Portsmouth City Public Schools
- Date Accessed: September 3, 2003
- URL: http://pps.k12.va.us/
- Content: Content is available on the homepage.
Web Standards
- HTML 4 or XHTML validation: DOCTYPE! was declared HTML 4 transitional, with 43 errors.
- Text-Browsing: Links overwhelmed the text experience.
- Proprietary Code: random images, marquee
- Editor Used: n/a
- Number of lines of code:374
Code length would be shorter with the use of CSS throughout; site used both CSS and FONT tags.
When examining the code, it appears that code snippets were copied and pasted from a patch-quilt's worth of different sources.
Usability Concerns
More space to the top might be given to identification, instead of wasting the white space on the right-hand side. The central area could then be opened up to more content.
The most content is provided through the moving marquee. Web page designer Jeffery Zeldman recommends against such gimmicks. It's difficult to read and follow. Since news should be the most important aspect of the front page, why hide it behind a small text block window.
About the only time I'll actually like pull-down menus is in the offering here: they are form based (not ideal, but better than Javascript), and they offer items we'd expect in a list: school names.
The text at the top, containing the phone number, etc. is a JPEG file. It could be text!
The menu system along the left side contains small text. Worst yet is the rendition of text for the webmaster link, bottom center.
In the Quicktime movie above, one can see a usability issue brought about on a linked page. The navigation area uses CSS to control mouse rollovers. Settings are such that the entire area of text "moves" because the rollover changes the text size. It's poor usability, not to mention design, to have your page dance around, and text to move from one line to the next with rollovers.
The smaller "more" link is too small. It also takes us to the site map. It would be better to link to a site map, rather than have multiple links, seemingly with context, take us to the same page.
Accessibility Concerns
Lots of links, and lack of ALT attributes make navigation by text alone somewhat unfriendly. Parts of the marquee text appear, but not all of it. Some users may have trouble with navigation by mouse when things move, such as the marquee and the scene from the movie, above.
Return to Operation Deconstruction and examine other sites.
Copyright © 2003 by John G. Hendron. All Rights Reserved.