Joanne Jacobs' site loads incredibly fast on every computer I viewed it on, not just my 15 mbps fiber optic connection at home. I accessed the site from my computer at work which has a broadband connection but I never tried it from a dial-up connection simply because I don't know where to find one. Each time, the site loaded within 1-3 seconds. All of her fonts display properly in every browser I used, including Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. Also, the fonts are uniform but slightly small for my eyes.
Her use of screen real estate is better than most blog sites, but still not 50% and certainly not the 80% that Nielsen calls for. The big blue-block banner that serves as her header is boring and takes up way too much space. The left side of the page is dominated by a screen shot of her book and also lists recent comments and recent posts. On the right side, a picture of Joanne sits above an amazingly long list of other blogs separated by subject. No advertising is present on the page, which is refreshing.
The whitespace on the page is overwhelming and Jacobs could absolutely make better use of the space on her page. The site has only 2 graphics and no ALT text is present.
Links are the lifeblood of Jacobs' page. She has a strip of structural links at the top of the page which make navigation easy and clear. She uses associative links throughout her posts and they are helpful because her posts are often short and are only meant as a jumping-off point for the reader to find more information. The majority of the links on her page are alphabetized references to other blogs. Link titles would be very helpful with the references to other blogs, but they are not present. I have relatively no interest in clicking on her reference blogs, but if there were link titles, it may help the reader decide if those links are worthwhile. The only link titles used are on structural links. The link colors are blue while the text color is black, so it is easy to distinguish between the two, but the link color doesn't change to purple or red after the viewer has clicked on it.
Jacobs' site does not use frames and Nielsen would be proud of her for that. Her page is technically framed but no information is within the frame, just whitespace.
The top item on her page is silly and I really don't see the point to it. Jacobs discusses another blog's post about how second-graders responded to the question "Why did God make mothers?" There are no news values here and Jacobs adds no original commentary or reporting to the post. Not surprisingly, the post has not be commented on by anyone.
Her use of screen real estate is better than most blog sites, but still not 50% and certainly not the 80% that Nielsen calls for. The big blue-block banner that serves as her header is boring and takes up way too much space. The left side of the page is dominated by a screen shot of her book and also lists recent comments and recent posts. On the right side, a picture of Joanne sits above an amazingly long list of other blogs separated by subject. No advertising is present on the page, which is refreshing.
The whitespace on the page is overwhelming and Jacobs could absolutely make better use of the space on her page. The site has only 2 graphics and no ALT text is present.
Links are the lifeblood of Jacobs' page. She has a strip of structural links at the top of the page which make navigation easy and clear. She uses associative links throughout her posts and they are helpful because her posts are often short and are only meant as a jumping-off point for the reader to find more information. The majority of the links on her page are alphabetized references to other blogs. Link titles would be very helpful with the references to other blogs, but they are not present. I have relatively no interest in clicking on her reference blogs, but if there were link titles, it may help the reader decide if those links are worthwhile. The only link titles used are on structural links. The link colors are blue while the text color is black, so it is easy to distinguish between the two, but the link color doesn't change to purple or red after the viewer has clicked on it.
Jacobs' site does not use frames and Nielsen would be proud of her for that. Her page is technically framed but no information is within the frame, just whitespace.
The top item on her page is silly and I really don't see the point to it. Jacobs discusses another blog's post about how second-graders responded to the question "Why did God make mothers?" There are no news values here and Jacobs adds no original commentary or reporting to the post. Not surprisingly, the post has not be commented on by anyone.
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