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MISCELLANEOUSINTERFACEISSUES 773an interface appealing and interactive and making it clear
and simple. The former usually involves graphical designs
with animations and client-side scripting, whereas the lat-
ter favors minimal text-based interfaces. Where a particu-
lar Web site belongs on the continuous spectrum between
the two extremes depends on its intended purpose and au-
dience, and should be a subjective, yet conscious decision.
The safest design decision is to always offer alterna-
tives, usually divided into high- and low-bandwidth ver-
sions of the same Web pages, so that the user experience
can be tailored to suit different preferences. The major
disadvantage of this is the increase in development time
and management requirements.Accessibility/Connectivity
The two major factors affecting accessibility and connec-
tivity issues are the bandwidth of the user’s network con-
nection, and the particular graphical capabilities of the
user browser. Low-bandwidth connections to the Internet
are still very common in homes. By some measures, dialup
modems are still used in 90% of all homes that regularly
access the Internet (Marcus, 2001). This requires Web site
designers either to incorporate only small, compressed
images on their sites, or to provide alternative versions of
pages, for both high- and low-bandwidth users.
Some user browsers do not have any graphics capabil-
ity at all, for accessibility reasons or user preference. For
example, visually impaired users and PDA (personal digi-
tal assistant) users most often require accessibility consid-
eration. Estimates of the number of disabled users range
from 4 to 17% of the total online population (Solomon,
2000). PDA and mobile phone Internet usage is relatively
new in the United States, but is already approaching
10 million users (comScore Networks, 2002). For such
users, designing a separate text-only version of the Web
site is a possibility. What would be better is to design a Web
site that contains automatic browser-specific functiona-
lity degradation. An example is to associate relevant tex-
tual content to graphical images; graphical browsers may
display the images, while text browsers may display the
descriptions.Consistent Page Layout
One of the most important design for a Web site is a con-
sistent page layout. While every single page does not need
to have the same layout, the more consistent each page
looks, the more straightforward it is for the user to nav-
igate through the site and the more distinctive the Web
site appears. A typical Web page layout utilizes parts or
all of an artificially defined border around the content (see
Figure 6).
Originally, HTML frames or tables were the standard
way of laying out a page, and they are still the preferred
method for most developers. However, the W3C clearly is
favoring the use of cascading style sheets (CSS) for page
layout (World Wide Web Consortium, 2002). CSS also pro-
vides a mechanism for associating styles, such as color,
font type and size, and positioning, with Web content,
without actually embedding them in it. This is in keeping
with the principle of separating content from its presen-
tation.Figure 6: A typical layout scheme for
a Web page.Consistent Navigation Mechanism
Web site navigation is an important component of the de-
sign, and a consistent navigation mechanism supplements
a page layout and makes the user experience much sim-
pler and more enjoyable.
One of the best ways of providing a consistent navi-
gation mechanism is to have a menu bar or panel that
is consistent across all pages of the site. Such a menu
can be a static collection of links, or a dynamic, interac-
tive component similar to that of a desktop application.
Figure 7 is an example of a simple and consistent naviga-
tion scheme that utilizes two menu panels. The top panel
(with menu items A, B, C) is similar to a desktop appli-
cation’s menu bar and is a global menu that is consistent
throughout the site and refers to all top-level pages of a
site. The left side panel is a context-dependent menu that
provides further options for each top-level page. This type
of navigation scheme can be seen on several public Web
sites (e.g., http://www.python.org).
While there are no absolute rules or guidelines for good
navigation elements, they usually provide visual feedback
(e.g., mouse rollover effects), have alternate text displays
(for nongraphical or reduced capability browsers), and
are designed to be easy to use as well as learn.MISCELLANEOUS INTERFACE ISSUES
The following are miscellaneous interface design issues.
Again, only suggestions for possible design choices are of-
fered, and they will not be applicable in all circumstances.Figure 7: An example of a consistent navigation scheme for
a Web site.