tailieunhanh - Creating Cool Web Sites with HTML, XHTML, and CSS- P8

Creating Cool Web Sites with HTML, XHTML, and CSS- P8: This book walks readers through the process of creating a basic Web site from scratch using HMTL, the basis for billions of Web pages, and then jazzing it up with advanced techniques from the author’s award-winning sites. This updated edition features new material that shows readers how to attract visitors to a site and keep them there, including new JavaScript examples and coverage of cascading style sheets and XHTML, technologies that make building successful Web sites even easier. | 324 Creating Cool Web Sites with HTM L XHTM L and CSS A key underlying question to determine usability revolves around the target audience for your site and the purpose of your site. If you re building a portal site to compete with Yahoo and MSN you may want to include more information on the page than if you re translating a three-page brochure into a humble Web site for a small-business client. I If you re building a Web site specifically to show off your coding skills none of this note may apply. But read through this chapter anyway. The sanity you save may be your own Amount of information presented The first guideline for usability is to always minimize the amount of information presented by showing only what s necessary to the user. This rule explains why the AOL and MSN home pages are baffling when first visited why it s hard to figure out what s going on at Yahoo and why Google by contrast is relaxing and easy to use. An example of a site with lots and lots of information that s still thoughtfully organized to ensure that it s not overloading the visitor is the . Internal Revenue Service site. Figure 15-1 shows the current page. Figure 15-1 The Internal Revenue Service Web Site-clean uncluttered and easy to read. Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on to remove this watermark. Chapter 15 Thinking about Your Visitors and Your Site s Usability The site is clean open inviting and has a small number of links off this page so that the user isn t completely overwhelmed by the choices. Very nice Compare this with the . Social Security Administration Web site as shown in Figure 15-2. Here you can see many more choices. The designer seems unable to differentiate between what I call the musts and the wants. The musts are those links that must be on the home page or for that matter on the specific page in question whatever it is. The wants on the other hand are those links that would be helpful to have up-front but are not critical. Remember the .