Re: Discussion: dynamic pages

I had a case last year that used server generated URLs that looked like this 
:-

http://www.oman.om/wps/portal/!ut/p/c1/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os3hjA3cDA39LT1_vEF9HAyPjMDcvSx8zYxcXE_1wkA6zeAMcwNFA388jPzdVvyA7rxwA7n6oRg!!/dl2/d1/L2dJQSEvUUt3QS9ZQnB3LzZfMzBHMDBPOUlNNFNWMTAySkZENThTNzJHODM!/?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/EN/site/home/bz/

The server generated urls  included tracking elements that allowed the 
server to work out where you had come from as well as where you wanted to go 
so that it could generate the most relevant content. This made it impossible 
to do a report based upon URLs. (It also makes it impossible for search 
engines to catalogue the site reliably !!!!). The CMS was from IBM - so it 
was not a fly-by-night operation.

We were able to provide a general overview initially but to provide an 
intelligible detailed report we had to work with each of the different, 
identifiable  personas and tasks. We took each available persona and went 
through all the relevant tasks and reported separately on each - so there 
was a section titled "elderly" within which we could say "when the elderly 
person reaches the section titled "Benefits" there are problems with x, y, 
and z that need to be addressed. X and Y are common barriers discussed in 
section ???. Problem z causes barriers for people with certain disabilities 
and could be avoided by doing this...".

For random pages we used a combination of a breadcrumb trail, page headings 
(page titles were all identical!!) and screen shots.

So in this case - for step 3 -Select a Representative Sample - the key 
functionalities would be the tasks that each of the available personas could 
undertake.

When defining the scope (Step 1) you cannot exclude sections because, being 
dynamic, it is all inter-related. So the scope was simply the root url 
(www.oman.om).

Looking through what we have developed in our methodology so far it seems to 
cover everything we had to do in Oman. So I am happy !

Regards
Richard

-----Original Message----- 
From: Vivienne CONWAY
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 2:06 PM
To: Velleman, Eric ; public-wai-evaltf@w3.org
Subject: RE: Discussion: dynamic pages

HI Eric & TF
I've just recently been struggling with this same thing.  I was evaluating 
an application that used almost entirely dynamic pages.  The URI's just had 
different STMP numbers so you couldn't even list the pages you'd chosen.  We 
ended up having to put a path that we'd followed to find the page and try it 
a few times to make sure that you always got the same page.  As you noted, 
which page you were presented with depended upon the information that you'd 
first entered.  It was a procurement application, so on each page you had a 
set of alternatives to choose between - say mobile phone technology, 
domestic/international, length of contract desired, type of users etc.etc. 
It was really frustrating and often entering the same information brought up 
different dynamically-generated pages.  We just had to log everything and 
take lots of screen shots to prove where we'd been.  We had to decide upon 
what profile we'd use and then pick a couple of generic profiles and log the 
details we'd entered for that profile.  Does that help at all?


Regards

Vivienne L. Conway, B.IT(Hons), MACS CT
PhD Candidate & Sessional Lecturer, Edith Cowan University, Perth, W.A.
Director, Web Key IT Pty Ltd.
v.conway@ecu.edu.au
v.conway@webkeyit.com
Mob: 0415 383 673

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________________________________________
From: Velleman, Eric [evelleman@bartimeus.nl]
Sent: Thursday, 5 April 2012 11:42 PM
To: public-wai-evaltf@w3.org
Subject: Discussion: dynamic pages

Dear all,

I would appreciate your input on what to do with audits of dynamic pages 
that do not just change data, but also provide different outputs, layout, 
alt-tags etc. Could we cover this by describing the exact use cases that we 
followed? But how do you evaluate a page that does this if you are an 
evaluator with a different profile than the use case that has been chosen?

Kindest regards,

Eric

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Received on Wednesday, 11 April 2012 01:23:26 UTC