28 August, 2008 12:16 am

Evaluate the Quality of Your Website

Posted by Richard Wong under Development, Others | 1 Comment

Since I just updated the design of the site, I start thinking whether this new design is better. But realising there so many different aspect of site that we need to look at in order to measure the quality.

Then I found 50 Questions to Evaluate the Quality of Your Website by Carsten Cumbrowski from my starred item in google reader. It covers a wide range of areas including accessibility, design, navigation and more.

A sample of questions includes:

  • Is content structurally separate from navigational elements?
  • Are links labeled with anchor text that provides a clear indication of where they lead?
  • Do clickable items stylistically indicate that they are clickable?
  • How intuitive is it to navigate? Are signs obvious or obscured? Buttons/Links Like Text, that are not clickable and vice versa, links/buttons that cannot be identified as such
  • Clear statement of PURPOSE of the site? Purpose must become clear within a few seconds without reading much or no text copy at all.
  • Are the colors used harmonious and logically related?
  • The fonts should be easily readable, and degrade gracefully.- Should look OK on various screen resolutions.
  • Does the copywriting style suit the website’s purpose and ’speak’ to its target audience?

Although the list isn’t particularly targeting developers / designer, I think it is still a very useful list to reference if you are running your own site. If you can answer YES on most of the questions, you have done a great job. For me there are still a lot of work to do here…

25 August, 2008 11:42 pm

New Look for 84 Bytes

Posted by Richard Wong under Others | 1 Comment

I have finally created my own theme for this blog. This is still a very early version which I will be busy updating for the coming weeks. The plan is to release often, release small :p

This is what the old design looks like

Old 84 Bytes Design Screenshot

And it was based on dsanctuary.

I hope everyone will like this new design. Feel free to leave some feedback.