Web Design Goodies Critique #20

Web Design Goodies Critique #20

Published February 1, 2001 By Joe Burns, Ph.D.

Greetings, Fellow Designers…

Mike Bell is a fellow Ph.D. I have never met him. I dont
know Mike Bell, but when I see those three letters following
a persons name, I know that we at least have one thing in
common. We are both persons who devoted a big chunk of our
lives to learning the art of research. Youll often find
persons who have a philosophy doctorate will create sites
devoted to their craft be it teaching or research. HTML
Goodies teaches. Mikes site is devoted to research.
Lets take a look.

Now the obligatory release clause statement…

>>>>The critique below represents the opinions of Joe
Burns, Ph.D. Feel free to disagree, argue, forget, or
accept anything he writes. The purpose of the critique
is to offer examples that you may use, repair, or forget
when it comes to your own Web site. As always, remember
that there are no hard or fast rules to Web design. Any
choice is the correct choice as long as that choice aids
the user and adds to the sites purpose for being. <<<<

Title: Virtual LRC (Learning Resource Center)
Author: Michael Bell, Ph.D.

http://www.virtuallrc.com/

Load Time: 9 Seconds, 57kps modem, cleared cache,
12/26/00 10:59AM.
My Screen Size: 1024X768
Browsers Used: Internet Explorer 5.5 and Netscape Navigator 4.5

Concept: The site explains it this way: The Virtual
Learning Resources Center facilitates secondary and
community college students in their search for quality
information for school and college academic projects.
The search engine is dedicated to helping students find
hits that assist in research. I address this further
in the first concern, but this is the basic idea.

Praise: Its a great idea. Let the students search here
where they have a better chance at finding information
they can use toward a research project. Searching Yahoo
might produce 100 hits that will do nothing but waste
time because they have nothing to do with the subject at
hand.

In terms of design, I am always happy when I see a site
that has taken screen settings into account. Michael has
set his page to a width of 720 so that it displays well
on all browsers 800X600 and above. Heres a look at the
homepage in 800X600 and then 1024X768:

It renders well. I like the format and the color scheme
is pretty nice. I wonder if the logo in the upper left-
hand corner might not get lost on smaller browsers, but
thats an easy fix.

I searched a few words. Wow! It returned a lot of
information and a lot of hits. Often, a personal search
engine will not have quite the amount of information I
want. This does. I think its because Michael doesnt
just search his own database, but rather numerous
databases specifically geared to finding academic
information.

Concern 1: This will be the second search engine page Ill
review for this newsletter. When I arrived, I asked myself
the same question, I ask of every new search engine, Why
would I come here over Yahoo? Yahoo was named the most
popular site of the year 2000. It is paired up with
Google, which claims to have catalogued the largest number
of page on the Web. So…why would I come here?

Suggestion: I read the homepage three times hoping the
answer would jump out at me. It wasnt until I went to
the About page that I found the quote above that
explained the sites reason for being. I would suggest
you rewrite what is on the homepage and make a point of
stating the sites purpose much more plainly. I would
use the text above. It tells the story in a much more
concise fashion than does the current homepage text.