Cornerstone University – Episode #168
Site Scores:
| Site | Visual | Information | Code | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cornerstone University | 61 | 58 | 65 | (184/300) 61% D- |
Today’s Tip:
If you are going to have interactive items on your site make sure the user has visual queues to know where they are and how to interact with them. A small arrow to the left or right can denote something will expand or move. Without these queues the user may skip right over the intended function.
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Tags: episode
May 11th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
I really like what they are trying here visually. It breaks the trend in which current highered websites are converging to. Maybe students will spend more time exploring the site if it appears more interactive with JavaScript elements and layers. Are there any hand coded websites in the age of CMS? I like how they handle the breadcrumb/navigation once you dive into lower level pages. It takes a little more room than other methods but I think it works.
May 11th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
I totally think students will explore if they know there is a ton of valuable content behind each of the areas.
I have seen quite a few hand coded sites that are CMS controlled. It seems that CMS’s fall into two categories. The ones that are purely plug and play and you basically build your site based on their modules that exist already. And there are ones that give you the functions but no pre-existing code so you hand code each of the elements that go in to your site. There are pros and cons to each but I tend to lean toward the one the produces the cleanest markup because in the end that is all that matters. I don’t care if it takes the template programmers a few extra days/hours to code the templates if in the end the thousands of users that visit the site every day are getting a light and accessible page.
The breadcrumb method I think totally works. It’s easy at a 10 second glance to see exactly where you are and the related areas. I prefer this method over > the > typical > way.