Links For Web Pub III In-Class Exercise 1:

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Well Named

Annotated Links:

http://www.neeminc.com/index.htm 
Mission: To sell information on a particular natural product that can be used for a number of ailments. Audience: Individuals with one or more of a selection of medical conditions. On this site, each page has a distinctive title. There is a basic footer, that is, it does not include all links, but just the major ones. It contains a search engine and even that page has a distinctive name. There are internal links and a link on the logo. You know what you will get when you click on one of their links. The site fits within the screen, with only the footer below the basic screen. This is an excellently designed site. The user knows what they are viewing and what else is available. While the hierarchy is not immediately available, the links appear in a logical progression. 

http://www.dea.gov/ 
This web site for the Drug Enforcement Agency is as good example of links that are well named. The information is laid out well and everything is clear and to the point. While there are a number of main links off the home page (9 on each side of the photo), the information is presented in a way that is not confusing. The links are named so that you know exactly what you'll get when you click on them: The Agency, Programs, Major Operations, Drugs of Concern, etc. (although it did take me a few minutes to figure out what FOIA was...Freedom of Information Act, and it didn't help that that particular link wasn't working). Also, the more important information is on the left, where it should be. The 18 links in smaller text on the bottom of the page are just repeats of the main links.

The online version of the San Diego Reader has well organized links. The online version actually mirrors the hard copy. It has links for each feature that you are accustomed to. Links such as restaurants, theater, movies, music, and classifieds. Note that they are all simply named. No clever looking icons with abstract names. This version gives you an opportunity to see what's going on even if your local 7-eleven has run out of free copies.

http://www.saic.com/ 
My hats off to SAIC for well named links (well organized links I might add, too). Must give our Corporate web team kudos. The links are easy to detect - both those in what is clearly a navigation bar, and those rendered in a button format. Names are not too long, but yet descriptive enough. What else can be said - no mysteries here.

http://www.globalstar.com/ 
GlobalStar is a telecommunication company that provides wireless communication service via a satellite, and also sells phones. With its mission statement, logo, search and clear navigation on the first page, this web site is certainly a wonderful one. GlobalStar's web site is clearly designed for its target audience i.e. its private customers, and investors. The web site is visual yet extremely content oriented.  The main page has a top-to-bottom navigation menu that has clearly defined links. For instance, 'Product & Services', 'How to buy', 'Investor Information' etc. Each of these links has other relevant sub-categories under them. These sub-categories can only be seen once the respective button has been clicked. For instance, under 'How to Buy', there are appropriate phone numbers and email addresses provided for the user. These straightforward and obvious links make this web site very user-friendly.

REALLY BIG
Really Bigs intention is to be a complete source for web builders. I was impressed with the way they named clearly what each link was for in 3 columns: We Have it All!, Content Areas, Webmaster Tools. This is where I found my buttons and navigated for backgrounds and CGI script.

Most sites have reasonably well named links. I picked Philips because it was a little different from the usual format.  First impression Loaded fast though not very attractive. Font size was too small.
Links from the home page were listed on the left side: consumer products, professional solutions, Philips in my country---. I felt these names were more descriptive than those usually seen on buttons. Sub-links were seen when moused over. (links are well described in this site but navigation breaks down as you get deeper into the site.
to Philips

Toyota's home page is easy on the eye. However, the both the WELCOME and WHAT'S NEW links take one to the same page dealing with the Tundra truck. It may be nice for the WELCOME page to give a broader introduction to the reader.

Well Named Links: Toyota

Simple and Effective. As a car enthusiast, this web site includes what I believe to be the best naming convention for this genre of site. That is, a text link item for each car that the company manufactures. For any car company web site, I think this is the best naming standard to use. The vehicles manufactured by Toyota appear at left on the featured link above. On another page is a similar list of links which include small photograph icons for the vehicles sold by Toyota. There's no mistaking what's at the end of these links with the photo and vehicle name.  For a car manufacturer, I think it is important to have text links named and organized for the vehicles they sell because it makes use of an intrinsic category structure already in use by them, namely their product line. The logical divisions/categorical units within this system are clear recognizable to a site visitor.  As a compliment to text links for each vehicle they manufacture and sell, Toyota provides alternative categories of links which is common to this genre of web site. Site visitors have a choice of what categories of links they feel most comfortable using to navigate the site. This site is exemplar of many car company sites which have semblant categories and naming standards for links. I've found few sites that I can navigate as quickly as one produced by an automobile manufacturer

http://www.thestreet.com/ 
This site's navigation is excellent and easy to navigate, especially given its heavy content as a financial site. The site has clean and clear direction and structure, especially given its wealth of links. The site has good text links (brief and intuitive names, which are all in lower case without spaces), a complete navigation bar on the left and tabs at the top (most of the important information is placed at the top). This navigation bar and these tabs carry through from page to page. The site offers multiple navigation approaches (text and graphics) and a homepage icon ("TheStreet.com" logo). Also, the "ticker" frame at the bottom of each page is effective and superb.

