Re: Web Site Using Informix SDE Datablade(read inside)

Your website critique is below. Please do not think because I point out a few problems that this is bad. Most of the stuff can be fixed in a few minutes or a few hours. Some stuff cannot be fixed but needs to be made clear to the user. Usability problems: > de2_logo_beta.gif is close to 100k, pretty pic, but took over 30 seconds to download the splash page, most on that gif using 28.8 connection. 10 seconds is a top limit for splash page. > No message about what this website is on the splash page that is clear for the user. Usage of Java, etc, should be made clear up front, security considerations, etc. The info page tells me it is an energy resources mapping site. > No keywords or description meta tags in HTML <HEAD>. This makes it hard for search engines to classify or users to search for this useful website. Title 'Digital Earth Explorer' is ambiguous. > The use of frames for index_frame.html is generally bad for users and the page loaded very slow. > The restrictions are very high (96K RAM), latest browser. Browser version could be checked on your side to help user realize they cannot run your Java applet. > Took me a while to realize that I had to click on the map for anything to happen in index_frame.html > My antiquated Linux system does not meet the requirement, only 64MB RAM. I am short RAM and one Browser version. Alas, I could not take time to view the site, the 689K applet takes too long to download for the major warnings about requirements. At least you tried to warn the user about high requirements. Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen and the O'reilly book with the polar bear cover on information architecture site design give good usability and information organizing information. -- --------------------------------------------------------- Steven Hauser email: hause011@tc.umn.edu URL: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~hause011 ---------------------------------------------------------