TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
> Like Arlen, I have difficulty taking Jakob Neilsen's advice seriously -
> one look at his site (http://www.useit.com) makes me want to ignore his
> advice, however valid much of it may be. YMMV.
Why would that be? His site passes some basic tests that many others fail.
e.g. only a couple of minor warnings from the HTML validator http://validator.w3.org/
W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium, the standards body for web things.
By comparison, www.netscape.com has dozens of errors and www.microsoft.com
cannot be validated because it is incorrectly formatted in a fairly basic
way, no DocType declaration. www.daleen.com, which I presume is your
company website, has a few dozen errors.
Of course it also worth validating for accessility for the disabled.
www.cast.org/bobby
Then there's format.
Try looking at his site with two or more different window sizes. It behaves
correctly, the HTML flows to properly fill whatever space is available.
Compare to brain-dead sites whose "designers" deliver whatever they imagine
might be appropriate (usually 800 by 600), completely ignoring the actual
space available. Look at microsoft.com or daleen.com, for example, on a
big monitor and watch how they leave a large chunk of screen unused.
He does not use java or javascript. This is a big plus. I work in computer
security and hang out with a fairly knowledgable and paranoid crowd. I'm
the only one I know who routinely has Java enabled in a browser, but even
I won't do really dumb things like enabling javascript (except occasionally,
for sites I trust) or installing Outlook.
Your daleen.com isn't even readable with javascript disabled. Methinks
whoever designed that site (and dozens of others much like it) should
take Neilsen as gospel for a year or so. Once they know what they're
doing (get all the basic points above right routinely), they can
consider criticising him.
Planning to attend IPCC 01, October 24-27 in Santa Fe? Sign up by
October 3 and get a substantial discount! Program information,
online registration, and more on http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
Your monthly sponsorship message here reaches more than
5000 technical writers, providing 2,500,000+ monthly impressions.
Contact Eric (ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com) for details and availability.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
