- From: <Paulsmith410@aol.com>
- Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 08:42:53 EST
- To: www-collaboration@w3.org
- Message-ID: <132.1861ca23.2b386cdd@aol.com>
Hello All, I am Paul Smith a student on my final year of a degree in Computer Studies, as part of this course I'm doing a thesis on Internet Standards. I have produced the questionnaire below to evaluate web designer's opinions on current standards use and whether or not they are always important in the design process. If you could spare 10 minutes I would be grateful of any responses you may provide. One final thing, if you do reply to this questionnaire could you please reply to my email (paulsmith410@aol.com) rather than the mailing lists address as i don't want to clutter this list with my project work Thank You in Advance Paul Smith Internet Standards Questionnaire 'An evaluation of current Internet website standards and the development of a web site as a reference for web developers worldwide to use as a basis for good practice.' Thank you for taking part in my survey. I am Paul Smith a final year student studying at The University of Derby and for my thesis I am producing a web site to teach web developers and people just starting out in the industry what standards there are for development as well as showing them how to implement these standards. As part of this project I am researching the views of leading web designers at present to get their opinion on web standards and how they use these. The questionnaire should take you around 10 minutes to complete, could you please be as full and clear in your answers as possible. General Internet Standards Issues 1. Could you please list the three web sites that in your view are the best examples of good design and have given you the best experience online? 1. 2. 3. 2. Why do these sites illustrate good practice/design in your opinion? 3. Could you please list the three web sites that in your view are examples of bad design and have given you the worst experience online? 1. 2. 3. 4. Why do these sites illustrate bad practices / design in your opinion? 5. Do you think it is important for sites to comply with standards for development and if so why? 6. Put the following list of web development considerations in order of how important you feel they are? _ Security _ Navigation _ Consistency _ Readability _ Technologies used _ Accessibility _ Download times _ Any Other (not listed above) __________________ Please give one reason for each of your top three choices. 1. 2. 3. Design Issues 7. When developing a web site do you test for download times? _ Yes _ No If you answered no, why is this the case? If you answered yes however, what time scale would be generally acceptable? 8. How do you keep your site content both consistent and readable? _ CSS _ Template Pages _ Framesets _ By Chance _ Not a Consideration Please comment on any of your favoured approaches. 9. Do you think keeping layout and information code separate is important if so why? 10. What tools do you use to create web pages (from the following)? _ Notepad _ FrontPage _ Dreamweaver _ Coldfusion _ Other [Please Specify] _____________________ Accessibility Issues 11. Do you think that information on the Internet should be available to anyone and anywhere without restrictions placed on disabled people, or other groups of users who might have difficulties with accessibility? _ Yes _ No 12. If you answered yes, how do you think this should be done? _ By altering existing sites to conform to guidelines? _ By creating alternative sites to put across the information? _ By using the same information but applying styles to it to tailor it for each market? 13. Currently there are only a very small percentage of web sites that conform to accessibility guidelines. A recent study by the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) has shown that 17 of Britain's leading web sites fail to conform to current accessibility standards. Do you think that there should be a greater effort to teach people when learning web design the importance of complying with these standards? (There are currently around 2 million people in Britain alone with some sort of visual disability) _ Yes _ No If so how should this be done? Scripting Languages 14. Do you have experience of using a server-side scripting language such as ASP, PHP or Coldfusion when developing web sites? _ Yes _ No If you answered yes could you please indicate which one(s) from the list below you have knowledge of and continue to answer all questions in the following section, if you answered no please go to the next section? _ ASP _ ASP.NET _ PHP _ Coldfusion _ Perl _ Other (please specify) __________________________ 15. As part of your programming which of the following good programming practices do you use? _Indentation _Commenting _Naming Conventions (i.e. all connections to database starting with 'con'). _Separating Reusable functions from bulk of code _Using consistent names for variables corresponding to database values 16. When programming interactive pages do you try to keep programming code away from your design/layout coding? If so do you use any of the following methods to achieve this? _ Include Files _ Making all connections to Database before HTML coding starts _ Declaring Functions before HTML coding starts _ Saving Design Information as a Template _ Saving Layout information as a Style Sheet World Wide Web Consortium W3C and Standards The World Wide Web Consortium was created in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee at Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT] to develop common standards for all technologies related to the Internet. W3C now has over 500 member organisations and has earned international recognition for its contributions to the growth of the Internet. 17. Before receiving this questionnaire were you aware of guidelines for web development that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) produces? _ Yes _ No 18. Do you follow W3C's Guidelines on Accessibility when developing a web site? _ Yes _ No If you answered no, what measure are you taking to make you site more accessible? 19. When developing HTML/CSS pages do you check all, some or none of you pages on W3Cs service. Why is this? Conclusions 20. Do you think it would be useful if there were a coherent web site that demonstrated current web standards in order that people could learn more about how to implement these standards? _ Yes _ No Would you be willing to use such a service if it was offered free? _ Yes _ No _ Maybe Would you be willing to take part in a short evaluation exercise of such a product? _ Yes _ No Thank you for taking part in this questionnaire, your contribution will help to evaluate current views on what makes web sites good/bad and whether or not web standards have any bearing on this. Regards Paul Smith BSc Computer Studies The University of Derby
Received on Monday, 23 December 2002 08:51:11 UTC