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There were 20 people present, including several first timers. This is the largest group we have had for some time.
We discussed the desirability of putting a Buy Sell Swap page on our web site, and agreed that it might be useful.
Colin stated that it would be done.
Our speaker for the night was Andrew Wentzel, who is from the Information Technology Group. His specialty at
present is web site construction. Colin Conrad, the Club's Web Master is a student of his.
Andrew began by describing the kinds of problems that frequently occur with web sites. Many of them try to do to much.
Although he was concerned mostly with commercial web sites he showed us a perfectly awful site as an example of the
kind of thing to avoid. We were treated to www.ingenfeld.de This site included most
of the faults a commercial site should avoid. It was observed that the example site was a private one, and not
commercial, and we agreed that the designer wanted to show off how clever he was, not advertise any product, still it
took several minutes to down load, and many surfers would have been discouraged by having to wait so long for results.
It is also important that a web site be easy for the search engines like Google to index. There needs to be a careful
selection of key-words to facilitate this.
A web designer needs to be aware that the average amount of time spent on any web site by someone surfing for
information is less than 15 seconds, so the initial impression is absolutely important.
The rules in general are:
1. Initial page should not be larger than the average screen. With today's computers this must be smaller than the
1024 by 769 screen; say 900 by 600 or so.
2. Everything which needs to be used by the viewer, should be available without the need to scroll.
3. LUGs, (Large Useless Graphics) should be avoided to allow quick download times.
4. All the links needed should be in plain sight. Down one side is a good place.
5. An iFrame is a scrollable piece of text on a web page. A home button on the home page may seem redundant, but
is useful for resetting the iFrame to the top.
6. A second set of Nav buttons should be displayed across the bottom of the page. They can be smaller and less
obvious, but they serve a useful purpose to the reader.
Help in designing web sites can be obtained from many sources including w3schools.com.
Access good-tutorials.com for help with using PhotoShop.
There were questions and answers after the formal talk, as well as some interruptions during the talk.
All in all it was useful and entertaining. There was enthusiastic applause when Andrew was finished.
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