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After careful consideration on how to develop this web site, the
consortium agreed that Sanjay Mistry would be mainly responsible for the development and
design of the prototype.
Within our project boundaries we have identified that we will be
unable to demonstrate all the principles that we would like to include in the web site for
the DETR. These techniques are described and is mentioned that it is not currently on
view.
There are many differently designed web sites currently available
for review on the World Wide Web. There is a common format that the majority of the sites
use, an example of a standard is that of having the menu list located on the left
hand-side of the screen. More and more special effects are being utilised to make pages
more attractive to the user, like for example animated gifs.
Another key point in the design of this site will be the
functionality of the navigational possibilities. It is an important factor for the user to
find the navigational easy to comprehend and use.
As web designers grow confident in using the available software
there is unlimited ways to develop a web site. Still based on the original concept of the
hyper-text mark-up language (HTML), Javascript or Java applets are used to give pages more
control and options to for special effects.
It is becoming a more common feature for web designer companies
to use the web-building software packages like Macromedia Flash and Microsoft Frontpage.
It is becoming common practice to develop 'fancy' web sites. However for the
purpose of this proposal we thought that it was important to show the organisation the
basics so that when the product is finally developed the DETR will be able to maintain
their own web pages.
The affects from such a package can be very effective to deliver
an organisations goal. I began to use this software and used it to develop the title page
of the site. The animation on the page gives a good indication of what can be achieved.
Developing a site for a Government department has its limitations. The use of graphics and sounds have not, until recently, been encouraged. This is because of the efficieny of sites. With so many graphics and sound files included in a web site, it can slow down the loading of pages, which can infuriate users. This is one aspect that I had under consideration whenever developing pages.
Browser Capabilties (Not shown)
It is important to take into consideration the usability of the
web browsers. Not all computers browser are the same. The two main highlighted browser are
that of Internet Explorer 4 (IE) and Netscape Navigator.
The way to overcome this problem is by firstly identifying what
browser the user has. This is done by the use of a Javascript function which displays the
results to the user (see section Alert Messages).
The prototype currently only supports Netscape however in the
actual web site they will take into consideration the user of IE. The site also uses
Macromedia Flash and a 'plug-in' is required to view the title page (see Title
Page).
The layout of the pages will be become consistent once past the title page. The general page consist of the three frames (see Use of Frames). This was implemented to aid the navigation through the site.
Fig.1: Railway content page.
The pages have been developed using the basic tools of HTML. The format for a web page consist of these fundamental tags;
(HTML)
(HEAD)(TITLE)Title(/TITLE)
(/HEAD)
(BODY)
(/BODY)
(/HTML)
The background has been assigned the picture detr.JPG between the BODY tags (BACKGROUND = "detr.JPG"), which is a graphics file that is recognised in HTML.
The main controls will be in the black borders which are described as the top and bottom frames. The format and functionality of the frames are discussed later on. For now in general terms the top frames gives the option of moving through the pages forwards or backwards page-by-page once visited. The bottom frames gives direct links to other pages in the site.
The majority of the web pages have an information scroll bar, that informs the user of any relevant information that the DETR wish to emphasise.
The black coloured frames both at the top and bottom of the
screen throws the attention of the user to the centre of the screen where the main
information can be delivered to the user.
The main part of the screen has a greyish background with the
DETR logo which is emphasised by the black borers. The text is mostly of black font which
stands out the best on a light background.
Within the bottom frame the hyperlink is shown as white text. The
way you can determine a hyper link is by the line that is under the text and when the
mouse is moved over the text the pointer it becomes a hand. Once that page has been
'visited' the text becomes light blue.
Tables help structure information on a screen. When used to its full potential, tables can be used to help group together large pieces of text and graphics that may need to be updated on a regular basis. This is a strong advantage we recognise for those pages that need to be updated frequently. We recommend that all text should be placed in tables so that editing is made simpler.
There are two types of lists available in HTML the Ordered List (OL /OL) and the Unordered List (UL /UL). The Ordered list gives a numbered list and the Unordered list gives a bulleted list. This is a useful tool for highlighting relevant text. We also believe that using lists gives a useful menu structure so that users can see at a glance what options are available to them.
Written in Javascript, this is a useful tool to give users
messages when using our site. For example when entering the web site, a message appears
that a shockwave plugin is required to view this page. These are always useful messages to
put in, this shows consideration to the user. Another useful place to place a message is
to those user who do not have frame enabled browser.
Another clever device would be to tell the user what browser they
are currently using.
There are a limited number of graphics currently in the site.
This is because when there are a lot of graphics on a page it will take a long time to
load up. Although the graphics maybe good, by the time it loads up over a server/browser
the user can often get irritated by the length of time that they must wait.
The graphics used in this prototype are that of the title page
which uses Flash. The top frame which has the company logo and the navigation buttons.
Also the background image on the majority of the screens with the DETR logo.
Currently in this prototype there are no sound attac hments to this site. We decided that currently most users do not pay much attention to the sound of pages and it can be found annoying to some. Especially when the sound file is extremely large and takes too long to load.
This page was last updated Friday January 23rd 1999