RE: [WSG] Document Formats
Kevin, This query opens a much broader discussion about the convergence of web content management systems and document management systems, and the appropriate use of various applications to present and format information for various media. Word, pdf etc are often used as presentation applications for information on screen, rather than presentation applications for printed information. This often leads to storage and maintenance of two parallel files - print and screen. A more appropriate solution would be the maintenance of a single (say XML) file tagged for use with templates for multiple presentation environments and purposes - the same information could be used to create a wallet quick reference card, full instruction manual, media release, or full screen web and mobile. The basic problem in the question below seems to be the appropriateness of the information formatting tool for the presentation purpose. Kind Regards, Peter Hislop -Original Message- From: li...@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:li...@webstandardsgroup.org] On Behalf Of Erickson, Kevin (DOE) Sent: Wednesday, 1 December 2010 6:52 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] Document Formats Hi All, The website I work with receives a lot of documents to be posted that come in the form of Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents. And now, with the release of the latest versions of Ms Office, they are coming to me with an X on their extensions. I have information in the footer of all the web pages for access to free viewers for all documents including these latest extensions. This may be an adequate CYA but I am not convinced it is the best practice. I know this must be confusing for some of our visitors. I would like to ask any of you if you have had to deal with multiple document formats and how you handled this for the best user accessibility. I am thinking the best practice is to have, first, a browser/HTML version, second, a PDF version, and after that whatever version the document was created as, i.e. Ms Word, PowerPoint, etc. Example: ul li Title a href=info.html titleTitle Web Page (Web Page)/a a href=info.pdf titleTitle in PDF Format (PDF)/a a href=info.docx titleTitle in MS Word Format (Word)/a /li /ul Thank you very much for sharing your experiences on this, Kevin *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
RE: [WSG] Long documents
Hello, Whilst many usability folk warn of user resistance to scrolling for information, there is some research that indicates that people will stick with long pages if the information is relevant and laid out in a manner that is least tiring on the eye (good contrast, thoughtful line length, no forced justification etc). From there you have two courses of action depending on the structure of the document: i) If the document can be logically broken into smaller chunks, such as chapters, an executive summary and a table of contents might work, ii) If there are no logical breaks, keep the single, long screen and offer a hard copy format - either a print css (so you're only maintaining one set of information), or an alternative file format such as Type A pdf or rtf. Whilst not environmentally friendly, it offers an alternative to people who may find long on-screen articles difficult to absorb. Hope that gives you some ideas to think about. Kind Regards, Peter Hislop -Original Message- From: li...@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:li...@webstandardsgroup.org] On Behalf Of Al Sparber Sent: Sunday, 17 October 2010 12:49 PM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Long documents On 10/16/10 6:19 PM, grant_malcolm_bai...@westnet.com.au wrote: Hello, Is there any standard (official or otherwise) that limits the length of single web pages? I edit an online journal which contains articles of up to 7000 words. Currently each article resides on a single web page which the viewer must scroll to read. Some of the articles are 10-20 'screens' in length. If anyone could clarify whether there is a standard and, if so, how such documents should be presented, I would be grateful. If you want to look at the journal I'm talking about see www.baileyandireland.com. I wouldn't change a thing. You could split the articles into x-number of pages with page links at the bottom, but text loads very quickly and unless you limit a page to a single paragraph or two, people are invariably going to need to scroll so you may as well have the entire article on the page. Makes printing easy, too. -- Al Sparber - PVII http://www.projectseven.com Dreamweaver Menus | Galleries | Widgets http://www.projectseven.com/go/hgm The Ultimate Web 2.0 Carousel *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
RE: [WSG] a tiny usability question on web form
