Survival Guide to Web Site Development - Chapter 1
ISBN 1-57231-851-1
Chapter 1 and the Table of Contents of the Survival Guide to Web Site Development reprinted with permission from Microsoft Press.http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/
On This Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 Web Content and Design
The Heart of Web Development
Planning Your Content
Ask the Right Questions
Define Your Message
Gather and Organize Information
Define the Technical Needs
Establish an Ongoing Content-Development Process
Develop an Editorial Voice
Consider Presentation
Plan for Editing the Site
Powerful Communication Through Graphic Design
Graphic Elements Should Tell a Compelling and Consistent Story
Graphical Components Should Help Users Use Your Site
Working Effectively with Graphic Designers
Design and Content for an International Audience
Content for the Web Men Shopping Site
Content
Customer Demographics
Technical Considerations
State of the Art: Quicken.com
Content Management and Development of Quicken.com
Summary
Chapter 2 Web Publishing
Technologies Behind Web Publishing
Internet Standards
HTML
Dynamic HTML and CSS
Fonts
Realistic Use of Dynamic HTML, CSS, and Fonts
Compatibility Across Browsers
CSS and Multiple Browsers
Dynamic HTML and Multiple Browsers
Fonts and Multiple Browsers
Images and Layout Technologies
Images
Color Palette
Layout
Tools for Web Publishing
Microsoft FrontPage 98
Microsoft Visual InterDev
FrontPage or Visual InterDev--Why Choose?
Publishing Office Documents on the Intranet
Design and Production for the Web Men Shopping Site
Design and Production Process for the Web Men Shopping Site
Summary
Chapter 3 Scripting
What Script Can Do
Client-Side Scripting Versus Server-Side Scripting
Microsoft Jscript
Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript)
Active Server Pages (ASP)
Real-Life Examples of ASP
New ASP Features in Internet Information Server 4.0
How Hard Is ASP to Use?
Tools for Writing and Debugging Scripts
Script Writing Tools
Script Debugging Tools
Writing Client-Side Scripts for Multiple Browsers
Putting It All Together
Scripting the Web Men Shopping Site
Scripted Dynamic HTML
State of the Art: Bryan McCormick
Summary
Chapter 4 Components
Why Use Component Code?
Client-Side Components
Java Applets
ActiveX Controls
Server-Side Components
Active Server Components
Where Do I Get Component Code?
Component Code That Is Built Into or Comes With a Product
Purchased Components
Creating Your Own Components
Developing Java Applets
Developing ActiveX Controls
Developing ASP Components
Security Considerations
Client-Side Components Versus Server-Side Components
Components for the Web Men Shopping Site
State of the Art: Steve Genusa
Using Component Code
Summary
Chapter 5 Web Server Basics
The Web Server on the Internet
The Web Server on an Intranet
Requirements for the Web Server
Web Server Hardware
Web Server Software from Microsoft
Working with an Internet Service Provider (ISP)
Common ISP Services
Where to Find an ISP
Questions to Ask an ISP
Server for the Web Men Shopping Site
Server Hardware (Thanks to Micron Systems)
State of the Art: Microsoft.com
Summary
Chapter 6 Commerce on the Internet
Building an Online Business
Who Are the Customers?
What Do Customers Want?
Lessons Learned--Microsoft Expedia
Attracting Customers
Providing Value
Ensuring Security
Exploring International Commerce
How Does Internet Commerce Work?
Credit Cards and Encryption
Encryption Technologies
Microsoft Site Server 3.0
Commerce Features
Advertising Server
Personalization and Membership
Analysis Tools for Commerce Sites
State of the Art: C-Systems
Internet Commerce
Summary
Chapter 7 Site Management
The Daily Grind
Site Management
Building a Staging Environment
Site Testing
Gathering and Using Feedback and Statistics
Performance Tuning the Web Server
Network
Memory
CPU
IIS
Streamlining Web Applications
Security
Get the Resources You Need to Run Your Web Server
State of the Art: Lycos, Inc.
Summary
Chapter 8 Building an Online Community
Extending the Reach of Your Web Site
Electronic Newsletters
Discussion Groups
Newsgroups and BBSs
Chats
The Importance of a Forum Manager
Tie Online Forums to Your Web Site
Tools for Chat and News Services
Microsoft Exchange Server
Collaboration over the Intranet
State of the Art: eBay
Summary
Index
Chapter 1 Web Content and Design
As the technology behind building a Web site becomes more complex, it is easy to forget that the most important part of any Web site is the content it contains and how well that content speaks to its audience. Content management and graphic design are two key components of any Web development project, and quality work in each area helps ensure that your site is a usable and useful tool for the audience you define.
