Module Three - Rules for writing online

Think about any differences between the articles: for example, is the advice in Nielsen’s paper -- written in 1997 – still current?

In Nielsen's paper one of the first things he mentions is scanning. In all my Interface design for sites I alway keep this in mind.

While Nielson's ideas are relevant, they are insufficient if you wish to design an easily readable page. For him text is king and without any design I feel he throws out the baby with the bath water. The computer screen is not a paper page with text on it and you cannot design a page as if it is.

Nielson has some strange ideas, and I feel he refuses to budge, the result being I don't use his site as his pages are too hard to read. I find his pages to be one of the worst offends of visual presentation, making it harder to read. Reading a 17" screen which is approximately 30 to 33 cm wide is tiring. see below

If you have alot of text it is important to have a decent left & right margin. No more than 20 cm wide.



Optional Task 1

Make a summary of what you believe are the 5 most important ‘rules’ for writing online.

The list below comes from: Dennis G Jerz of Seton Hill University

1. Have your most important material first
2. Have clear, relevant and meaningful links
3. Consistent navigation
4. Consistent interface design
5. Scannable text

This list below is from MaxDesign and is what I tend to follow:

Basic Usability

1. Is there a clear visual hierarchy?
2. Are heading levels easy to distinguish?
3. Does the site have easy to understand navigation?
4. Does the site use consistent navigation?
5. Are links underlined?
6. Does the site use consistent and appropriate language?
7. Do you have a sitemap page and contact page? Are they easy to find?
8. For large sites, is there a search tool?
9. Is there a link to the home page on every page in the site?
10. Are visited links clearly defined with a unique colour?

Optional Task 2

Test your web page according to the W3C standards by going to their ‘validator’ page. If your page does not conform (it probably won’t!) record in your learning log why you think this is: try and identify the particular tags or code that are causing trouble. Are the problems related mostly to display, usability, or accessibility?

My webpage in the Student Presentation area passed XHTML 1.0 Strict validation. Yeh me! see below


Since we are valid xhtml we are proudly displaying the fact.