What Is A Web Tool

Tools

Web Authoring

As the saying goes, there is a peg for every hole, well, there is a web tool for every application. In web development, web tools are very important because as the jobs get bigger, so does the complexity. Therefore, many web authors rely on top-notch tools to assist them in their tasks of developing web sites (O'Reilly, 2002). Some new software web tools that are worth the investment are Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX and Adobe's GoLive 6.

Web Page and Site Measurements

Where as there are numerous tools for web authoring, there aren't so many efficient ones for web site measurements. But one such suite of tools that has a wide array of functionality is called WebTango. Since web sites contain a mix of text, links, graphic elements and formatting for images, there are a broad set of affects that determine overall site quality. The WebTango tool analyses and measures the site on four types of criteria:

1. Information Design - focuses on identifying and group content items and developing category labels to reflect the site's information structure
2. Navigation Design - focuses on developing mechanisms to facilitate interaction with the information structure.
3. Graphic Design - focuses on visual presentation.
4. Experience Design - encompasses all three of these categories, as well as properties that affect the overall user experience.

The table below explains the elements that are essential in determining whether or not a site that is developed is users friendly and design well.

Figure 1. Web site structure.

Figure 1 illustrates hierarchy elements in web site structure. Text, link, and graphic elements are the building blocks of a web interface. Page and site-level features use these elements to improve the user's experience.

Figure 2. WebTango architecture.

Figure 2 illustration deplicts the web tango achitecture in terms of usability of a website. The crawler tool selects pages to be measured by the metrics computation tool. The analysis tool used this information to evaluate a submitted web site design.

This table below expresses the outline used to establish what the quality of a web site is.

Within the WebTango architecture there are three types of tools that were used. They are the following:

1. Quatitative Analysis

These tools use statistical analysis to measure usage patterns and it does traffic-based analysis (ex. pages-per-visitor).

2. Simulation

Some of these tools simulates a user's information-seeking behavior within an implemented site model. It follows an idealized user model that follows an explicit, prespecified navigation path through the site and estimates several metrics, such as page load and optimal navigation times.

3. Guideline Review

These tools assess static HTML documents based on some predetermined guidlines. The tool Bobby assess sites on the consistancy of ALT tags used with graphic images. Some tools like the Design Advisor uses heuristics about the attentional effects of various elements, such as motion and size. AIDE (semi-Automated Interface Designer and Evaluator), helps designers assess and compare different design options using quantitative task-sensitive and task-independent metrics, including efficiency, vertical and horizontal balance, and designer-specified constraints.

Reference Hearst, 2002.

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What Is A Web Tool

Source: https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~sobers/Webportal/webtools.html

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