Computer Graphics Survey

Web Page Refinements

Using the Resources of the Internet

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Tutorial Goals

However, these pages are also a useful basis for building up your online portfolio. As such, you may want to give some thought to how you can help your audience find and enjoy your work.

In this final handout, you will find some basic suggestions for improving the usability of your web site. Following the links provided will lead to additional insights.

Suggested Improvements

1. State technical requirements
   • Web browser with direct support for GIF and JPEG (otherwise pictures-as-links won't work)
   • Should work on any platform, but you may want to mention which operating systems and browsers you used for testing.
   • <A HREF="http://quicktime.apple.com/">requires QuickTime plugin</A>
   • <A HREF="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/">requires Shockwave (Director and Flash) plugins</A>
2. Make the site friendly to the disabled
   • See the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) site for suggestions and compliance verification.
   • The W3C (the main standards body for the Web) publishes Accessibility Guidelines.
   • Check your page in black and white. See WWW Colors and Black & White Monitors, by Jason Harrison. This is an often overlooked issue--not everyone has a color display (and, I would add, not everyone sees colors).
3. Explain operation of less-familiar items
   • Zooming in/out of Flash map
     • Bringing up the contextual menu on the picture (Control-click on Macs, right-button-click on PCs) allows you to zoom in and out.
     • Zooming-in automatically switches to the grabber hand cursor--allowing you to slide the image up/down, left/right.
     • 'Show All' resets the picture to the initial view. 'High Quality' turns anti-aliasing on/off.
   • QuickTime movie controller
   • QT VR panning and zooming
4. State file sizes
   • In the Finder, select the file icon for your distribution file (e.g., the edited and compressed JPEG file, not the original TIFF scan)
   • File-->Get Info
   • Use the size number in bytes--the size in K is influenced by the way the disk is organized (allocation block size).
5. Add return links
   • Return to top within page
     • Add a label to the heading for your table of contents:
       <A NAME="toc">Table of Contents</A>
     • Add a return link at the end of each section of your page:
       <A HREF="#toc">return to top</A>
   • Return to homepage from other pages you created (important if viewer jumped directly to the secondary page from another site)
     • Add a link with URL equal to the filename of your homepage (assumes that all of your pages are kept in the same folder/directory):
       <A HREF="sample_s.html">return to my homepage</A>
6. Include document URL in body of page
   • important if someone obtains hardcopy of your page, and is interested enough to want to see the original on the web.
   • The standard format encloses the URL in angle brackets. Use named entities:
     • < is represented by &lt;
     • > is represented by &gt;
7. Revision date
   • Show with frequent updates that your site is worth a repeat visit.
   • Use the standard ISO 8601 format, such as '2000-12-10' (avoids ambiguity between US and European formats). For further details, see Markus Kuhn's paper on date/time standardization.
8. Contact info
   • If you create a link, make sure to also repeat the address in the visible text so it wont be lost in hardcopy
   • <A HREF="mailto:sample@simple.com">sample@simple.com</A>
9. Copyright issues (USA)
   • Regardless of notices or registration, you automatically own the copyright to anything you create.
     • Conversely, anything you might consider copying is very likely the copyrighted property of someone else.
     • For a straightforward discussion of the basics, see Brad Templeton's essay 10 Big Myths about copyright explained
   • Copyright notices, registration--to be able to realistically defend your rights in court.
     • Forms and further info at Copyright Office at Library of Congress site.
   • Screen all your postings for infringing materials.
     • Add a disclaimer, with contact info for sending notices of infringement.
10. Promoting site
    • META tags in HEAD container
      • Author, keywords, description, publisher
      • See these handouts' source code for examples (use the browser's View-->Page Source command).
    • Search engine submissions
      • further info at SelfPromotion.com URL Registration ShareService
      • Check compliance with search engine rules using VSE Be Found
    • Domain name registration
      • further info at the InterNIC site of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

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Notes

HTML Entities

• Entities are a way to encode text characters which would otherwise not be allowed in standard HTML.
• See the W3C Advanced HTML Guide at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/Advanced.html for info on encoding additional characters.

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