Web Printing Continue on Web Usability It is a good idea that web sites can provide a printing version and browsing version for the same document.

Content Design Content is the most important thing on a web site. Guidelines for the web content:  Concise, scannable, and suitable for online viewing.  Besides confirming essay writing standard, web content writing has its own distinctive style.  Split the content into multiple pages and connect them by links, but each page should still contain a complete topic.  Make the important contents and links to be the first things we see on the screen when the page is first loaded.  Use well-designed headings.

Page Contents Example: Highlight keywords and make text scannable Use bulleted list Keep paragraphs short and concise Use subheadings Navigational links

Page Title Use good page title.  Syntax: My Page Title  Page title should be kept between 40 to 60 characters, but still explains the contents well.  Different pages use different page titles.  Page title words should be precise and meaningful, and put the most important word in the front of the title.

Web Text and Documentation Visibility of web text  Make the text stands out with the surroundings.  Limit the usage of background patterns.  Use fonts that even vision- impaired people can view.  Do not move the text around. Online documentation:  Make it easy to navigate to different parts of the document.  Use examples to clarify the ideas.  Provide clear step by step instructions if necessary.  Be concise and simple to use. Navigational Features SortedList Example Java 2 online documentation

Multimedia on the Web Indicated the file size when it required more download time than the standard. Use still pictures and summaries to help understand what the multimedia objects are about Minimize graphics generally on every page. If graphics are necessary, use less on the top level pages and relegate the rest to lower level pages. Use different techniques to reduce the image size: cropping and scaling. Scaled-down still picturesSummariesDownload size NASA Multimedia Site

Animation Minimize the use of animation Animation should be used for certain amount of time and stop Criterions for use of animation:  Show continuity in transitions  Indicate the dimensionality in transition  Illustrate change over time  Multiplex the display  Enrich graphical representation  Visualize 3D structure  Attract attention This animation illustrates the building of ChemPen3D molecular model over time

3D Graphic and Audio 3D on the web  Difficult and hard to use  Error-prone, confusing and poor display  Not supported by commonly used hardware and software  Use 3D graphic when you need to demonstrate a physical object in its solid form Use of audio on the web  Provide commentary and help  Music promotion  Pronunciation teaching, sound effect for a new event Pronunciation help provided on dict.cn

Web Video Problems associated with online videos  Poor quality.  Long download time.  Subtitles need special care on the web Always provide a higher quality clip for download rather than just a streaming video Most video clips should be less than one minute length Put up some still pictures, text summary along with a clip that is a condense and shorter version of the original longer video Segment it into different chapters when a long video must be put on the web, and provide menu, summaries and thumbnails of different segments for user control

References: Designing Web Usability. Jakob Nielsen. New Riders, Berkeley, California. U.S.A