Intros inhibit website users to access the information they were looking for. In addition they convey the impression that the website owners place more importance on the design than on the offer of information or solutions to their customers. A website needs to instantly communicate what it is about and what a user can expect to find. The website must also take account of the little time available to the website user. It should be noted that users spend in average only 2 minutes on a website.
An intro page to allow language or regional choice is unnecessary, as there is a possibility to identify this automatically.
Javascript intros for re-directing and configuration purposes are also discouraged, even though users hardly notice them, as they have an impact on search engines and accessibility. Nowadays there are better alternatives to be used server-side.
Please note that you may not be able to see an intro page, depending on language settings, IP address and other user criteria. The intro page may, however, show for other users, and it is available for search engines, spiders and bots.
Source:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger
Further information:
http://www.kundennutzen.ch/intros.php
http://nitzsche.info/de.pub-2-vorschaltseiten.php
No intro page was found on the tested website.
The website must contain a precise and meaningful "title tag", a page title. This is based on the following:
- The title is displayed on the title bar of the browser window.
- The title is used when setting a bookmark (or favourite).
- The file title is shown in the browser in the list of pages previously searched.
- Many search engines offer the title as a hyperlink.
- Search engines use the content of the title for their search.
- Website users often only read the first words and should therefore have enough information about the website.
Equally important is the choice of precise and meaningful titles. The content should be summarised in the title, helping users to find the information needed. According to Nielsen, titles should not be longer than 60 characters.
Source and further information:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger and
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html,
http://www.usability-now.com/suchmaschinenoptimierung/.
The tested website complies with this requirement.
HTML is a mark-up language used to create websites, and is independent of platforms.
"HTML is not a programming language, since HTML does not allow to, say, control a robot, set a variable or programme a game." (Quelle)
The display of invalid or incorrect documents depends on the software reading them (browser, roboter, screenreader, etc; see above). However, the display will vary greatly depending on the software, and this can lead to errors, often without the knowledge of the website manager, since it is impossible to test the website against all updates of all the software.
Non validated HTML source text can cause high costs, especially if it causes the software to look for an error or if the functionality and therefore the user experience is impacted.
Further information:
The validity of the HTML source text can be checked with a so-called 'validator'.
Examples:
Further information
http://blog.antikoerperchen.de/beitrag/28/validierung-wozu-warum-valider-html-code-wichtig-ist.html
Acronyms:
HTML: HyperText Markup Language
The tested website contains valid XHTML source text.
Pop-ups tend to annoy web users, as they appear suddenly and cannot be controlled. In addition, many users associate pop-ups with untrustworthy gambling and porn sites. User-friendly websites should therefore not include pop-ups, with the following exception: a print-preview of a page displayed as a pop-up.
Source:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger
Further information:
http://www.usability.ch/Alt_nav/Alertbox/NJ_20041206.htm
Your website does not contain pop-ups.
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The tested website successfully passed this test.
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The tested website successfully passed this test.
"Times New Roman" is the font mostly used in printing. For online usage, however, it is advised to use it with a size of 12 points or more. Basically, Nielsen does not advise to use it, as it is not perceived as being professional and does not appeal to any age group.
Source and further information:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger
No Times New Roman font was found on the tested website.
This page is optimized for ... or "Best viewed with Netscape Navigator and 800x600" reduce unnecessarily the usability of a website and tell the website user to choose the "correct" configuration to allow an optimised display of the website. It is the duty of the website owner (web designer) to create a site so that it remains functional without loosing appeal in as many browsers and browser configurations as possible.
Further information:http://www.htmlhelp.com/feature/art2.htm ""This page optimized for ..." - arguing with customers -" the website Design Group.
No text reading "This page optimized for ..." was found on the tested website.
Links to web files placed on local files do not work, and are therefore classed as 'dead' links. Such links should be avoided.
The tested website complies with the requirements.
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The tested website successfully passed this test.
Internet users expect hyperlinks to be either coulour coded or underlined. Therefore, the tag "underline" should not be used for non hyperlinked text. Using the tag "underline" for non hyperlinked text confuses the user, making it more difficult to recognise genuine hyperlinks.
Source and further information:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen and Hora Loranger
http://www.usability.ch/Alt_nav/Alertbox/NJ_20040510.htm
No "underline" tages for non hyperlinked text were found on the tested website.
"Even though machine-level addressing like the URL should never have been exposed in the user interface, it is there and we have found that users actually try to decode the URLs of pages to infer the structure of web sites. Users do this because of the horrifying lack of support for navigation and sense of location in current web browsers. Thus, a URL should contain human-readable directory and file names that reflect the nature of the information space."
Source:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605a.html
Further information:
http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/uri-choose
The tested web site does not contain URLs that are too complex.
Blinking and moving text should be avoided. website users would like to read at their own pace and usually they class moving text as unimportant ads. Static text can be read quicker by users and does force them to wait for returning text. Furthermore, problems may arise when printing the page.
Source and further information: "Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger, as well as hints on http://www.barrierefreies-webdesign.de/
No blinking or moving text was found on the tested website.
HTML is only one of a series of markup languages, though it is the best known one. HTML is relatively old and has seen various, rather different variations. The Document Type Declaration indicates which markup language and which version of it has been used. A sorting software, e.g. a web browser, can understand this indication.
Source and further information: http://de.selfhtml.org/html/allgemein/grundgeruest.htm.
The tested website contains a Document Type Declaration.
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The tested website successfully passed this test.
So called "black lists" are kept worldwide to avoid spam. The lists contain domains, e-mail addresses or IP addresses. Incoming e-mails can be treated separately if they are found to relate to one of the criteria listed. This can range from completely deny reception to a delay, from deletion to the marking as spam. Black lists can be kept locally or centrally on servers, in what is called a "Realtime Blackhole List" (RBL).
