Personal Website: Design Documentation

Goals

Target Audience

Format Design Goals and Specifications

Category Goals Specifications
Navigation
  • Quick access to all pages and files
  • Multiple paths to a file (hierarchical/web hybrid)
  • Easy to update, maintain, restructure, add content
  • Titles and footers on every page
  • Easy to get back home or to contents pages
  • Accessible to browsers without displaying images
  • Works for most popular screen resolutions
  • Easy access to frequently used information
  • Navigation elements take up little screen space
  • Details of linked pages
  • No independently scrolling frames
  • No pull-down menus
  • Works on any hosting service or disk
  • Distinguish navigation and content
  • Link to home in upper left corner of every page
  • Top-level navigation using iframe height=70 at top of every page
  • Second-level navigation using iframe width=120 on left margin of every group of pages
  • Home page contains links to most popular features
    (resume, activities, random photo and document, this document)
  • Navigation iframes can contain links to both indexes and content pages
  • All links to index pages (including Home) should be indicated using boldface
  • All images should use alt attributes
  • JavaScript generated headers (titles) and footers, but minimize JavaScript
  • All links in navigation frames use title attributes (Windows tool tips)
  • Use CSS, DHTML and JavaScript to highlight iframe link that matches current page
  • Use JavaScript to hide or show navigational iframes?
  • Use a black border around the content
Appearance
  • Consistent look and feel on every page
  • Clean, bright, precise, serious, enjoyable
  • Look and feel combines Africa and technology
  • Easy to read text
  • Thumbnails small but identifiable
  • Stylesheets and relatively clean, standard, browser-independent XHTML
  • Page body uses black text on white background
  • Navigation frames use black text on gray background
  • Link colors blue and purple (default)
  • Borderless table of colored stripes appears in upper left corner
  • Headings H1-H4 use bold, wide, sans serif font (e.g. Century Gothic)
  • Body text uses sans serif font (e.g. Verdana)
  • Use embedded thumbnails to illustrate individual pages
  • Images/thumbnails should be 640x480/128x96 or less
  • Home page includes a random photo with link to more
Files and Folders
  • Combine hierarchical and web structure
  • Broad rather than deep
  • Clear, consistent, expandable file and folder naming
  • Fit all files on a free web hosting service (<20 MB)
  • Keep individual and total file sizes small
  • Pages download fast
  • Clearly indicate download file sizes and contents
  • Keep only the best content
  • All file and folder names in all lowercase, underscores not spaces
  • Index pages named index.htm; inline frames named iframe.htm
  • Store all photos in one folder; thumbnails in thumbs folder
  • Create a document database with search and sort features

Tools

Development Tasks

* = partly done, x = done