Re: School District Site

by "Sebastian" <sderaadt(at)clear.net.nz>

Date:	Thu, 19 Mar 1998 18:19:53 +1200
To:	"hwg-critique" <hwg-critique(at)mail.hwg.org>, "Connie Lysinger" <clysing(at)pps.k12.or.us>
	todo: View Thread, Original



>I would appreciate a ruthless critique of Portland Public Schools' web
>site, http://www.pps.k12.or.us


Hi Connie

As the designer and webmaster for a school site, I was particularly
interested in critique request...so here goes...

The first page in the right frame is too long. It suggests scrolling down -
and scrolling, I've learnt, is not appreciated by your average surfer :-)
Break it up into two pages.

I would drop the frames, a single page formatted with tables looks and feels
better. If you must keep the frames, remove the border between them with
attribute frameborder=0.

There are too many navigational links on first page, I was confused. You
have the links in the frame, so don't replicate them in the righthand
document.

The 'PPS Home' link in the left bottom frame launched into new browser
window - rather irritating I find.

The backgrounds were inconsistent. Sometimes they were a nice blue,
sometimes white and sometimes darkblue. Best to have one consistent style.

The headings were also inconsisent. Sometimes they were green boxes and
sometimes tables with overused border attributes.

In the 'Help and Technical support' page, the Netscape icon is old - it
refers to version 3.0. I would remove all the browser and search engine link
icons - they all get far more links than they deserve - mostly from sites
like yours who work hard for visitors. By the same token the link to
Lightning HTML Editor should be removed.

The text only version went into a new browser window - unnecessary.

I would specify a sans-serif font for all your pages text - the default font
in many browsers - a serif font like times roman - is revolting IMHO.

Your pages lacked a doctype. This is two lines of text placed above the
<HTML> tag that informs the browser and other user agents the version by
which this document complies (or tries to comply to).

Maybe a few pictures would add some life to the text heavy pages.

All links were live and all pages loaded quickly.

I spotted no spelling mistakes.

I hope this helps :-)

Cheers

Sebastian
__________________________________
Sebastian de Raadt  sderaadt(at)clear.net.nz
http://www.rh.steiner.school.nz/sebastian
"If you cannot convince them, confuse them."
__________________________________

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