Evaluating websites

Work as a team of 2-3 students. Select 3 websites which you would like to evaluate (for example, the Ostfalia website and some websites some of you have developed). Record your results in a table. At the end of this exercise three teams will be asked to present their results to the class.

1) Check your 3 websites with the W3C tools. (Evaluate the usefulness of these tools as well: which tools are particularly useful?)

2) Evaluate the usability of your 3 websites. (If you have already taken an HCI class, you can use anything you remember from that class for this task.) Evaluate with respect to:

3) Check the accessibility of your website:

Find a suitable tool on this website: W3C accessibility checking tools

Try this lynx viewer to get an idea how the page is structured to someone using a text-based browser.

(For further information on how blind people surf the web: video demo of the JAWS screen reading software.)

Non-teamwork exercises:

Tools for content development

Watch this short video about Typo3 (as an example of a CMS).

Here is a video of a WAF: Ruby on Rails

Do you understand the difference between CMS and WAF and what they are used for? Would either a CMS or a WAF have been useful for any of the websites you have developed/might develop? Have you used a CMS or WAF before?

Other tools

If you are using Firefox and have not already done so, consider installing Firebug and have a look at its features for analysing websites.