Currently, the tested Domain is not listed in any on the reviewed black lists.
The titles need to be ordered in a sytematic and logical way, i.e. there can be no jump going from h1 toi h6. In addition, the first title must be h1.
Further information:
http://www.vorsprungdurchwebstandards.de/theory/retro-coding/
(Chapter: "Semantisch strukturiertes HTML" = "Semantically structured HTML)
The title structure of the tested website is correct.
A table based layout carries many disadvantages if compared to a purely CSS layout. A CSS layout improves both accessibility and performance.
Further information:
A detailed article by Douglas Bowman can be found onhttp://www.stopdesign.com/articles/throwing_tables/.
Hint for webmasters: Be sure that when embedding third party content, e.g. with iFrame, there are no layout tables included.
The tested website does not use table layout.
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The tested website successfully passed this test.
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The tested website successfully passed this test.
RSS is a technique that allows users to subscribe to contents of a website such as news, reports, blogs, etc. Atom is a format competing with RSS.
Newly published content is regularly and automatically downloaded on the subscriber's computer or other devices thanks to RSS or Atom. This allows the subscriber to keep up to date.
Functions based on RSS are increasingly integrated in existing applications, like e-mail programmes or web browsers.
Further information:
http://www.stefanbucher.net/tutorial/rss/
Acronyms:
RSS: Really Simple Syndication, also called Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary
Contents in RSS or Atom format were found.
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The tested website successfully passed this test.
An image map is a graphics file with clickable areas to re-direct users. This means that single areas of the graphics file can be defined in such way that they act like a link in a text. By clicking on the specific area, the users are taken to an external URL or to pre-defined are of the website.
Image maps contain problems, especially when they contain barriers. A solution for barrier-free image maps can be found on http://expertinnen-web.de/2006-115/barrierefreie-image-maps/
Further information: http://de.selfhtml.org/html/grafiken/verweis_sensitive.htm
The tested website complies with the requirements.
To abstract design from the structure and the content, HTML should contain classes. Classes are invisible to web site users, and allow to classify elements, paragraphs, areas, etc.
The website designer can select and re-format classes with a stylesheet. Classes are only necessary if they differentiate elements, paragraphs, areas, etc. A common mistake is for instance the classification of all elements of one type, which does not add any value but makes the HTML and CSS code unnecessarily long, complex and difficult to understand. Such cases are also referred to as "Classitis", see also
http://www.bs-markup.de/blog/archiv/2005/06/30/dr-css/ .
Another typical error is the wrong naming of the classes.
An article detailing these problems can be found on the seven49.net - Papers.
/Web/de/Papers_Links/Bezeichnung_von_IDs_und_Klassen.htm
The tested website complies with the requirements.
Search engines do not include pages in their indexes which contain "?id=" or "&id=" in their URL or query string. Examples:
http://www.anyaddress.com/index.html?id=727
http://www.anyaddress.com/products.aspx?category=3&id=7
Google does actually index those pages since Autumn 2006, in contrast to their previous practice. Still, those URLs are not advisable since they do not specify how other objects are called, they mean nothing to users and they are not optimised for search engines. An additional tool is available for this test, which allows to highlight any warnings, tips and hints in the source text of the website. You can find this tool here:
http://www.qualidator.com/Web/en/ProductsServices/SiteAnalyzer2.htm
"If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few."
Bad examples:
http://www.irgendeineadresse.com/index.html?id=727
http://www.irgendeineadresse.com/products.aspx?category=3&id=7
Source:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
The tested website complies with the requirements.
"According to RFC 2616, Internet HTTP Compression is a method to send, from the Web server, an HTTP response message in compressed format to a requesting Web browser.
HTTP Compression saves transfer data volume and reduces web page load time." As there are some known issues with Internet Explorer 6 you may want to disable compression for IE6.
Source: http://www.http-compression.com/
The website uses a GZIP or deflate compression for HTML files.
"According to RFC 2616, Internet HTTP Compression is a method to send, from the Web server, an HTTP response message in compressed format to a requesting Web browser.
HTTP Compression saves transfer data volume and reduces web page load time." As there are some known issues with Internet Explorer 6 you may want to disable compression for IE6.
Source: http://www.http-compression.com/
The website uses a GZIP or deflate compression for javascript files.
Names of links should be short, precise and meaningful. Links such as "more" or the die character sequence ">>" should be avoided, as the user should be specifically told what "more" can be expected.
Source and further information:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger; there are also good examples on http://de.selfhtml.org/html/verweise/definieren.htm
The tested website complies with the requirements.
Accessibility guideline 10.5 for web content 1.0 W3C, dated 5th May 1999 states: "Until user agents (including assistive technologies) render adjacent links distinctly, include non-link, printable characters (surrounded by spaces) between adjacent links." http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT.
This means that subsequent links should be separated by a printable, non hyper-linked and free-standing character. The prolem is easily solved by using a navigation list for the links <ul>. Additional characters can be added with CSS.
Further information:
http://www.vorsprungdurchwebstandards.de/theory/accessibility-nach-vorschrift/;
http://de.selfhtml.org/html/text/listen.htm
On the tested web site, subsequent links are distinguished by the list element <ul> or are clearly kept apart through printable, not hyperlinked characters.
Older web projects were often designed with so-called "empty images" (i.e. images without content, used as placeholder). This technique is now outdated and should be replaced with CSS features such as "Padding" and "Margin". This allows an increased performance of the website, as well as a strict separation between design and content, and an abstraction of the design from the structure.
Further information:
http://seybold.jan-andresen.de/05killer.php
No empty images were found on the tested website.