Usability

The study of the relationship between a user and a User Interface (UI) forms the basis of user-centred design. An analysis of usability requires the designer of an interface to answer a number of questions.
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March 12, 2010, 5:14 am

Website Design

Introduction

 

For several years I used my website to pass on information to computing students. This section was intially written as part of a project I carried out for the Open University region South, based in Oxford. The idea was to help Maths and Computing tutors with constructing a website. Displaying mathematics raises a lot of problems not faced by most subject areas. So with that in mind I set out to find, within certain limitations, how best to do it.

I have tried to keep this material up to date. I have also made substantial changes, not only to the structure and appearance of this site, but also to the means used for delivering its content. These pages are now, with a few exceptions, scripted using the PHP programming language. By doing so, I hope to reap the benefits of producing dynamically generated web pages, rather than deliver static HTML documents. As this site has grown, site maintenance has been a problem, particularly when modifying navigation menus. That should now prove to be a thing of the past.

My first website, written in 1998, was a contender for Web Pages That Suck. I have subsequently tried to learn from my mistakes. No doubt there are still flaws, but I like to think they are less obvious. Consequently, what follows is based on my own experiences of building and maintaining a website.

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Copyright © 2010 John McSweeney