Web Development

Here are a few links I have found interesting and/or helpful.  They reflect my interest and belief that simple is best.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) - Where HTML guidelines come from.

Center for Advanced Instructional Media - The Yale University School of Medicine's site. A great site with a wonderful collection of electronic document and Web design related information. The illustrations in the Gallery are wonderful. They also have excellent on-line Web Style Manuals full of page and site design information. Downloadable/printable versions available.

useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website - Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., is a principal of the Nielsen Norman Group which he co-founded with Donald A. Norman (former VP of research at Apple Computer). Until July 1998 he was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer and the company's Web usability guru.

Dr. Nielsen coined the term "discount usability engineering" and has invented several usability techniques for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces, including heuristic evaluation. He holds 16 United States patents; mainly on ways of making the Internet easier to use.  This site has an enormous amount of information on the user interface. A must read for anyone designing a site and wishing to optimize the access to the content.

Ask Tog - A great site that covers all aspects of site design and usability.  Wide selection of articles dealing with user interface issues. Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini is lead designer at Healtheon, start-up founded in February, 1996 by Jim Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape.  Formerly, Tog was Distinguished Engineer for Strategic Technology at Sun.  During his 14 years at Apple Computer, he founded the Apple Human Interface Group and acted as Apple's Human Interface Evangelist.

Doctor Html ^(TM) - Test your page against current HTML guidelines.

Web Pages That Suck - Learn from other people's mistakes, you don't have time to make them all yourself.

Center for Democracy and Technology - learn about privacy issues on the Web.

A few scanning tips - Grossly misleading title!  This site by Wayne Fulton goes way beyond "a few scanning tips".  If printed there are more than 200 pages of VERY useful information. It has an incredibly succinct description of the scanning techniques; what, why, and how much.  It is very well written, profusely illustrated, and a great find. Not to be missed if you need to scan anything for use on the Web (or elsewhere).

ACCESSIBLE WEB DESIGN - The wonderful world of the graphical interface on the Web is certainly a rich and rewarding experience for most of us but are you making access to your hard work impossible for some? Here's a small list of sites that can help you ensure that everybody can access your information.

What does your site look like in Lynx? - Many people are forced to use "text only" browsers. Test what your page looks like to them.

Trace Research & Development Center - The Trace Center is a Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center. Trace has an excellent collection of information on its own site and links to other sources as well.

Bobby - Bobby is a web-based public service offered by CAST that analyzes web pages for their accessibility to people with disabilities as well as their compatibility with various browsers. The analysis of accessibility is based on the working draft of the W3C's WAI Page Author guidelines.