I'd look to the postal standards for countries that you're expecting to ship to. This Australia Post publication: http://www.auspost.com.au/correctaddress/adStand.pdf specifies formats, field lengths and type formats. It also refers to two Australian Standards for data formats: Australian Standard AS4212-1994 - Geographic Information Systems - Data dictionary for transfer of street addressing information; and, Australian Standard AS4590-1999 Interchange of Client Information. Hope that this provides a useful research direction. Regards, Peter Hislop -Original Message- From: li...@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:li...@webstandardsgroup.org] On Behalf Of tee Sent: Wednesday, 6 January 2010 1:20 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] a tiny usability question on web form Was making a web form for a commercial software which clientele are mainly from EU countries, in the original form the order of the Country field. The order looks like this: address/street country state city zipcode Maybe I'd been making too many web forms for US and some Asian countries' clients, I find it creates a tiny usability issue for user to have the country field places above state, city and zipcode. From my own experience, I always use tabbing to navigate web form, in a few US sites that I did shopping and that has country, city, state and zipcode setup in a non-US format, I find them to be a usability problem because I didn't read carefully but out of habit (and this is something I expect many web users would do), entered my address expecting them to be in standard US format. My client thinks otherwise: quote: Regarding the order of the fields. I understand your background, but from a usability standpoint it seems weird to me to for example show the Country field AFTER the State field. Why? Because the State field is depending on the Country field. If a user goes from field to field and are not from the US, they will be surprised to see that only US states are available in the State field. It seems more natural to choose a country first, and then have a field update (change from selectbox with states to a input text field) BELOW that instead of ABOVE that. Is is a non-issue how the order is? For sites that cater international users, is there a more standard format for address in web form? Thanks! tee *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Web governance
Andrew, I feel that you have hit one of the Big Problems, and perhaps many feel overwhelmed at its breadth (as do I - I've been pondering it for a few days). Others may have differing views and experiences, but a lack of governance and adherence to standards may be a symptom of corporate immaturity, political power struggles or, unfortunately, ignorance. Other contributing factors may be; • AGIMO’s “suggestions” for best practice not being mandated and • ongoing costs for bespoke development and maintenance of usability, accessibility, corporate branding and systems interoperability. If effectively empowered within the organisation, Information Management should be promoting an integrated, compliant and best practice information environment. It may be an appropriate department to be engaged in this – sitting in the policy area between the executive, auditing, marketing or IT. I hope this gives some food for thought, Peter Hislop - Original Message - From: Andrew R To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 4:13 PM Subject: [WSG] Web governance I realise the list is very much about nuts and bolt of standards. So this might not be the right place for this posting and might be deemed to be ‘off topic’. If it is please ignore! I work in a large (lumbering) Australian federal government agency. My colleges in the web publishing section see developing standards compliant web sites as normal professional practice. However, some other parts of the organisation, mainly ‘traditional’ developers in the IT section, simply don’t get it. The outcome of this is some of the organisation’s web based applications are riddled with problems caused by poor coding practices. These manifest themselves as accessibility issues, difficulties with cross browser compatibility, and significant bottle necks applying updates to branding and presentation. The problems are steadily growing as the organisation builds more and more web interfaces to various applications and systems. To date the web section has taken the approach of trying to work with the developers in the IT area to help them understand the techniques and benefits web standards. However, this has been problematic because there is a lack of more formal mechanisms to enforce compliances. This brings me on to my question for the group. I’m currently looking for web channel governance models suitable for applying in a large public sector organisation that is moving towards significant delivery of services on-line. Can anyone give me some pointers, do have something that works in your organsiation, etc? The few models that I have found are geared at managing inter/intra net sites with a strong emphasis on managing content publishing and how this is used as a communication/marketing tool. For example http://egovau.blogspot.com/2008/07/drawing-lines-effectively-structuring.html. This approach tends to place the Marketing sections as the owner and avoids engagement with an organisation’s IT area. The problem is online services delivery is much bigger then the traditional ‘communications’ business activities, they cut across many parts of the organisation and require complex integration with other systems. Help! Andrew -- Get the best wallpapers on the Web – FREE. Click here! *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
