Re: Designing WWW server pages

[Jonathan Lavigne <jpl -at- LYRA -dot- STANFORD -dot- EDU>]

kathy -at- nevada -dot- edu (Kathy Eyster) writes:

>Hello everyone,

[Excerts from the original post]

>I'm responsible for the "look" of the pages we place on the server. Though
>I've attended a couple workshops on designing online help and documents,
>these were more specifically geared to microcomputer platforms where the
>developers knew what software their customers would be using. In this
>case, however, people accessing these files could be using the full-blown,
>color graphics of an Xwindows viewer or the text-only Lynx utility.

>I've also set up a Gopher server to share our newsletter and seminar
>catalogs. In this case, I settled on the lowest common denominator, ASCII
>text only with short (60 character) lines and blank lines between
>paragraphs. Titles are all caps with a row of hyphens below to simulate
>underlining. Headings are uc/lc and also "underlined" in the above manner.

Kathy,

I've done quite a bit of work on our Web server
(http://www-rlg.stanford.edu), so I guess I can offer a few
comments.  One thing you need to get used to with HTML is that, by
design, the provider of information has far less control than usual
over the look and feel of a document. Unless you turn everything --
into an image -- a very un-Web-like thing to do -- it's the reader
who decides, for example, what typeface to use.  And HTML lacks many
rudimentary layout options that even Windows help provides, to say
nothing of what's provided in the average word processor or desktop
publishing program.  (This may change a bit in the future.  Right
now, I'm beta testing a Web browser that uses some HTML extensions
to offer decent options for controlling the flow of text around
images -- a feature that the first version of HTML lacks and that
leads to some awful but inescapable problems with layout.)

Even with HTML's current limitations, though, I would say that you
want to do more than just provide links to text files on your Gopher
server.  These show up in a plain monospace font, so they don't
benefit from HTML's ability to use proportional fonts and different
size headings. By necessity, we've had to make some files do
double-duty, but I try to say things in proper HTML whenever
possible. In some cases, using HTML is more than just a matter of
appearance. Whenever you're referring to other Web sites, you'll
want to make real links that get people to the sites you mention,
and for that you need HTML.  The best course, I think, is to have a
single source file that you can use macros on to format both as
plain text for your Gopher or FTP server and marked-up HTML for your
Web server.  I've experimented a little bit with this, though I
haven't done as much as I wanted.  It does take a fair amount of
planning.

As for images. I'll admit that I'm a bit prejudiced against turning
everything into needless graphics. Some sites do a good job of it,
but, since I'm often using a SLIP connection, I get annoyed with
having to wait while a simple menu comes up as a series of GIFS --
particularly if all the menu leads me to is a list of meaningless
file names on an FTP server. Images are what make the Web visually
more appealing than any other Internet front-end, but I think you
need to strike a balance. (I'll admit that our server could use more
images and we're working to make it a bit spiffier.) One thing
you'll want to do with your images is make sure that they use the
minimum number of colors to keep the file size as small as possible.
I usually check the color level in Paint Shop Pro and try to reduce
it to no more than 16 if possible.

Good luck with your Web server. I'm finding my work on our Web
server one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.
--
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Jonathan Lavigne                                BL -dot- JPL -at- RLG -dot- STANFORD -dot- EDU
Research Libraries Group/Stanford University