1. Website Design. 

Website are often designed hierarchically. There are several layers to a site, so that the main page has four subpages and each subpage has, say, two or three pages linked to it. The more layers, the "deeper" the website structure. On the other hand, a simple structure is to have a menu page with all the subpages linked to it, and no layers beneath. This is the structure I have to recommend for a web paper. The analogy for a web paper is a traditional hard-copy paper, and we usually move through that paper sequentially, one section after another. Leading a reader deeper into a section may distract him/her from the flow of the paper. 


Web site structures
 

2. Graphics. 

The temptation is definitely to include a bunch of graphics, because web paper authors believe that a) this is cool and b) they'll have to do less writing. This is not good reasoning. Web papers must produce convincing arguments; graphics should support and complement this basic mission, not shortcircuit it or distract readers. The other major problem with graphics is download time. Readers get impatient if it takes a long time to download graphics. If the professor is going to be reading the web paper in his or her office, it may be fine to include big graphics. If the professor is going to be accessing the web paper at home, over a modem, big images are a bad idea. Here are some other tips:
* Make the images large enough to be legible, but don't let them dominate the screen. Wrapping text around images is a traditional print method, and most readers find it very attractive.
*Use GIFs for icons, symbols, and other images that don't have a lot of detail. GIFs (files with .gif extensions) are smaller and quicker to load.
*Use JPEGs (files with .jpg extensions) for photographs or images with lots of detail. JPEGs are bigger files, but provide more resolution.
* Don't forget to provide captions for images. Some web authoring tools, such as the one used for this presentation, Composer in the Netscape Communicator suite, provide easy GUI means for adding captions.
 
3. Design Issues

*Contrast is essential for good visualization. Include a darker column, at a side or the top, and use bold type for contrast. 


Non-contrasting, non-balanced vs. contrasting and balanced design

*Balance graphics and text. A graphic in upper left might well be balanced with one in lower right. Think of text as a kind of graphic, too, a block which could be relieve with white space and/or balanced with a visual graphic.
*Consistency is extremely important. Use the same layout for every page in a web paper. Set up a template, then create all the pages you need. This means the author must have a clear idea about the web paper before he/she begins laying it out in HTML.
*Page dimensions. A screen is smaller than a page, so chunks of information need to be small. Also, when designing a page, it's best to make the width of the page smaller than the typical screen. This guarantees that the reader won't have to scroll horizontally as well as vertically--anyone who has had to do that knows how awful it is, how difficult to read. Notice that this presentation uses a table (without borders) so that all the text is in the bottom right cell, the index is in the bottom left cell, and the section title is in the top cell, which spans two columns. The usual screen is 640 pixels wide and 480 pixels deep. Below is a diagram which shows the best widths for printing and for viewing: 


Best web page dimensions

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