Reading websites, part 2
Posted on October 01, 2003 @ 15:10 in Research
In a previous post I asked for your opinion about what cues are good indicators of the "technical ability" of the author of a web page. Thanks to all who commented or wrote me an e-mail about that. Today, I have a revised question about the same issue for you :-)
Last time I asked a very broad question and got very broad answers. The comments mentioned navigation, layout, and valid code among the qualities that indicate a home page author's "technical ability."
The problem, however, is: how do I as a researcher operationalize "technically sophisticated" navigation, layout or code? To be more precise, I don't want to look at every page's source or run it through a validator to see if it is "good." What I want to do, is look at the home page as it appears in my browser, as it appears to the average surfer, and pick out/pick up on elements that say something about the level of "technical ability" of that home page's author. I'm trying to stay close to how I imagine the "average surfer" reads the various elements of home pages.
What I would like you to do is name those elements on home pages that to you say "technically sophisticated." Try to be as detailed as you can.
For example, those W3C valid (X)HTML and/or CSS buttons on someone's home page, are they good indicators of the author's technical ability? Why? Why not? What do these buttons tell you?
Help me out here and I'll give you something back for it :-) I've been working on an operationalization of "technical ability" myself and I will post that in a couple of days, so you can see what I've done with your comments.
At this point in the research I'm primarily looking at "personal home pages," of the static HTML kind, rather than weblogs. I will return to weblogs later in the research, so feel free to reference them in your comment.
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Just a few random thoughts...
1a. Normally, when I think of "personal homepages", the mental images of HTML3, Netscape 2 come to mind (things like http://www.ionesco.org/ or http://www.geocities.com/johnsonindy500/index2.html -- note the GeoCities domain; when I close my eyes I imagine I am back in 1996).
1b. As in the second example, the main page would be cluttered with links to everywhere and nowhere with no NavBar in sight.
2. When I think of *modern* personal homepages, I expect intelligently used frames or frame-like structures with a NavBar, and outlook control through CSS.
3. 'Valid HTML4/XHTML/CSS' buttons tell me that the person who built the page/site knows who W3C are, and what web standards are. Therefore, we may assume that some technical knowledge has been put to good use (although inclusing of the button is no guarantee, and absence no ill omen).
4. Yours truly is a practical web designer. I tend to write XHTML and I always use CSS(2) (priding myself nerdishly on writing everything with Notepad). My pages are, however, almost never 'real' valid XHTML because I omit the DOCTYPE declaration. Why? Because The Browser That Cannot Be Named (still a market penetration of 90-odd percent) chokes on it, giving unexpected results (such as undesired scroll bars &c.).
Posted by Arjan on October 07, 2003 @ 16:08
Apparently I have picked the right profession for myself, or so says the BBC quiz "What Kind of Thinker Are You?" Interpersonal thinkers: Like to think about other people, and try to understand them Recognise differences between individuals and appreci...
Trackback from feministe on October 07, 2003 @ 16:40
i appreciate the use of css, myself. i also appreciate the implementation of margins (white space makes a page easier to read) and regular font sizes. organization of pages, especially from a hobbyist web designer, is also indicative of their knowledge of web accessibility.
i also tend to look at their programs and software that are listed. i respect those that use more complex methods of site building that those who use applications like Frontpage. hosting is also a factor in this. i have a general rule that i won't visit web pages hosted on geocities, tripod, or similar sites. the popups and ads become too much.
i also agree with Arjan that the verification buttons are less about whether their code is clean and more that they understand the importance of web standards and accessibility.
hope this helps. i've sent more comments your way.
Posted by ms lauren on October 07, 2003 @ 16:45
Definitely, CSS use says "technically capable". If I'm in a particularly geeky mood (or bored) I might look at the stylesheet itself and make decisions based on how it's written, whether there are redundancies, how much of the language they are using and so on.
I'm immediately suspicious of anything that's been built with Frontpage, and to a lesser extent Dreamweaver - but a good site design will eliminate that. Anyone using stock buttons or animated GIFs is marked down as "newbie" to me.
Generally, I think technology should be used to make pages simple, quick-loading and attractive. I'm not impressed at all by huge quantities of DHTML, for instance - I hate it. I find it hard to distinguish in value terms between technical skill and design skill - a site with three nested TABLEs that is clear and well-laid-out will win over one that uses great CSS2 but is a bitch to read. It's all about the *application* of the technology.
Perhaps the main thing is browser compatibility, which is usually influenced by the above factors. Designed for IE only? Loser. Even IE-specific elements, filters and so on, make me think twice. It has to look basically the same on IE at work and Camino at home.
Oh, and everything has to work, obviously.
Posted by fridgemagnet on October 08, 2003 @ 01:33
More precise comments in response to Frank's actual questions/observations...
As others before me have said, readability is everything. Layout, whitespace, font family and size. This, however, has no one-on-one relation with technically sophisticated code, as anyone could "fake" the most important CSS features with a bunch of FONT tags and some additional other ones (highly undesirable re. the content/representation separation). Outwardly, no difference -- but don't look under the hood.
Less specific comments...
1. Come to think of content/representation separation... Why are the I and B tags still valid, not-deprecated XHTML/Strict tags?
2. Has anyone come across sites that offer serious alternatives to visually-impaired users (apart from target audience specific ones, of course)?
3. I think browser-specific extensions, filters etc. should only be used when they add a little "icing" that is dispensable and does not deteriorate the viewing experience when using a different browser. As long as all essentials are available to everyone, then that's fine.
At work (some of my office time is devoted to building c/s applications with XML/XSLT and Java), I abide W3C validity rules (incl. DOCTYPES), even though (a) my XSL tool (XML Spy) validates documents that have no DOCTYPE, and (b) 100% of our customers use IE5+.
As for my personal pages, I see 98% IE5+ usage, so I tend to use *some* IE icing as described above, as with those scrollbar visualisation things. I like to change the scrollbar appeareance - nice to have when done in style, yet if you're a non-IE viewer, no harm done.Posted by Arjan on October 08, 2003 @ 10:11
Thanks for all the feedback :)
Quick reply to ms.lauren: if you're sick of pop-ups, give Mozilla Firebird a try and install the Tabbrowser Extension. It gives you full control over who can and can't open new windows and what should happen with newly opened windows.
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/
Posted by Frank on October 08, 2003 @ 15:55
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