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Sunday, June 21, 2009

Breaking the law, breaking the law

This week we were asked to complete a HTML lab to present in class. So I plead to the jury that I have successfully completed this assignment and have submitted it on time using the drop box in blackboard. It was necessary for me to do so since I will not be with you on Monday night. "So what!" you exclaim. Well, I have broken some of the rules that we have learned in our readings when creating the vocab html. "How?" you ask so puzzling. Just look at the evidence; our professor might be kind enough to show you the facts of my project this week in my absence. The intent of the vocab HTML page was to practice using HTML code. Based on this fact, I am asking for a reprieve since I broke some of the rules for this exercise to make a point, "I did understand the rules". For example, I underlined the terms but they were not linked (sue me); truly this is not a good practice and personally would not like the misleading information if I were you. I used rainbow colors as text and though you could read them, there was no rhyme or reason for using these colors (what a rebel). I did however align the terms to the left, utilized proper spacing & font sizes, enlarged the title and provided a link to another vocab related website. So people of the jury, I did follow the general rules of the project. I understand that the vocab HTML project I prepared is not the prettiest but I understand my crime and am willing to face the charges (by the way, I was just making a point).

Let's now cover some of the facts in evaluating 2 other websites, the criteria in which the evaluation is done along with how to apply this information to future website projects. I will briefly review 5 areas: authority, coverage or purpose, currency, objectivity and accuracy.
Since I am away on vacation in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, my wife and I took a look at http://www.rehoboth.com/. My wife actually wanted to do some shopping with the kids since it was overcast today . . . "wonderful". As I was looking at the website I was being overly critical (Thank you Professor Mislevy). The title page of the website was presentable, warm and inviting. Click on 'enter site' and "BLAM"! Tons of information scattered throughout the page. Blinking graphics, hard to read text, links that do not bring you back to the home page and the list goes on. The website did cover several different activities, was up to date and well detailed but did not use CRAP to it's fullest (do you remember CRAP? If not, reference my week 1 blog, Walking through a spider web).

Since it was overcast, windy and the kids were dying to go to the beach after being here 2 days you would have thought I went to Excedrin.com but instead went to http://www.weather.com/. This is a very resourceful website that interactively allows you to view the weather anywhere (Hawaii seems nice this time of year). You can easily follow the links back and forth from page to page. You can also select information that covers the weather anywhere & anyway you would like to see it. The website is clear, concise with properly placed graphics, fonts, texts and alignments. As with the Rehoboth Beach website, there is a ton of information that is covered but in this website it is laid out in a format that leads you to where you want to go without getting lost on the linked pages. Lucky for me, I will not need to go to Excedrin.com because tomorrow the weather is supposed to be wonderful. The website will get a worse review if they are not 'accurate' about tomorrow's weather but they have clearly covered their purpose, objective, authority and currency in understandable detail.

Moving forward, I have learned my lesson about bad website designs and will follow the CRAP I have learned. I will take into consideration the authority, purpose, currency, objectivity and accuracy. For more detail on evaluating these areas, please visit http://library.duke.edu/services/instruction/libraryguide/evalwebpages.html

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