Arlington Public Schools
- Date Accessed: August 28, 2003
- URL: http://www.arlington.k12.va.us/
- Content: Content is available on the homepage in the form of links to news stories.
Web Standards
- HTML 4 or XHTML validation: DOCTYPE! was included for HTML 4 transitional, and validated without errors.
- Text-Browsing: Works well
- Proprietary Code: none
- Editor Used: n/a
- Number of lines of code:250
Validation with standards kept size small, and made text-browsing work.
Usability Concerns
The Arlington Public Schools' site does many things well. It starts off with a clear identity section with address and phone number, puts important new content up top, and then presents us with the "grid of all grids," ripe with a plentitude of links.
Non-standard links colors are used, without underlines, which works, due to the use of background color to denote rollovers. The section titles, however, are also links. The setup of the table doesn't make this intuitive, and only did I know about them being links after trying rollover actions with the mouse. The sheer number of links is a usability issue which may only be remedied with a redesign of the site structure or the number of available links.
What might work instead are nine major links (the heading names), which then take you to subordinate links.
The other issue were the length of some links, in text. Second lines ("Countywise Schools & Programs" or "Boundary Development & Program Planning") of long text strings hang left on the second line, making scanning difficult for the links. Lists would be a preferred method to list links, with more leading or spacing, between link items.
Accessibility Concerns
A better choice for the top banner's ALT attribute string would be welcome, to clearly identify the site in a text-only browser.
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Copyright © 2003 by John G. Hendron. All Rights Reserved.