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Nigel Parry is a young Englishman who acts as the amanuensis/webmaster for Birzeit University, which is near the West Bank town of Ramallah in Palestine.
The reason we mention him is because, via his newsletter, we came across an exceptionally well designed part of the site, from which we can all learn.
In Who killed Muhyideen Al-Shareef?, Parry dissects an exceedingly complex tale in words and pictures.
The narrative is relatively easy to follow for such a Byzantine plot. The story is broken into three parts. Images, which are reduced to an absolute minimum in terms of bytes, are scattered throughout the text in appropriate places. Complete with "ALT" tags, they load as the text is being perused, are relevant and add color and life to the narrative.
We like this site because it tells a story, it uses HTML appropriately and in broad conformity with general standards, and because the architecture minimizes scrolling.
Oh that all sites were so simple!
A site should be light and agile, its constituent parts connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the site should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little nor too much, neither needless loops nor useless links, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity.
A site should follow the "Law of Least Astonishment". What is this law?
It is simply that the site should always respond to the user in the way that astonishes him least.
A site, no matter how complex, should act as a single unit. The site should be directed by the logic within rather than by outward appearances.
If the site fails in these requirements, it will be in a state of disorder and confusion. The only way to correct this is to rebuild the site.
* Freely adapted from The Tao of Programming by Geoffrey James, InfoBooks, 1985
Our jihad against fat online graphics continues by our alerting you to GIFWizard.
GIFWizard is an online service that
reduces the file sizes of your Web site images so that your Web
pages will load faster. Which is A Good Thing...
They will even scan your entire site for bloated GIFs, animated GIFs and JPGs, create reduced file size version of those graphics and check for broken links. You can also check graphics one at a time by entering a URL or uploading a file from your machine.
The Site Scan service comes at a price, as follows:
Which seem pretty reasonable in the context of acquiring the knowledge and application to do it yourself...
There's also a library of 400,000+ image thumbnails, which you can scavenge for images when inspiration deserts you.
Well worth checking out.
Billing itself as "the complete on-line career magazine for the Indian IT professional", Winjobs is much more than a simple matching service for job seekers and potential employers.
India, of course, has a justified reputation for producing high-quality IT professionals - the sub-continent was, after all, the birthplace of the science of mathematics.
It's an intersting and well-designed site. Content ranges from an article on the city of Pune (just south of Bombay and previously best known as the world headquarters of Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh), as well as profiles of Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai, to a poll on who Indian IT professionals believe should be their next Prime Minister.
Full access to the site is through (free) membership, obtained by filling out a simple, well-designed form.
We like this site because it has, first and foremost, interesting content relevant to its audience. Navigation is easy and intuitive, and the site, as a whole downloads quickly. We must also admit to a bias as to its being written in British English...
Good job, Winjobs! And if you are a recruiter seeking well-qualified candidates...
Take a look at the Archives. We've indexed all the past issues with topic pointers.
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