site help
Web sites should be simple and intuitive to use. But sometimes it's a good idea to provide a Help Page to explain particular features of the site's design, navigation or facilities.
The Syntactic site has the following usability and accessibility features.
- The main menu, on the left of every page, gives access to the main sections of the site (and to the Home Page), especially for vision-impaired users.
- A site search facility and a site map, both available from the Home Page, provide navigation alternatives to the main menu.
- On big screens, the body text is given a maximum width to maintain its readability. (Unfortunately some browsers, notably Internet Explorer version 6, ignore this.) The text is right-justified.
- The site is designed to adapt fluidly when viewed on smaller screens (narrower windows), including handheld devices. Advanced browsers, such as Opera and Firefox (and Safari on Apple Macs) support this design. The most obvious feature is that, for narrow windows, the menu slides below the body text when it can no longer fit comfortably alongside. On less capable browsers, such as Internet Explorer, the site's pages are still fluid but are rendered less well and are not rendered properly at all in very narrow windows.
- All pages can be printed for reference, if users wish (the text doesn't get truncated on the right, as happens with some sites). The on-screen menu isn't needed on printed pages, so users of modern browsers will find that the printed version of pages contains just the body text and not the menus. Printing is therefore quicker.
- Images have alternative text, where appropriate, for users with images switched off and for vision-impaired users (using screen readers etc).
- All links have tooltips giving a brief description of where the link goes. Modern browsers display these when the link is selected (e.g. hovered over by the mouse).
If you experience usability problems or have any comments, please let me know. You can e-mail me at syntactic at syntacticweb dot co dot uk.