Some guidelines for creating World Wide Web home page files
| Published date | 01 April 1995 |
| Date | 01 April 1995 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045394 |
| Pages | 383-388 |
| Author | Pieter A. van Brakel,Cerina Roeloffee,Amanda van Heerden |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Article
Some guidelines for creating World
Wide Web home page files
Pieter
A.
van Brakel, Cerina Roeloffee and
Amanda van Heerden
Department of
Information
Studies,
Rand
Afrikaans
University,
PO Box
524,
Auckland Park
2006,
Johannesburg,
South Africa
E-mail:
pavb@info.rau.ac.za
Abstract: The World
Wide Web
has become an important resource of timely
information for the information
professional.
Unlike previous (traditional)
formats of information, especially paper-based publications, the
Web
has also
brought the concept of electronic publishing within reach of any person who has
browser access to
this
Internet navigator. It therefore implies that the information
professional can also take part in the publishing process by creating and
maintaining a homepage on the
Web.
Although a few articles have been
published on homepage maintenance by information
services,
not much has been
made available about the requirements for homepage
design,
or guidelines for
the planning and structuring of a complete homepage
environment.
This
article
provides a few basic guidelines on homepage
design,
arguing that the physical
appearance of a homepage
is
similar to that of a good graphical
user
interface
(GUI).
In designing a complete homepage file, the premise
is
that basic hypertext
design principles could also be applied in the World
Wide Web
environment.
1.
Introduction
Literally hundreds of 'home pages'
can now be accessed via
a
World Wide
Web (WWW) browser, while the ad-
dresses (or URLs) of many new home
pages are systematically being re-
ported in different listservs, journal ar-
ticles,
news columns, advertisements
and even on business
cards!
However,
not much has been published which
could be of use to guide a person when
creating a home page for a specific
purpose. Even less information is
available on how to plan and imple-
ment a complete home page environ-
ment that incorporates the needs of the
'owner' of such a home page. The
books that have been published re-
cently — for example, Dougherty &
Koman (1994) and Manger (1995) —
provide the reader with the basics of
HTML, URLs and other hypermedia
concepts but no practical tips or guide-
lines are given on the requirements for
a good home page, or how to go about
designing a home page environment.
Despite a multitude of existing home
pages,
the potential application for ex-
ample for decision-making, research
or training has also not yet been fully
investigated. If
the
home page consti-
tutes such an important access route to
WWW files, then surely some guide-
lines should be developed to assist the
WWW newcomer.
In this article an effort is made to
address two of the issues mentioned
above: namely, the nature of the home
page
itself,
as well as ways and means
of planning and implementing such a
home page environment for the indi-
vidual as well as an organisation. The
already-mentioned lack of informa-
tion in the literature compelled the
authors to undertake an extensive
study of existing home
pages
available
on the Web to acquaint themselves
with home page design.
2.
The home page as a graphical
user interface
According to December & Randall
(1994,
p.
1022) a home page is a de-
signed and designated entry-point for
access to a local Web
site.
It also refers
to a page that an organisation desig-
nates as its own 'main page', often pre-
senting personal and professional
information. In contrast, Dougherty &
Koman (1994,
p.
185)
define a home
page as follows:'... a graphical door
and screen that are full of information,
in which links to related information
are included.' In one of the few articles
on home pages which have appeared in
the information science literature, Fal-
cigno & Green
(1995,
p.20)
state
that a
home page is actually a file, or collec-
tion of files, made up entirely of sim-
ple ASCII
text.
Such a home page then
often consists of
a
collection of linked
home page documents. 'Linking' re-
fers to the possibility (in the Web envi-
ronment) of creating hypertext
anchors and links to other files or
documents by means of hypertext
transfer protocol (HTTP).
It can be argued that a home page is
analogous to a graphical user interface
which provides access to a variety of
WWW servers and information in a
variety of multimedia formats such as
journal articles, conference proceed-
ings,
research reports, brochures, cor-
respondence, graphics, video, anima-
tion and sound clips. From the
previous statement it can be deduced
that the theory underlying the design
of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) can
make an important contribution to-
wards formulation guidelines for
home page design. Writers of home
The Electronic Library, Vol. 13, No. 4, August 1995 383
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