A site that has well named links is SDSU.edu  In addition to being a well organized site, it also has well named links. The name of the links clearly inform the web-browser the link connection. It is very rare that I click into a link and connect to a page that is not what I expected

California Wine Tours has well named links on their site. This site is written with frames. The navigation bar on the left side of the page is in a frame, so any page that you go to, including off the site, you will still have the site navigation bar. The links are big, bold and clear to where you will end up if you click on them. When I clicked on the "Tours" button, I got tours information. This is a very nice site and I would like to incorporate some of the techniques that they used into my site

Most of the sites I came across are well named links. But, I always find the entertainment site such as www.video.com, to be appealing because pictures describe best especially when the title is branded on the picture.

Amazon.com is a site with well named links! The user knows exactly what they will get when linking to the sites additional pages. Being a frequent user of Amazon.com, I have never been lost in the site.

http://www.meatstinks.com/
meatstinks.com is a vegetarian activism site. The site seems to have several purposes: to promote a vegetarian lifestyle, to promote activism (non-cruelty to animals and non-sustainability of meat-based diet in the world), as well as just to enlighten people about the health aspects of a vegetarian diet. All the links in the site are set up to this end.  Some of the more colorfully named main links are as follows:  - McCruelty To Go  - Meat Eating Causes Impotence - I hate men's guts  - Meet your Meat  - Peta dishes up unhappy meals  I like this site because it is attention-getting and effective, without being flashy or insulting. It does this by having a very good structure, content that is interesting (and compelling) and also by using very pointed link names and icons. Every link I followed was exactly what I thought it would be. Even with offbeat names, it was easy to figure out where I was going next. I was afraid to spend too much time at this site because I was worried that it could be a life-changing site at a time when I don't feel up to the challenge of changing my eating habits so drastically

Caravella Italia - www.seeitaly.com
For me Caravella's web site is one of very few examples of web sites with well named links;(I can not tell it about their URL that has nothing to do with the comapany's name). Caravella has only 5 links on their home page. They are all strictly client needs oriented. The basic 3 links for CUSTOM TOURS, PRE-PLANED TOURS and SPECIALITY TOURS are also descripted, so visitor should not have any doubts where to click. On other pages basic menu is not repeated, but but click on large logo icon brings to home page.

http://www.cdnow.com/cgi-bin/mserver/redirect/leaf= 
CD Now has thousands of categories to deal with. They could get creative and separate them into clever segments. But they don't. When I go to their home page, I have no problems finding my favorite music.

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Poorly Named

Annotated Links:

http://www.oxo.com/comfort/index.html 
Mission: To sell their products which include peelers, etc. Audience: Commercial and domestic users of products that will be used by the hand. This site hides its products carefully. Only after spending severalminutes on the site, was I able to discover the extent of their products. They use small symbols in their headers. Rollovers tell you what they are, which is good becuse some of the items do not make sense. For example: a hand means "built for comfort" and takes you to their produce line and a tilted box(which is actually a chefs hat) is their link to the "Chefs Choise", a page that provides recipees from guest chefs. This site has no footer (which it needs because of its poor header... which disappears as you view certain products). The site includes a side-bar that provides navigation within each section. The logo is not a link. They use an open eye as a place holder and a closed eye to indicate a located site. I want my eyes open when I look at a site.

http://www.krispykremes.com/ 
Krispykremes.com may have the best doughnuts in the world, but they have the wrong ingredients when it comes to their web site. The site opens in a separate window with a flash presentation that leaves a bad taste and it doesn't get much better. There are five main links on the home page, which is good, but some of the names of the link aren't very exciting: Doughnuts (this one's fine), History (come on), Community Affairs (please), Locations (not too many other ways to say this, so it's okay) and Contact (standard). When you go to history, you find a link for "Hot News Now". I can't quite figure out how that's history. Naming a link Community Affairs makes it sound like a government site, bad choice. When you click on locations, you only get three states, California not among them. I checked to see when the site was last updated. It was November 3, 2000, so this information is not current at all.

