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Getting Started: Overall Design
Each website is unique because each instructor is unique, but they must all meet certain guidelines. All content needs to be understandable and navigable. This includes making the language you use clear and simple and designing a website with an understandable way to navigate within and between the pages. Keep the wording you use for navigation tabs short and keep in mind that not all students can use visual cues. An icon used alone to relay information is not going to help a visually impaired student. You need to provide text equivalents for images and other multimedia content. Once this information is provided, it becomes the responsibility of the student’s own assistive technology programs to present the information to them.
While designing your website keep in mind that not all students may have large screens. According to OneStat.com, a company that tracks and analyzes web information, the usage of screen resolution settings of 800 x 600 pixels has significantly decreased since June 2006. More and more internet users are now using a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 or higher. Adjusting your own computer screen to 1024 x 768 will allow you to review the design the way most of your students will see it (see Figure 1).
Update your own web browser. You will want be sure the site you are designing will display well on the most current browser software.
- Apple Safari
http://www.apple.com/safari/
- Mozilla Firefox
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
- Mozilla Suite
http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/
- Konqueror
http://www.konqueror.org/features/browser.php
- Microsoft Internet Explorer
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/ie/getitnow.mspx
- Netscape Navigator
http://browser.netscape.com/
Figure 1: All percentages are based on information gathered in February and March 2007 by OneStat. The percentages are based on a sample of 2 million visitors divided into 20,000 visitors from 100 countries each day.
| Rank |
Most Popular
Screen Resolutions |
Percent of Users |
| 1 |
1024 x 768 |
55.34% |
| 2 |
1280 x 1024 |
17.23% |
| 3 |
1280 x 800 |
8.23% |
| 4 |
800 x 864 |
8.18% |
| 5 |
1152 x 864 |
3.67% |
It’s also important to remember that not all students will have high-speed internet. According to an Internet speed survey in February 2007, only 47% of Americans have broadband Internet service at home. Placing large image files on your webpage will cause the pages to display very slowly for a student using a dialup connection.
Although it’s not required, it’s a good idea to indicate the size of a file when making it available for students to download. This practice will give some warning to students with slower connection speeds prior to beginning a download. This is easily done by simply stating: (1.3MB), or (340kb), after the link to the file. (replacing the numbers with your actual file size).
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