Autumn Theme Banner

 

Here's a banner I made using Adobe Fireworks CS3 by cropping and merging different photo's of leafs.

Ex. 2: Analyzing Web Sites

VisitScotland

1. HCI 4/5
• The links change colours or become underlined when you hover over them indicating there is interaction.
2. Navigation 4/5
• It's fairly easy to navigate, everything is about two clicks away and all the content is accessible from the home page.
3. Web Accessibility 3/5
• The site is not suitable for all web users as visually-impaired people may have a hard time finding their way around. The site map is all cluttered in a long list rather than a neat list with headings.
4. Colour 4/5
• The colours of the web site match the scottish flag colours, so in that prospect it's very well done and thought of.
5. Text 4/5
• The text is easily readable and there's additional languages available for users from different countries.

TheScotsMan
1. HCI 3/5
• The navigation background highlights blue and is hardly visible in daylight.
2. Navigation 3/5
• Entire navigation is cluttered on top of the screen and is unorganized, it takes time to read all of it to see where you need to go. An additional navigation menu appears on the left screen after you navigate away from home, this one is more organized.
3. Web Accessibility 5/5
• The site complies to the w3 standards and meets need of all web users, it has been tested by all web browers. The site map is easily accessible and displays all links in a structured way.
4. Colour 3/5
• The colours used are dull and there are adverts on the right and above the content text which don't look very good.
5. Text 5/5
• The text is easily readable.

 Scotland

1. HCI 4/5
• The navigation background highlights indicating there is interaction going on.
2. Navigation 4/5
• Easy navigation throughout the entire site, this site uses a hierarchical navigation structure. Main links appear on the left and as you click them more links appear on that topic.
3. Web Accessibility 5/5
• The site complies to the w3 standards and meets need of all web users, it has been tested by all web browers. The site map is easily accessible and displays all links in a structured way and has links to software for disabled people.
4. Colour 5/5
• The colours reflect the scottish flag and match the website perfectly.
5. Text 5/5
• The text is easily readable.

Amazon
1. HCI 5/5
• The navigation background highlights and shows an arrow pointing towards more options when you hover over it.
2. Navigation 4/5
• Easy navigation on the left side with a search option included on the top if you can't find what you're looking for.
3. Web Accessibility 3/5
• Not accessible to all web users as some may have trouble searching the right item, some texts are images so will not be properly read by a screen reader.
4. Colour 4/5
• The background is white and all the images and objects blend out perfectly so that it catches more attention to the viewers.
5. Text 5/5
• The text is easily readable.


BBC

1. HCI 5/5
• The navigation background highlights when you hover over it and removes the underline if available.
2. Navigation 5/5
• Easy navigation as the headers take you to a section where you get more links again (hierarchical structure). Full list of categories are available at the bottom of the page.
3. Web Accessibility 5/5
• Accessible to all web users and complies to the w3 standards for accessibility. Quick links to change text size and other things quickly at the top right.
4. Colour 5/5
• Colours match the website; everything is easily visible.
5. Text 5/5
• The text is easily readable.

Ex. 1: Various Web Authoring and Design terms

HTML
Hypertext Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages, it contains markup tags which are opened and closed. Each tag defines an element (e.g. boldness, italic, image file, scrolling text) which gets readen by a web browser and translated into a web page.

Javascript
Javascript is an object-orientated scripting language first introduced in Netscape, it is commonly used to introduce interactive features into a web page. Javascript could f.ex animate if you hover over a picture, pop-up other windows or even validate information that's been entered.

PHP
Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) is an open-source scripting language created to make dynamic web sites. PHP is server-side which means everything happens on the web server rather than the users' computer. PHP can be embedded into an HTML page by using PHP code and HTML output.

Web Authoring Software
Software for creating web pages without too much knowledge on how to code by the use of "What You See Is What You Get". Dreamweaver is an example of a web authoring software which lets you design and create websites in easy steps.

Image Manipulation Software
Software used to alter or improve images. Adobe Photoshop is an expensive image manipulation software which is used for advanced tasks such as adding effects to the image, blurring, colour-correction and other various stuff.

Static Web Page
A static web page is a page which isn't dynamic and stays the same everytime you visit the web page and therefore is easily cached/storable.

Dynamic Web Page
A dynamic web page as opposed to static is interactive and runs every time on the server as the user is viewing  the web page which means it will have new information everytime visitors visit the website.

Web 2.0
Web 2.0 generally refers to the use of a social platform to distribute content since 2004 for people with no specialized knowledge about making web sites.Web 2.0 doesn't have a set definition but it also refers to the move of dynamic web pages rather than static web pages.

Web Accessibility
Web Accessbility refers to making websites usable and available to people with all kinds of abilities and disabilities. All information available on the internet should be accessable by all web users.