Investigation in to other sites

The DETR web site provides information not only on transport, but also on the environment, wild life, research and Europe. We tried to find sites that provided information about the same topics unfortunately there really were no British/ European sites that provided such a variety of information. It was difficult to find sites that dealt with transport, the ones we did find only dealt with one subject and provided the White Paper as additional information. We believe that these sites do not provide an information service like DETR, but just give information on their selected subjects. The DETR is more of an encyclopedia of information concerning transport. Thus we decided to evaluate sites that provide a similar information service to determine what a good site should provide.

To meet the criteria of our Multimedia option and to give an example of our indiviual skills, there are copies of our individual assessments of related web sites. Just click on the name of the assessor.

SITE NAME: Year 2000 Information Centre

SITE URL:http://www.year2000.com

SITE CONTENTS

• Year 2000 Emergency Management
• Executive risks from the Year 2000 software data problem
• Year 2000 Announcement list
• Communicating and Year 2000
• Year 2000 Law centre
• Year 2000 Archive
• Year 2000 Press clippings
• Jobs 2000
• Products to build awareness
• Year 2000 User groups
• Useful Data related links

SITE OVERVIEW

The content of this site is fairly concise in a way that it does actually contain a large amount of information. Most information is taken directly from various articles. This information is not clearly sub-divided under precise areas, but is more of a "mish-mash" of information.

The site does have a search engine incorporated, and is a good one, as it lets you fix various strings when searching. This gives for a more clearer and precise search

The general outlay of the site is rather bland. It does use a consistent colour scheme throughout, but looks boring and is not at all eye-catching. There is also no use of multimedia in this site, making the site very boring.

SITE NAME: Info 2000 Home Page

SITE URL:http://www2.echo.lu/info2000/infohome.html

SITE CONTENTS

• Introduction and documentation
• News and announcements
• Stimulating demand and raising awareness
• Explaining European public sector information
• Triggering European multimedia potential
• Support actions
• History

SITE OVERVIEW

The content of this site is fairly in-depth in all subjects, but it focuses more strongly at the whole of Europe as opposed to just the United Kingdom. Its information is based around straight insertions of articles from various other people and sites

The overall appearance of the site is dull, due to the colour scheme, even though a standard set is used throughout. There is no multimedia incorporated, and the information is conveyed in "book" format, which is very dull and can become tedious.

The site does however have a site map, which basically breaks down the whole web-site. This can make it easier for the user to search for a specific area or plot a path to look through in order to gain specific information.

SITE NAME:Y2K NEWS

SITE URL:http://www.y2knews.com

SITE CONTENTS

There are no set contents available on this site. There are mostly hyper-linked headlines from various articles, which range from government issues to the millennium bug.

SITE OVERVIEW

Overall, the site is crammed with information, but is not portrayed in an easy to access manner. There is no search engine, which makes navigation a harder task. Most of the information is also just straight articles, which can be accessed via hyper-links.

The design is plain and not very eye catching. There is a small links list on the left side of the screen, which allows for direct links to information archives, subscriptions and email addresses.

There is also no use of multimedia in this site, which for us shows that there was a complete lack of design strategy used.

Conclusion