that you are a credible source
of sound information. If you never get to the "whole story" of your paper,
you leave the reader with the impression that it was superficial or weak.
Is that the impression you wanted to create?
Later still, Jakob
Nielsen's page "Writing
Style for Print vs. Web" (June 2008) covers Linear vs.
non-linear; Author-driven vs. reader-driven; Storytelling vs.
ruthless pursuit of actionable content; Anecdotal examples vs. comprehensive
data; and Sentences vs. fragments.
.
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Linking and Navigation:
(within the page, and to/from other pages):
Put a good Table of Contents on every page as one of your consistent standards.
Then provide a link back to it from the bottom of every section within
the page. In this way, the casual reader can click on a topic, skim over
it, and find a link at the bottom of the section to get back to the Table
of Contents (in order to quickly pick out his next topic of interest).
Spend as much time as you can with your Table of Contents (mainly when
you do the outline for your page content). An important point here is to
group
similar topics together, especially the sub-topics. Then describe each
sub-topic completely. By grouping, you provide the reader with the ability
to discriminate between similar links. Usability studies have shown this
to be a significant aid to readers. Apparently, (less-relevant) link rejection
is at least as important as (relevant) link selection.
.
Use lots of headings, and include them all in the Table of Contents (TOC)
for the page.
Provide links from the TOC to every heading. And put enough information
in the TOC entry so that the reader can make a reliable decision if s/he
wants to go there or not.
Provide Next/Previous links at every heading if you can manage it at all.
Since some browsers do not handle "Back" within a page (rather they transfer
back to the previous page), provide a link back to the TOC and to the bottom
of the page with every heading if you can manage it at all. But the links
to next/prior need to be at the top, near the heading, not at the bottom.
If they are near the heading, then they will always be positioned in the
same place whenever the surfer clicks. S/he can just leave the mouse in
one place, and click his/her way through the headings, reading the first
few lines of each introductory paragraph. If you have written
like a good Journalist, s/he gets a good impression from the first
sentence of each subject with no scrolling whatever. [Give yourself a red
star!]
.
Use plenty of links to all
the related City pages, both ways. It is hard to overdo convenient links.
Remember that linking between pages is the essence of the World-Wide
Web. The best page in the world is weak if it is not linked in its context
with its related subject matter.
This linking of your new pages to the related matter in existing pages
is time-consuming, but is perhaps the most worthwhile aspect of new page
development. Take time also to go to your existing pages, and provide links
to the new one. You know the subject matter of your website better than
anybody else.
One of the best services you can provide to your visitors is to give them
the option of seeing the "whole related story" from the point of view of
the author. It is a service they cannot obtain from any other source;
and it will add value to our website like nothing else we can do.
Remember, you never know how a visitor got to your page. He/she may have
been referred by a friend, and may not want the detail on your page at
all. Rather s/he may have come in the hope of finding something related
to
the content on your page. If you don't provide the links to related material,
then it's been no help at all for that visitor.
Linked documents are much more efficient to access than un- linked
documents, even if the related material is nearby. Take the time to add
links, even if it is only for the improved efficiency you afford to your
readers. In government, we need to take advantage of these efficiencies
in everything we do, both to reduce costs of government, and to help
our constituents get what they need quickly.
Remember too, that there are at least three different "levels" of links
you need to consider: (a) overall document cross-references to other
related documents and web pages, (b) sentence and phrase cross-references
for narrower and more specific concepts and ideas [both contrasting and
supporting], and to places where implications and risks (usually beyond
the scope of your article) may be found, and (c) individual word
links to definitions, expansions of acronyms, etc. These links make a document
far
more helpful than merely publishing it by itself. By linking it to
the other relevant material, to other ideas and to definitions and tutorials
(especially for those unfamiliar with the subject matter), you transform
what would otherwise be "just another paper" (emphasis on the old sterile,
stand-alone "paper" model) into some sort of a living entity that helps
your reader in real time to answer the question of the moment. Each reader
follows only the links that s/he needs to follow; but the complete story
is there, if needed, in the links. Posting a batch of WORD documents, for
example, even with a good index and descriptive titles, is just another
old-world bulletin board. And it pales in contrast to the same series of
documents, posted as web pages with all the internal linkages needed for
complete comprehension and understanding.
.
Avoid using underscore for emphasis. Use bold or italics instead.
Better yet: use heading level 4, 5 or 6--that defines the structure
of
what you want, rather than its format. Remember that links are usually
underscored. Readers will wonder what is wrong with your link if you use
an underscore otherwise as part of the text.
.
Keep in mind that you never know where the reader will point his/her
bookmarks/favorites (hence, where s/he will start reading your page, or
suggest it to others). You may have made a point (or issued a warning)
in the last section that would suffice if the reader had seen it. If the
current section has a heading (and an internal bookmark), then the reader
could have come directly to the current section from the TOC or via his/her
own bookmark/favorite. If the warning is pertinent in this section, re-issue
it, or (better) provide a link to it.
.
Internal MS WORD Bookmarks:
Be sure each page has a WORD bookmark called "Top" at the left of the heading
line, or other first line of the page.
This bookmark needs to be added to the file name of any link in which we
want to transfer the reader to the TOP of the page.
Keep in mind that a bookmark, once defined, may be used in any link to
the file from anywhere, including people outside the City. If you move
it, or change the spelling (or the case of any character),
then
all the links that referred to that bookmark will either fail to find the
new bookmark, or (if you moved it) take the person to the "wrong" place.
The
solution here is to keep old bookmarks forever. Add new ones as needed.
New ones can be put in the same place as old ones; but by also keeping
the old ones you maintain the integrity of other people's references to
your pages.
WARNING: If the user has viewed a page, and subsequently gone to another
page, and then returns via a link to any page he has viewed previously,
the previously-viewed page is positioned as he had it last unless
the most recent link contained a bookmark.
What this means is that if you have a link to a bookmark in a page, and
the user opts to go there (leaving the page at some position other than
its top), then when another link is executed to that page without a bookmark,
the browser will display it in the position that the user last saw it.
This is what we want if the user remembers how he got there. He may actually
have in mind to go back right where he was reading.
What it also means, however, is that if he is transferred somewhere deep
down in a page early in his browsing session, and later returns via some
other route in which he expects to get to the top of the page, he will
be very confused if you do not include the "Top" bookmark in your
link.
Therefore, in each link to another page, we need to determine if we need
to transfer the reader to the TOP of the page. If we do, then we need
to include the "Top" bookmark in the link. That should always be the
default, though many web page editors are not very helpful in that regard.
This whole issue is complicated by the fact that most of the time, the
user will only link to another page once in a session. In that case, when
a new page is fetched for him to read, the browser will position it at
the top of the page by default.
Leave lots of internal bookmarks all over the place. You do not know where
others will want to point their bookmarks/favorites in linking to
your page. You want to avoid the case where a site links to your page,
and then qualifies it with "then sift through ... ... until you get to
... ... ." By leaving a convenient bookmark, s/he can link to your page
right where s/he wants.
The points immediately above augment the importance of preparing your web
pages in a user-driven context. If your web pages are easy for others to
refer to in ways where they can get right to the point they want to access,
they will be seen to be more useful than otherwise.
.
Include, on every page, a link back to both the GRAPHICS version and the
TEXT version of the entry page so that visitors can choose a smaller size
if they have a slower line, etc.
.
Include a see also section at the bottom of pages which are part
of a set, or part of a subject also treated by others. In this way, the
reader has convenient links no only to your related pages (and their indexes),
but those hosted by others.
.
In all links, provide some descriptive information in addition to the links
themselves. Give the reader enough information to make a pretty good decision
whether s/he wants to go there or not. Of course, a long string
of unannotated links is better than no "see also" section; but good annotations
are a part of what distinguishes the high quality pages we are seeking
to post.
.
Forward and Backward Links
-
As you create a series of web pages, the useful links that come to mind
will be "forward" links (that is, links from entry or table-of-contents
pages to the pages containing the details and components of the subject
you are describing). Once the pages are established, however, and particularly
as they are linked to and from related pages, you will need to consider
"backward" links also (these are links back up the chain to more general
pages from which the user can navigate to other detailed or component
pages). Since some subjects require large numbers of pages, it is quite
helpful if you have installed both the forward and backward links in the
shell pages from which many of the pages have been made. The whole point
here is that as you build a set of pages, you tend to think of accessing
and linking them according to the hierarchy in a top-down way. But in large
subjects, many links and bookmarks will be set to pages at the bottom of
that hierarchy; and readers who arrive via those links will never have
seen the higher-level entry and table-of-contents pages. By providing links
to them in the detailed pages from the outset, you can save yourself a
lot of work down the road. This whole question is complicated by the fact
that large subjects tend to be expanded as additional components are added
after the initial designs are considered complete. These additional components
need to be added to the original forward links (not too hard), and also
added to the existing detailed pages (the ones which did not anticipate
them). Correspondingly, of course, the new pages need to link to the existing
detailed pages and their higher-level entry and table-of-contents
pages.
[Return to Table of Contents for this
page. Go to Top | Bottom] .
____________________________________________
Encouraging Feedback (to help foster
active participatory government):
The Internet, and especially the World-Wide Web, are interactive media.
Visitors
expect to be able to ask questions, make suggestions, and "talk back" if
need be. In government, we need to be especially attentive to making our
pages so that the electorate can easily and conveniently
tell us
what they think. After all, "Uploading Governance" is one of our principal
purposes in mounting an on-line presence.
Use lots of e-mail "mailto:" links. In every authoring section, as a minimum,
identify the person to contact for further information about page content,
the
person who maintains the page, a place they can ask for further
general
information about your site (INFO on our pages), and a place where
they can contact the person who maintains the web site (WEBMASTER
on City pages). Every time you mention a staffer's name, you should include
his/her e- mail address (spelled out in full), and a "mailto:" link for
convenience. In every case that the name has not been tested, make a test
to be certain that the e-mail address is exactly correct. A "mailto:"
link that does not work is quite a bit worse than nothing at all. Remember,
by the time his message to your "mailto:" link bounces back to him, he
will be long gone from your web page. He may have a very difficult time
finding his way back to look for additional detail, or a correct mailing
address. See also point above on picking
pages where you can tell the whole story.
.
In every case of a "mailto:" link, include the complete e-mail address
also as a text string. Remember, some browsers do not have forms capabilities;
and you want to make it as convenient as possible for readers to reach
us. By providing the complete e-mail address as a text string, you permit
your reader to use cut-and-paste to pop it into his mail handler or address
book.
.
For e-mail contact, departments may wish to create generic e-mail names
rather than using personal ones. An e-mail address "agendas" may be established
by the City Clerk, for example, in order to make it convenient for people
to submit meeting agenda items. Internally, the e-mail name "agendas" is
mapped to the person currently responsible for agenda preparation. When
that changes, it is a simple one-time change to the maps. If personal names
are used (especially in many places), then a big maintenance chore is created
every time the assigned responsibilities change. Generic e-mail names are
easy and cheap to create and maintain. But we always have to be careful
that messages to these names are never routed to la-la-land.
.
When using "mailto:" forms, you can also specify all or part of the "Subject:"
line on the generated message. This can be very helpful in knowing where
cryptic e-mail messengers were when they sent your department a message.
[Believe it or not, many think you know where they were when they
sent you the message.]
[Return to Table of Contents for this
page. Go to Top | Bottom] .
____________________________________________
Testing Your Web Pages:
Always test your web pages (particularly every new link) in three places:
While they are on your hard drive as you prepare them.
When they have been copied to the internal intranet.
When they have been copied to the World-Wide Web server.
.
Always test your web pages with a text-only browser, and with at least
two different page-widths. This assures that your presentation will work
for at least some of the general cases as well as for the configuration
of your particular desk-top. Remember: the user controls both the page
width and the font used to display your page. That means he controls the
layout.
You
only control the structure. It is hard to overstate the importance
of this (sometimes subtle) implication for new web page developers. See
"Writing for the Information Age"
above.
[Return to Table of Contents for this
page. Go to Top | Bottom] .
____________________________________________
A Few Technical Considerations:
Always enter a "TITLE" line as the first line of the page. Some Internet
search engines examine only the title line of a web page for key words
to enter into their data bases. It is therefore worthwhile to spend time
being sure that the key words in the title line are comprehensive and contain
the synonyms which surfers may be using in their search criteria. There
is a length limitation on the Title line that may be somewhere around 64
characters in some cases, and up to 512 characters in others.
.
Use only up to eight character file names, sub-directory names and directory
names; and use only lower-case characters. This is the combination that
allows us to obtain consistent results with Macs, DOS or Windows and UNIX
machines.
.
Keep the .htm files for all your pages in the same DOS directory. Include
only the lower-order (sub- directory) names in links subordinate in the
tree from that directory. Do not include any higher-order path components
in links (except the "../" relative designation). When a browser encounters
a link that is missing the high-order components of the pathname, it uses
the pathname of the current directory (the directory in which the file
containing the link was found). This so-called "relative addressing" is
very convenient for moving pages around in different directories IFF you
put only the lower-order components of the path in the links between pages.
.
Use only .htm suffixes on HTML files. There is an option to assume the
.html suffix, but it will foul up your testing on a DOS machine. By using
the .htm suffix, you can do all your testing in a DOS environment, and
then transfer the files to the web server. If the web server is a UNIX
machine, the homepage (only) will need to have an .html suffix. We have
overcome this by just duplicating our homepage.htm as homepage.html. That
way, when a user first arrives at our site, s/he gets the .html version;
but any links back go to the .htm version. All our internal links stay
as .htm's, both on our DOS machines and on the UNIX machine.
[Return to Table of Contents for this
page. Go to Top | Bottom] .
____________________________________________
Publishing/Announcing your Web Pages:
Add the title line to your SEARCH page, and make the entry (and the link)
for the new page there as soon as the page is posted. Add synonyms and
other material to the title line as appropriate and helpful in the search
page (no length limitation applies there).
.
Keep in mind that when you publish a web page, especially on an internal
intranet server, that it will likely migrate to the World-Wide Web at some
point. Initially, it will be for internal use only; but sooner or later
either you (or somebody) will very likely want to publish that information
more widely. If the other person is very polite, they might ask you to
re-write it for a wider audience. If they are in a hurry or if they are
a novice, they might just copy it the way it is. The point here is that
web pages are akin to e- mail messages (see our caution
on e-mail privacy, and especially the hazards
paragraph and the records
paragraph) in many respects. Electronic material is just plain easy
to copy. Sometimes, the ease with which it can be copied causes it to be
transported to places over which you have little control or even influence.
If you just write it as if you were likely to be quoted, then you
can perhaps save yourself some of the embarrassment which will otherwise
result when it becomes a public document.
.
Notify the appropriate search engines of your new page whenever you create
one. This way, readers searching for the information you have just published
will be aware of it right away.
[Return to Table of Contents for this
page. Go to Top | Bottom] .
____________________________________________
Changing and Deleting Web Pages
(considering the stability of our website):
Keeping old pages has a value you might not have thought about. Remember,
this is a cross-linked medium. You never know who (or how many) have linked
to your page in what they are presenting. And you never know about, nor
do you control the contents of search engine and catalog data bases or
who has added a link to any of your pages among their bookmarks/favorites.
By keeping your old pages, you help maintain the integrity of the subject
matter you are presenting. By prominently referring to your updated pages,
you provide convenience for those who want the current information, and
by not deleting your older pages you avoid dead ending your visitors.
.
Web pages on the City's web hosting service will not generally be deleted
once they have been published. Care needs to be taken when pages are initially
selected for publishing that we have the resources and the commitment to
maintain them thereafter. For pages where resource availability is questionable,
other publishing media should be considered.
.
Once a file has been installed on the web site, keep that file name for
the page for which it was initially used. If you must change the file name,
keep the old one too, so that search engine data bases and those with bookmark/favorite
pointers to it will not generate either the error message "page could not
be found" or (worse) some page unrelated to what we previously told them
was there.
As a first step, insert a one-liner at the top of the page (that will display
on the first screen) that says the page has been moved (and provide a link
to the new location).Keep all the original contents intact. [For some readers
and circumstances, the old one will be just fine; for others, old information
is often better than nothing at all.]
As a second step (at the point where the material on the page becomes misleading,
or confusing), delete the content, but keep the file name, the titles,
all the internal bookmarks, etc., the note about the move, and the link.
Maintain that indefinitely. The cost is substantially zero; and it allows
people and search engine data bases to keep their old bookmarks/favorites
and links/pointers as long as they like.
In any case, keep all the headings, authoring information, and navigation
links to the HOMEPAGE, etc. This allows the reader to get back to the home
page, for example, so he can find some of the intermediate links in case
they have been added since s/he made his/her bookmark/favorite.
.
Jakob Nielsen,
SunSoft Distinguished Engineer, posts two pages. One is "Fighting
Linkrot" which adds useful information on this subject, including reasons
to pay attention to both in- bound and out-bound links. The other is "Web
Pages Must Live Forever," in which he points out that "once you have
put a page on the Web, you need to keep it there indefinitely:"
"Other sites may link to your page, so removing it will cause linkrot
and lost business opportunities as you turn away new users."
"Users may have bookmarked the page because they want to go directly to
a relevant part of your site instead of starting at the home page every
time."
"Search engines
are slow in updating their databases, so they too will lead users astray
if you remove pages."
"Old content adds value to your site: some users will benefit from the
old pages, so why not keep serving these customers?"
"Any URL that has ever been exposed to the outside world must continue
to bring up something reasonable when people go to it. Because they will.
It is common experience among webmasters that they keep getting hits on
URLs that were put out of service several years ago."
"Even if you believe that the old page has zero value, the old URL should
be supported and made into a redirect to the closest related page on the
site."
It's a "great way to establish a reputation as a substantial online service
of record."
"Removed pages equal lost users."
"The cost of keeping old content is trivial."
[Return to Table of Contents for this
page. Go to Top | Bottom] ____________________________________________
Creating Web Pages from PowerPoint
Slide Presentations Automatically
This is a straightforward procedure. If you need help, see your system
administrator. It is quick and easy; no training or understanding of web
page creation is required.
[Return
to Table of Contents for this page. Go
to Top | Bottom] .
____________________________________________
Other Style Guides and Web
Page Creation Resources
Flow is the quality that will glue them to your screens. Make your
website "engaging" so your visitor can "go with the FLOW." FLOW is the
word describing what makes time fly when you are at your keyboard, or what
glues a teenager to a video game for hours on end, from Articles
on Internet Marketing by Jim
Sterne, an Internet marketing guru. Also there was an article entitled
"Easy clickings." The section "Foremost, Make It Engaging," contained the
following:
... So what is it about computer games that make them so beguiling? Why
are they so compelling? So captivating? How can toddlers grow into ripe
old age without their hands ever leaving the Nintendo controller? It's
called "flow." It boils down to the ultra-focused attention achieved
when you're deeply engrossed in an activity. You concentrate so intently
that hours go by unnoticed. When the value of the goal is high and the
challenge of achieving the goal is sufficient to be intriguing, you are
going
with the flow. It conjures up pictures of small children at play,
athletes in the heat of competition, and any teenager glued to a video
game. It also conjures up a picture of an Internet junkie at two in the
morning, unable to extricate himself from the screen. Donna L. Hoffman
and Thomas P. Novak explain why the experience is so addicting in "Marketing
in Hypermedia Computer-Mediated Environments: Conceptual Foundations."
Only when consumers perceive that the hypermedia CME [Computer-Mediated
Environments] contains high enough opportunities for action (or challenges),
which are matched with their own capacities for action (or skills), will
flow potentially occur. This congruence between the control characteristics
of the consumer's skills and the challenges of network navigation enables
the consumer in flow to feel in control. When flow occurs, the moment itself
is enjoyed and consumers' capabilities are stretched with the likelihood
of learning new skills and increasing self-esteem and personal complexity.
However, ... if network navigation does not provide for this, then consumers
will become either bored (skills exceed challenges) or anxious (challenges
exceed skills) and either exit the CME, or select a more or less challenging
activity within the CME.
Note: for a broader definition of flow in this context,
see Flow
and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (say "ME-high CHICK-sent-me-high-ee") "who
has devoted his life's work to the study of what makes people truly happy,
satisfied and fulfilled." He learned "that what makes experience genuinely
satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow - a state of concentration
so completely focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity."
His notions of flow have "inspired the creation of experimental school
curricula, the training of business executives, and the design of leisure
products and services. [They are] also being used to generate ideas and
practices in clinical psychotherapy, the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents,
the organization of activities in retirement homes, occupational therapy
with the handicapped, and the design of websites and museum exhibits."
Nancy Levy's coaching paper on the phrases "in the flow" or "in the zone"
contains descriptions from athletes who have experienced this state of
mind during sporting contests. Levy lists the following characteristics
of the "flow" state:
Delightful coincidences occur - Some people call them miracles.
Work cannot be distinguished from play.
Whatever you are working on is effortless - it is unfolding in front of
you.
You lose track of time; time is not an issue.
You feel energized.
You're very clear about your intent although you may not be clear how you
will achieve it.
Everything works effortlessly.
Jakob Nielsen,
who writes Alertbox
and other Internet Usability articles and books, offers a number of thoughtful
suggestions, backed up by his usability studies. You can subscribe to his
free Alertbox
E-Mail Newsletter (no registration; no ads or spam; links to his stable
website; reliable information).
He has some terse advice for writing for the Web: "Be
Succinct! (Writing
for the Web)." He adds other insights about nested headings, and writing
in "coherent chunks," too.
He also has some very good advice about Cascading Style Sheets. His paper
"Effective
Use of Style Sheets" describes a few dos and don'ts and provides links
to related resources.
The Yale Center for Advanced Instructional Media (C/AIM) posts an excellent
style manual, the Yale
C/AIM Web Style Guidewhich comfortingly states, "the basic elements
of a [web] document aren't complicated, and have almost nothing to do with
Internet technology." This link was suggested by the Scout
Report (29 May 1998, Vol 5, Number 5). The style guide is also available
via anonymous FTP and as a PDF document at the above address. This is an
excellent dissertation on all the elements of style, page composition,
graphic design, etc. Their section "Typography
I - Visual contrast and page design" makes an interesting point that
"Legibility depends on the tops of words" (scroll to near bottom of page).
They show two fragments of a heading: one containing the top half of the
words, and the other containing the bottom half of the same words. It casts
some interesting light on the use of initial caps and all caps in headings.
The Treasury
Board of Canada has posted a "Common
Look and Feel (CLF)" initiative which contains an excellent set of
standards and guidelines for Government of Canada websites. Initiated in
June of 2000, implementation is scheduled to be complete by the end of
2002. The earlier Government
of Canada Internet Guide contains helpful sections for departments
planning and setting up an Internet presence. The guide contains lots of
rationale and general principles which would apply to any Internet website.
[Return to Table of Contents for this
page. Go to Top | Bottom] .
____________________________________________
CNET Builder.com posts a website
[cookies (cookie
caution)] with tools, articles, suggestions, news, etc., for website
builders.
Links to websites with advice for publishing web information and training
pages, according to survey respondents on a web training mailing list.
The question was: "Please list any World Wide Web sites or other resources
that you are aware of that address visual issues for the design of WWW
information and instruction."
Usable Web: Guide
to Web usability resources. "The ultimate comprehensive collection of useful
links" - Jakob Nielsen.
http://www.usableweb.com
The Alertbox: Current
Issues in Web Usability A Bi- weekly column by Dr. Jakob Nielsen, Principal,
Nielsen Norman Group. This is an excellent source of website design principles
and precepts aimed at good web usability.
Web Design
Guide - The WDG's reference section offers background information and
technical specifications on HTML authoring. Its main purpose is not to
provide browser-specific "hacks", or workarounds for browser bugs or limitations,
but to give the correct way to do it.
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/
Web Page Design
for Designers - This page is aimed at people who are already involved
with design and typography for conventional print and want to explore the
possibilities of this new electronic medium. They are probably already
using page layout tools like QuarkXPress, Photoshop, Freehand and Illustrator
and have discovered that designing web pages is something quite different.
http://www.wpdfd.com/wpdhome.htm
[Return to Table of Contents for this
page. Go to Top | Bottom] .
____________________________________________
.
.
.
.
Our Web-Counter
says you are visitor number:
to this website since mid-June 1996.
.
.
.
Title: The Meek Family Website - Web Page Style Standards; Writing
for the Information Age.Contact for further information about this page: Chet
Meek. Voice: 780+433-6577;E-mail:
cmeek@ocii.com
.
The primary URL for this page is: http://www.GoChet.ca/wp_style.htm Page last updated: 30 March 2012 (N4.8, w/SC). Page created:
15 June 1995.
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