An website with poorly named links is Virtualspoon.com This site is an e-commerce website highlighting SpoonŽ brandwristwatches. Fortunately this site features four links on the homepage. Each has an icon and text. The first link is labeled "411". This indicates that "information" is provided on this page. The second link is labeled "team" and features famous personalities who endorse the product. The third link, entitled "goods", contains pictures and specifications of the wristwatches. The last link states simply "get it" and brings the viewer to a store locator.

http://www.wallpaper.com/files/000base/index.php3?session=7d505183c800f82657a295ff71e29bcf 
This site wins my poorly named links award. Why do I have to move my mouse over the image to find out what my navigation options are? This is what Vincent Flanders calls "mystery meat navigation". No thanks.

http://www.tacobell.com/  
This site is really odd! It seems to have been hosted during a chaotic phase of its production. The navigation has three main categories, 'Main Street', 'Grindables', and 'Sponsor'. None of these categories state exactly what lies behind them. As a user, I found these navigation names extremely impractical and puzzling.  The whole web site is, in fact a bit unsightly. When the user rolls the mouse over their logo (The Bell), the alt tag says, "What? Are you lost or something?" Since I was completely lost, I thought that was supposed to be a help button. To my disbelief, it just reloaded the same page. 'Main Street' has sub-category links called 'extreme zone', 'Border Hangout' etc. Under 'Extreme Zone' there were links called, 'Lingo', 'Extreme Vids' (Video maybe? - Who knows!), and 'Xgames'. Once again, these categories seemed redundant to me. It is surprising to see a huge and popular company like Taco Bell do such a bad job at choosing navigation names for their web site.

WORLDS WITHOUT END-A History of the Soap Operas
A Worlds Without End is at the end of the line. In scrolling on the page their are no alt tags to tell you that the individual pictures are actually links in themselves. At first it appears that the entire image is one big link. At the bottom of the image is a button that fades in and out. It fooled me and caused me to go where I did not want to go.

Hershey's main page has a menu bar on top and an attractive chocolate button menu on the left. The items on the latter include:  - Hershey's website (so are we somewhere else?) - plant tour - Visit Hershey's (how is that different from the one above) - Kidz town (?) - Chocolate world -- and so on so go see it -- to Hershey's

Poorly Named Links: HeresTheBeef.com

To be fair, although I'm selecting this site as an example of one with poorly named links, I'll conceit that my ignorance of the site subject matter probably introduces an unfair bias in this example. In spite of this though, it does have some drawbacks in the use of naming conventions which in my opinion still warrant it's selection as bad example The home page for this web site has 2 tables containing the groups of links. I presume the 1st table lists breeds of cattle and livestock that an informed site user would recognize, but within the 4 Col x 5 Row table are 2 items which do not fit well with the rest. Most of the links feature categories based by the common breed name, but the 2 obtuse/'don't appear to fit with the rest' items are: "Unusual, Miniature, or Alternative" "4-H & FFA Club Calves & Finished Steers" The first item has to just to many words in one group, that they'd probably best fit into a group label such as 'Other'. But there is already a text link for 'Other Breeds'. So it seems like a very out of place item with the other text links. The second item is an example of the same critique, 3 types of cattle lumped into a group and separated by ampersands. Not very well thought out. These 2 items coupled with the rest of text links gives the sense that there is no standard or system to the naming convention.
The 2nd table of text links on this site is prefaced as a 'Check out the Bulletin Board'. By it's very nature, a bulletin board is known to be, a kind of random/loose list items, not necessarily having any relation to another. The text links on this list certainly give make me think of the term, 'unrelated.' Now for the critique. 'Semen', enough said, this word is used as a text link. My intent is not to pre-judge the explicitness of this word, but in it's use as a text link, it would probably be best to preface it with what kind it is. It's probably readily inferred to be cattle semen, but for the sake of professionalism another choice of wording that does not connote so many other thoughts would be more appropriate. And the last text link to critique on this table, 'Embroys' should be spelled embryos. Good naming should include proper spelling and grammar. I'll note that this site goes on record as the worst I've ever seen. I'm almost embarrassed to admit I surfed it. I really did find it randomly.

www.ikea.com Being a global store with several stores worldwide, it was fun navigating this site until I got to a page which has very confusing menu links. Then I realized that most of the pages are built that way. The menus do not describe what the page is about. The links have no sense. And there is no other way to go back to the main page where you can choose a country but to click on the back button of your browser.  One example is the HongKong page. There is a link called 'benefits' and I do not quite understand what it is all about at first glance. Upon clicking, it apparently is a page with more graphics and reasons on why one should use furniture made by Ikea.

