Learning to read a Web page critically

Reading a Web Page

The critical reading of a web page is similar to reading any other document, but in some ways it is fundamentally a new and different phenomena than reading a printed page. Consider that the author cannot assume that the first page of the document is the starting point, ie. the reader could be thrown into the middle of the document from some other document. The author must establish a context and a rappore with the reader through multi-media semantics and syntaces. However, this freedom is not without its drawbacks. The creater of the web page can and often does get carried away with too many of the bells and whistles of HTML i.e. all the various features such as background colors and patterns, sound, etc. to the point that that it interfears with the message. Further, the document is not displayed the same by two different browsers and/or computers and the look and feel that the author targeted to one machine environment looks terrible on the readers.

The Assignment

The Student is requested to examine a variety of government documents, namely the Massachusetts town and city home pages.

Before going off and examining the web sites make a list of what you expect to find on the site. For instance, do you expect it to be written for you the resident, the tax payer, and voter? Or perhaps the it is written to prospective corporations looking to locate, students looking to study at the local university, or attracting wealthy and healthy seniors looking to retire or vacation.
Pick your home town and Five others in Massachusettts and compare them to your list of what you expected to find. What conclusion can you draw about the message of the web page and who do you think was the target audience. Make a table of the six sites that compares what was on your list verus what you found.
Diagram the links and pages that make up the sites. Is the flow of ideas easy or impossible to follow. What structure appears to be the authors model i.e. a tree starting with a table of contents (TOC), or linear i.e. like a book, or no apparent pattern. Was this a useful and logical linking of ideas and concepts.
Did the author or authors use too many features of HTML that distracted or annoyed you? If so, how would you suggest correcting this problem?
Does the message of the page tell a compelling story to the target audience? If not, why not? More importantly, how did your home town's home page effect you and what ideas might you have for improving it. Lay out an outline and diagram for your concepts of your town's web site.
Print out and attach a copy of each and every web site visited. Include the URL of the Web site with your report?

The report will be due the Monday of the next week.

References

Where to go Next?

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