This chapter begins with a discussion of content development and management processes for the Web, including message definition, content organization, and keeping information up to date. Then I'll talk about communicating through graphic design. With the help of some professional graphic designers, I'll then overview the designer's role in the Web development process.
The last two sections in this chapter are the first installments of regular features seen throughout this book. First, most chapters discuss the development of the Web Men Shopping sample site (http://www.webmentalk.com) that was developed for use with this book. This documented Web site shows in action the technologies that I profile in the book. Most chapters also contain a section called "State of the Art," in which organizations doing great work in the Web development industry discuss their secrets for success. For this chapter, Karen Weiss, producer of the Quicken.com Active Channel from Intuit, provides advice about content for the Web.
The Heart of Web Development
When most users surf the Web, they are looking for information. They want to research or purchase goods and services, read the latest news, play a game, or ask a question. Every day the Web is becoming a more powerful vehicle to help these people as the content becomes stronger and more complete.
The problem is that as Web content becomes more complete, it is also becoming alarmingly confusing. Every site takes users through a new navigation process to find what they're looking for. Search engines return results in the thousands. Many times, when a user gets through this maze to the information he or she is looking for, it's out of date or irrelevant. The most important thing you can do in the early stages of your Web planning effort is to decide what you're going to publish, how to organize it appropriately, and how to make sure it is complete and up to date. Through careful planning you can develop a successful Web site that will be useful for your target audience.
Planning Your Content
Let's start talking about how to plan your content. There are eight major steps:
1. | Ask the right questions about your business, your customers, and the Web. |
2. | Define your message. (Figure out what you want to say.) |
3. | Organize the information into logical groups. |
4. | Define the technical needs of the content you want to publish. |
5. | Establish an ongoing content-development process. |
6. | Develop an editorial voice--a distinct personality. |
7. | Consider presentation. |
8. | Plan for editing the site. |
In the next sections, we'll look in greater detail at each of these concepts.
Ask the Right Questions
Does it really make sense to publish and maintain information about your organization on the Web? (Here's a hint: the answer is not "Yes, because everyone else is doing it.") You need to analyze your customer demographics. What customers are you trying to attract? Are these customers using the Web? Dozens of companies are doing research on Internet demographics. Information about their efforts is easy to locate.
Information about Web demographics, geographics, and usage patterns and the costs of developing Web sites in major U.S. metropolitan areas is available from Cyberatlas at http://www.cyberatlas.com . Cyberatlas also has many links to reports from other research companies. You might also be interested in looking at Web Advertising and Marketing by Design, by Mary Jo Fahey and published by Microsoft Press. This hands-on, visual guide to creating compelling marketing and advertising materials on the Web has a lot of practical advice about creating the right look for a given audience.
Tip Looking at multiple research studies can help give you a good general understanding of who is using the Web and how the market is expected to develop. You may be surprised to find who is out there, and even more surprised to find who isn't.
You should also make cost-benefit analysis a part of your project planning. Web-server hardware and software, network connections, program code development, graphic design, content development, ISP (Internet service provider) charges, and multiple other expenses all add up to making a Web site a much more expensive effort than most organizations realize. Do preliminary research into the cost of development when making decisions about your Web site.
Define Your Message
What do you want to say? Write a one-sentence or two-sentence mission statement for your Web site. Use that mission statement to build the set of information that you will publish. For instance, the mission statement we developed months ago for the Site Builder Network Web site is "Publish the complete set of tools and technical information that will best help customers build Web sites with Microsoft technologies."
Writing a mission statement may seem trivial, but once you have a stated goal for your site, you begin to get a clear picture of what you should be publishing.
Gather and Organize Information
After you've defined your mission statement, use it to figure out what to publish. Write everything in a content plan for the Web site. Keep asking yourself how useful the content you are putting together will be for your audience. Here are some ideas to start you thinking about possible content for your Internet site:
| • | Detailed information about your products or services |
| • | Customer-service information and applications--for example, product manuals, how-to materials, and frequently asked customer questions |
| • | A newsletter that talks about events, sales, or other time-critical information about your business |
| • | Online catalogs, ordering information, and ordering systems |
| • | Archives of publications from your organization |
| • | Job openings |
| • | A library of press releases or lists of your partners and clients |
| • | Information for stockholders |
Publishing some of this information online can save in customer-service costs. Here are some ideas about possible content for your intranet:
| • | Information about your corporate structure and executives |
| • | Information about and registration for your corporate benefit plans--401(k), health care, and so on |
| • | Plans and status for current projects |
| • | