Maintainability What is the primary task for the maintainability of a web site? Web sites designers must be aware that during the lifetime of a site one must be able to add easily new elements (documents, pages, links, etc.). What is important for the maintainability? It is important to port the site from one server to the other without difficulties. What makes a web site easily portable? If links are internal to the site, the use of relative links makes the site easily portable. On the contrary, external links must be frequently checked to make sure that the link can still be traversed. When designing a web site one must ask himself: could another icon be designed that would fit into the current set? Can the image be easily replaced or can additional graphics be easily incorporated into the existing image? Who wrote the page? When was it last updated? This can be useful when another person takes over site maintenance. Source: WebSAT - National Institute of Standards and Technology

Accessibility What are the main problems regarding the accessibility to a site? Differences in hardware and software platforms are undoubtedly the main elements that may or may not limit the access to a web site. What kind of shortcoming these differences can cause? The Internet connection speed is surely affected. With low capabilities, time to load pages with large amounts of graphics or to download software may become intolerable. Do these differences affect Internet Browsers performance? Yes. For example, frames may not be supported and colours may be treated differently. Are audio and video capabilities important for a web site? Surely they make the site more interesting and pleasant, however one must keep in mind that not all visitors to the web site may have these capabilities on their PC Source: WebSAT - National Institute of Standards and Technology

Form use What is the main purpose of a form use? Using a form is a good way of collecting information from web site users. Who should be interested in posting a form? All web sites interested in having viewers and customers registered, for instance e-commerce sites, on-line job recruitment, data banks, etc. What is important for making customers at ease when filling the form? Text fields must be clearly labelled. Option fields must also be indicated because viewers do not want to lose time. Send (submit) and clear (reset) buttons should be provided. Finally the presence of useless horizontal lines across the form should be avoided as many viewers see these as stopping points and do not scroll beyond them. Source: WebSAT - National Institute of Standards and Technology

Form use What is the main purpose of a form use? Using a form is a good way of collecting information from web site users. Who should be interested in posting a form? All web sites interested in having viewers and customers registered, for instance e-commerce sites, on-line job recruitment, data banks, etc. What is important for making customers at ease when filling the form? Text fields must be clearly labelled. Option fields must also be indicated because viewers do not want to lose time. Send (submit) and clear (reset) buttons should be provided. Finally the presence of useless horizontal lines across the form should be avoided as many viewers see these as stopping points and do not scroll beyond them. Source: WebSAT - National Institute of Standards and Technology

Navigation What are the elements that can provide navigation aids? Links are very important as tools of navigation. This is true because many people do not use the Back buttons for navigation. How should links be displayed? Users are used to associate blue underlining with links. What should links tell? Links should be descriptive of what users will find upon visiting.However the number of words in links should not be so long as to ensure that the link will consume more than one line (if links are continued on two lines there could be misunderstanding whether there is one or two links). Should links be embedded? Yes, otherwise they are difficult to see. Should links open a new browser window? No, because non expert users could have difficulties in getting back to the original window. Source: WebSAT - National Institute of Standards and Technology

Performance What are the problems connected with an Internet site performance? The main issue concerns the time it takes a viewer to download a document or a software. Is there an maximum amount of graphics that can be posted on the site? The total amount of graphics should be 30K or less. Everything greater than this amount can result in load times of more than 20-20 seconds for low end connections. Are height and width of an image important? Yes, because graphics with an unspecified size load slower. Is there any specific format in which images should not be posted? The JPEG format should not be used since all browsers are not capable of displaying its images. What is the acceptable banner size? To ensure that the majority of users will not have to scroll horizontally to view a banner, the banner size should be less than 500 pixel (which is the default size of browser pages). Source: WebSAT - National Institute of Standards and Technology

Readability What makes a text less readable? If the web page contains numerous animations, scrolling or blinking text, it is likely that users are easily distracted from actually concentrating on the information contained. Is a ‘dense’ web page a good web page? Highlighting techniques, such as the use of bold or larger font sizes, blinking, marquee style, are used to direct the readers’ attention to important material. However the more highlighting the more difficult it becomes to locate important information and to read a stationary text. What size should web pages have? Web pages should be of a size such that users do not have to scroll more than three or four times to reach the end of the section. Also it is suggested not using horizontal lines across the web, because this can confuse the readers and let them think to have reached the end of the web page. Source: WebSAT - National Institute of Standards and Technology