http://www.blairwitch.com/ 
This site's navigation is fair but confusing to navigate. There are too few but yet too many different ways to navigate - if one determines how to navigate. The site has fairly clean and somewhat clear direction and structure but unintelligible links. On the homepage (non-splash page), the navigation is hidden, with graphic links at the left and no links at the bottom. On subsequent pages, text links are used and naming is vague and unclear. The navigation is carried through from page to page but varies as to which type is used. The site offers multiple navigation approaches (text and graphics but is inconsistent with "alt" tags), fair text links (vague and unclear names but all are in lower case without spaces) and no homepage icon (one has to back click to get to the homepage).

A site that has poorly named links is Sfgate.com Sfgate.com is a website about San Francisco. The names of the links on sfgate.com do not inform the web-browser about the next link. For example, the name of one link on the homepage is Broke For Mumia. I don't know what that means. The link connects to an article about merchants protesting over Mumia Abu-Jumal.

Okay, I tried looking up Mitsubishi for their cars and it was the most insane rabbit trail. I finally did a search for Mitsubishi Montero and through more drilling down found mitsucars.com

The Wayside Inn site is a very good example of a site with poorly named links. This site is very small, with little information for the viewer. The only thing that you can click on is the picture at the top of the page, this made me think that this was a splash page, but when I clicked on the picture it was only a larger version of the same picture. What a rip off. This site needs some help and a lot more information for the viewer.

Packet Video, http://www.packetvideo.com gets my vote for poorly named links because it's tacky to display links as '01 The Platform', '02 The Products', and '03 The Partners'.

Here is a site that is very difficult to follow. Website Backgrounds is a site that offers "free" and a low cost program of backgrounds for websites. First, the text is done in an obnoxious yellow, making it difficult to read. Second, the site seems to have been designed by a European individual. The search engine is in a foreign language. There is also a link to a "counter" service, but no mention that this is where you will go if you click on it. Yikes! I've already sent an email to the "webmaster" about this!

http://www.webspawner.com/users/ugh/
This web page claims it is trying to be the worst web page in existence. I don't think they are too far off the mark.  The links on this page are as follows:  - Webspawner Free Web Pages  - IB's Place (my real page)  - Rob's Place  - Funster  - Send a little Sunshine!!!  - Mr. Poot  It is not clear to me what any of these links are, so I followed some, just to see. Mr. Poot is a pretty tasteless " I fart in your general direction" cartoon, complete with sound. Lovely. 'Funster' is a form that signs the user up for multi player word games. 'Send a little sunshine' is several dancing sunshine GIFs and some pictures that didn't load. Rob's Place appears to be a homepage with lots of links to other pages. None of this is too clear. None of this is too interesting, either.

Itali@n Top Dream
The great example of web site with poorly named links makes Itali@n Top Dream.

• The basic navigation found in left top corner gives to a visitor 5 basic choices:
  PROJECT, VEHICLES, WHO WE ARE, SPECIAL EVENTS, and CONTACT US
  Having this names I would bet that by mistake I came to car rental company.
• Under mysterious project I have found 6 paragraphs - not clickable - about different services called : Great Nature,Great Heritage, Great Cuisine, Great Wines, Great Homes, Special Event. I really love this names...
  
• Links VEHICLES and WHO WE ARE exactly repeat information from home page. They are useless.
• I was really interested in SPECIAL EVENTS. I don't live too long in The States but with my knowledge of the language I have thought about weddings, honeymoons, anniversaries etc.
  I will cite description of Special event I have found on this site:
  "a really exclusive "extra": a special event.
  For one evening you shall be the welcome guests of an Italian family.
  To bring you right into the heart of the country, we offer you the opportunity to join in the real life of a family.
  There is nothing like a family dinner to create a real and genuine atmosphere.
  A unique, stimulating experience that lets you get to know from the inside how a middle class Italian family lives, thinks, eats and speaks.
  Your hosts will be free-lance professionals, entrepreneurs, businessmen, ... interesting people.
  There will be no language problem.
  Our guides will accompany you throughout the evening to ensure that you make friends easily and that you get the best out of this close encounter, making it an evening to remember with pleasure, for life."
  
• The part of the home page looks like this: Our exclusive travel packages include:
  - car, motorbike or van  rental - accommodation in luxury hotels and resorts
  - top Italian restaurant - complete assistance along the itineraries Did you click on this non-links?
  I did as well. It is non about poorly named links it is about non existing fake links.

 

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