IDK0040 Võrgurakendused I

Building a site: Advices

Deniss Kumlander

Advices• keep a database of users, how to contact them, and how

private they want their personal information kept

• keep a database of site content, who contributed it, and how each piece relates to the others

• keep track of which users have looked at which pieces of content

• keep track of how users are coming into the site and which external links they are selecting (clickthroughs)

• if a commercial site, keep track of which advertisers' banner ads have been served and to whom and whether or not they were effective

• help the site maintainers keep in contact with different classes of users

Advices

• Try to reach some limit, but not 100% functionality (although depends on a site mission and goals)

• Should be driven by other departments, rather than IT: – not IT for IT

Rich User Interface

• A richer user interface is always harder to learn. Your readers don't want to learn how to use new programs. They already learned how to use a Web browser and probably also word processing, spreadsheet, and drawing programs.

• Always address users

Real-time Updates

• Many users do not want to see annoying messages on updates, download applets etc.

Edward Tufte's Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative• The screen should contain information, not navigation or

administration icons. The information should become the interface, i.e., clicking on a word that was itself informational should take you to a screen with more detailed information.

• Give users broad flat overviews of the information (e.g., tables of contents) rather than forcing them through sequential screens of choices.

• Organize your data according to expected user interest rather than mimicking the internal structure of your organization

• Why use icons for navigation when words are clearer and take up less screen space?.

Browser menus

• The first general principle is Don't break the browser's Back menu

A user who notices a mistake in the general information of a set of ordering forms should be able to return to this step, for example, from the confirm page form’s step using either the Go menu or the Back button, correct the address and proceed from there. It is important to ensure that arbitrarily moving back and forth did not result an incorrect behaviour or an error.

This looks to be simple but it can be difficult to implement, especially as publishers' ambitions become grander, as more session state is kept by the server, and as publishers start using JavaScript etc

Images

• Photographs are valuable content, as distinct from graphics which are generally a waste of your money and the user's downloading time

• When dealing with film-originated images, always scan from an original negative or slide, never from a print.

Images

• Users are not going to thank you if you present a 5MB .pcd Image Pac file straight from the PhotoCD. For starters, it would take 12 minutes to download with a 56K modem. And then when they were all done, they wouldn't be able to view it because Web browsers don't understand Kodak PhotoCD format.

• So– Use compression formats– Use a “preview” images (small one) with a link to the large one– Remember about users with disabilities– ?: use watermarking

Sites that are applications

• Decide whether you're building a dynamic document or a program with a Web interface. – Text with programs or programs with text?

• Choose a computer language.– Consider suitability, support for complex data types, safety,

development time

• Choose a program invocation mechanism. – Computers Do Not Like to Fork 500,000 times per day – DB does not like to be opened & Closed 500,000 times per day

• Choose a Web server program to support the first three choices.

Auditing

• How many users request invalid URLs?– Automate

• How long they stay at one or another chapter?– Cookies

– Keep track of • which users have looked at • how users are coming into the site and which external links

they are selecting. • which advertisers' banner ads were clicked on. • what purchases a user has made.

Auditing: output• Rachael Supergreat has ordered 10 times before. Though we're running low

on inventory, push her order to the front of the list and quote her a 24-hour delivery time.

• Tristan Pretty Good has ordered once before. However, it was a year ago so he's probably not going to turn into the best possible customer. If the factory is behind schedule, quote him a three-week delivery time and see if he still wants to place the order.

• Phoebe Unknown has never ordered before. She might become a very valuable customer, so give her order medium priority and quote her a one-week delivery time. We don't want to risk turning her away.

• David Difficult has ordered custom products eight times before and returned them each time. He did not include the original packing material on six of those returns and damaged the product cosmetically three times. Give him a "server busy, please try again later" page.

http://philip.greenspun.com/panda