h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've been running various websites since the gopher was the technology used to disseminate information on the Internet. In that time (almost 12 years, I guess) I've encountered some very good websites and some very bad ones.

The good ones share some traits and the most important of them is content.

A website that has high quality information (HQI) and is frequently updated is generally more useful than one that has low quality information (LQI) and is never updated. A website with HQI but is rarely updated may be useful but quickly becomes dated.

Distinguishing between HQI and LQI websites is a bit a trick. An indicator of quality can includes the organization putting the information up (i.e. are they an authority on the subject).

Some websites are very pretty with bleeding edge technology, but have no content. It's a pitfall that can waylay the best intentions of an organization (or person) running a website.

I've had conversations in the past for one website I manage that run something like this:

Them: "We'd like to make the website look prettier."
Me: "Oh, I wasn't aware it was ugly."
Them: "Well, organization X has buttons that change colour when you move the mouse over them. We'd like to do that."
Me: "Why?"
Them: "Because we think it would attract more people."
Me: "More content would attract more people. Our website is functional, reasonably attractive, easy to navigate and can be used by pretty well any browser you care to use, including Lynx."
Them: "Oh. But..."
Me: "... but we need fresh content. If we get a steady stream of fresh content for the website, then we can talk about making buttons that change colour. But such buttons don't add anything to the functionality of the website, and will make it load slower because now people will have to download a gazillion graphics to view a page."
Them: "Oh. Hmmm."
Me: ""
Them: "We'll try to get some more content to put up."
Me: "Excellent!"

The key to a good website is to avoid unnecessary graphics and similar things, have a consistent layout that makes it easy to use and have high quality information that's well organized.

At the risk of putting my head on the proverbial chopping block, what do people think of my site in terms of ease of use etc - it's something I try and focus on, along with the content, so I'd be fascinated to hear what people have to say (he says, bracing himself!) http://www.sfxb.co.uk

Since you asked....

Not bad. There's only only little bit where the text is actually a graphic and not text but you've filled in the ALT attributes for the tags, so that's good.

It looks like it's expecting the browser to be a certain width. My browser window is currently around 1100 pixels wide and everything below the green box with SFXB Home in it is left aligned while the top bit is centred horizontally. (FYI, I'm running Linux with Netscape 4.73. Yes, it's old, but I haven't found a newer Netscape I like, yet.) That could be a browser problem.

Took a look at it with Lynx and it works fairly well.

Overall, not bad.

How strange. The top bit is a table, as is the bottom bit below SFXB home. Both have exactly the same settings! Perhaps that version of Netscape doesn't deal well with more than one table..?! I suppose, thinking about it, I could/should use DIV tags to format the tables but it seems very odd that one align command should work and the other not.

The welcome image on the front page is probably the only place I use an image where text could work - but it's intentional to keep its size "guaranteed" - which is also why I use graphic buttons. The page is just shy of 800 wide and fixed. In some earlier sites I did let pages go almost as wide as the screen, but with resolutions these days the columns just become too wide. The BBC site is an interesting one because its news sections assumes only 640 screen width - which I believe Web TV uses? In theory, you can also read all of the content column of SFXB in 640 width - assuming you can scroll sideways a bit!

Glad it works (at all!) in Lynx!

I just checked your site with MS IE from work and it looks the way you expected it to. I suspect that it's a Netscapeism on my box at home.