Evaluation criterias

 What are the aims of the website?

The aim of this site is to make users discover or rediscover Janis Joplin’s life and artistic work. It doesn’t attend to provide a full reference but only an overview.

 Is the navigation easy to use? (Menu design, Menu structure)

The content is organised in sections and the design provides a vertical menu, a dropdown menu, contextual previous and next pages links and various hypertext links.

 Are the colours used on the site pleasing to look at?

Warm colours are used, and the contrast for texts is good.

 Is it easy to find and access information about the subject matter?

It depends of what kind of information. If looking for general information (like the whole discography), that’s ok. If looking by instance for what happened at a specific date, no because it’s not the aim of my site : this is an overview of Joplin’s work, not a complete and indexed reference.

 Does the site attempt to accommodate the need of the users with accessibility problems?

Generally yes, notably for memory and vision problems as discussed previously in the report.

 Is the interface “User friendly” (Navigation Heuristic)

The apprenticeship time to understand the organisation and navigation matters seems to be short.

 Is the site fun?

This highly depends if the user like Janis Joplin or not! The interface is agreeable and content varied : text, sounds and pictures.

 Choice of media?

World Wide Web…

 Does it abide by C.R.A.P

In terms of contrast : black on white and pink on black should be correct.

As all the interface is guided by a unique template and unique Style Sheet, we reach the Repetition requirement.

Alignment is well set (left, right and justify alignments), as well as left-right balance (by instance pictures in the biography section).

Finally proximity is ok as related items are placed together (buttons, navigation links, thumbnails, etc…). Moreover, various elements breathe.

 File size considerations

The files size are about 56KB for the home page, including 50KB of files common to all pages (images + Style Sheet) downloaded only the first time. Then 6KB per page + extra contents (illustrations) and around 250KB per sound sample

 Download time

It’s difficult to estimate. The home page is verifiable after the first 6KB, so less than 2 seconds with a 56K modem. The design is fully loaded in about 8 seconds, and preloaded images in 2 seconds (rollover buttons).

For next pages it’s more various, less than 2 seconds for the page itself plus the specific content. For high-speed connection, it takes about 1 second for the heaviest page.

 Users Internet connection

The download times are correct for 56K modems, and perfect for faster connections. The site can run on a web server as well as on a CD-ROM.

 Resolution

The site is designed for 800x600 resolutions and higher, but alternative navigation manners have been provided for lowest resolution so users don’t have to always play with an horizontal scrollbar.

 Fonts

The font use is easily readable, a preferred font is specified for common Operating Systems or alternatively the family for more exotic OS.

 Web safe colours

Basics colours are websafe, however graphics gradients may look a bit ugly on 8 bits systems

 Plug-ins

If Java is considered as a plugin, yes. Note that it is supported on 99,3% of configurations and compliant with W3C’s recommendations. Furthermore it’s only used to provide sound capabilities, not for key function as navigation or textual content.