| Category |
Strengths |
Weaknesses |
| Content |
- lecture notes summarize many sources
- calendar organizes all course activities
|
- not enough contextual links to external web sources
- news page not updated enough to be very useful
- calendar page is most used, should be more accessible
|
| Writing Style |
- content subdivided using headings, tables and bullets
- no long paragraphs
|
- sentences are too long
- explanations are too brief, terse, incomplete
- not enough examples
- concepts and language are too difficult or advanced for target
audience (undergraduate students, non-native English speakers, computer
newbies)
|
| Text Format |
- consistent headings and table header cells using stylesheets
- serif font is good for printing
|
- text is too dense, crowded
- body text serif font is not as readable as sans-serif
- full-justified text looks bad for small window sizes
|
| Images |
- screen captures illustrate application windows
|
- animated gifs are annoying, waste bandwidth
- few self-made images; plain and unexciting look
|
| Page Layout |
- tables not used for page layout
- consistent frames, header and footer for all pages
|
- left frame takes up much space on small windows
- single column of text is too wide
- calendar is too complex and too wide for small screens
|
| Navigation Structure |
- quick access to any page
- navigational and contextual links
- consistent location of navigational elements
- every page identifies itself, home page, organization, author
|
- usability problems associated with frames; no
noframes
tag
- few associative (related topics/see also) links
- links have not been automatically validated; a few broken links
- content pages do not indicate site section
|
| File Structure |
- few directories, little nesting
- images are shared among files within a course directory
- notes and coursework are put in subdirectories
- index files are used in most folders
|
- files in gvogl should be in top level directory instead
- repeated images should be shared by all courses
- some files and folder names are too long and contain capitals and
spaces
|
| HTML |
- relatively clean, standard, browser-independent HTML
|
- HTML has not been automatically validated
- frequent use of deprecated attributes instead of CSS
- many rules of XHTML are not followed
|
| Accessibility |
- relatively fast to load; small file sizes; entire courses fit on a
floppy
- important images use alt attributes
- flexible for any screen resolution and text size
- lecture notes are well formatted when printed
- logical formatting is often used
|
- dependent on frames for navigation
- dependent on JavaScript for headers and footers
- no automated accessibility check has been made
- some physical formatting like bold and italics is used
|
Critique of My Course Websites