Colophon

Web Standards

In the development and building, implementation of this site I have worked to maintain the following important web standards:

• Accessibility - In building this site I have worked to maintain accessibility standards. Some of the most important are:
  • The layout and navigation of my site are consistent and understandable throughout the entire site.
  • All images have alt text.
  • All links have a title attribute.
  • All page content minus the web gallery are accessible via the keyboard
  • Navigation is simple and can be navigated through quickly using a keyboard
  • The contrast between the background and foreground is great enough for text and other content to be viewed with ease.
  • All tags are nested correctly and in an orderly fashion.
  • Instructions and descriptions do not rely upon visual or audio attributes to make sense.

• CSS 2.1/3.0 - "Cascading Style Sheets" have become the accepted standard in styling a website. Some benefits of CSS include:
  • Forward and backward compatibility. CSS 2.1 user agents will be able to understand CSS1 style sheets. CSS1 user agents will be able to read CSS 2.1 style sheets and discard parts they do not understand. Also, user agents with no CSS support will be able to display style-enhanced documents. Of course, the stylistic enhancements made possible by CSS will not be rendered, but all content will be presented.
  • Complementary to structured documents. Style sheets complement structured documents (e.g., HTML and XML applications), providing stylistic information for the marked-up text. It should be easy to change the style sheet with little or no impact on the markup.
  • Vendor, platform, and device independence. Style sheets enable documents to remain vendor, platform, and device independent. Style sheets themselves are also vendor and platform independent, but CSS 2.1 allows you to target a style sheet for a group of devices (e.g., printers).
  • Maintainability. By pointing to style sheets from documents, webmasters can simplify site maintenance and retain consistent look and feel throughout the site. For example, if the organization's background color changes, only one file needs to be changed.
  • Simplicity. CSS is a simple style language which is human readable and writable. The CSS properties are kept independent of each other to the largest extent possible and there is generally only one way to achieve a certain effect.
  • Network performance. CSS provides for compact encodings of how to present content. Compared to images or audio files, which are often used by authors to achieve certain rendering effects, style sheets most often decrease the content size. Also, fewer network connections have to be opened which further increases network performance.
  • Flexibility. CSS can be applied to content in several ways. The key feature is the ability to cascade style information specified in the default (user agent) style sheet, user style sheets, linked style sheets, the document head, and in attributes for the elements forming the document body.
  • Richness. Providing authors with a rich set of rendering effects increases the richness of the Web as a medium of expression. Designers have been longing for functionality commonly found in desktop publishing and slide-show applications. Some of the requested rendering effects conflict with device independence, but CSS 2.1 goes a long way toward granting designers their requests.
  • Alternative language bindings. The set of CSS properties described in this specification form a consistent formatting model for visual and aural presentations. This formatting model can be accessed through the CSS language, but bindings to other languages are also possible. For example, a JavaScript program may dynamically change the value of a certain element's 'color' property.
  • Accessibility. Several CSS features will make the Web more accessible to users with disabilities:
    • Properties to control font appearance allow authors to eliminate inaccessible bit-mapped text images.
    • Positioning properties allow authors to eliminate mark-up tricks (e.g., invisible images) to force layout.
    • The semantics of !important rules mean that users with particular presentation requirements can override the author's stylesheets.
    • The 'inherit' value for all properties improves cascading generality and allows for easier and more consistent style tuning.
    • Improved media support, including media groups and the braille, embossed, and tty media types, will allow users and authors to tailor pages to those devices.

("2.4 CSS design principles" W3C-http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/intro.html#design-principles)

Usability

While learning about web usability the following practices have been implemented:

• Quick identification of site - I have created a logo for my site and business that matches the sight name. The logo is bright and bold enough to get peoples attention. I put this logo and the sight name in the top left corner of my site to follow the standard found on many web sites.
• You always know what page you are on -I have made each page's title to be specific and helpful in knowing which page you are on. The links are designed to look like tabs on folders to emphasize where you are at in the site. Each of the navigation tabs maintain a different background color than normal when you are on that particular page. On the bottom of each page is another set of navigation links that also maintain a different color when you are on the particular page.
• Simple straight forward Navigation - My navigation has been designed to be straight forward. The design is simple not to distract, but nice. Each title is simple and descriptive of it's contents. When hovering over a particular tab, if the page has sub links, a dropdown menu appears and each sub menu can also have sub links. This gives people quick and easy access to any page on my site on every page.
• Scannable content - I have kept the actual written content of the page to a minimum with key words for people to scan through and understand the general idea of the content.
• Easy to understand instructions - Where I have instructions(the photo galleries) they are very brief and to the point. This should be enough to help people use the functionality of the website. It isn't so in-depth and intensive that it discourages or makes the user feel babied.
• Brief but adequate explanations - When something is explained, I have used simple and straight forward wording to help all understand.
• Meaningful content - The content that I have on my site is the picture I want to portray to my users. I work to emphasize the site is about me and what I am doing in life, but also to emphasize my strong interest in photography.
• Easy to read text - the background and color of font used is easy on the eyes, to help people keep from straining and squinting to read or see the content.

ROI

This page has been built with a good template system, that allowes a person to create a new page with new content without having to take the time to figure out how to make things look similar. Updating pictures in the galleries is not difficult at all. Even adding a multiple virtual galleries is very simple. Maintenence of this site is low cost and time friendly.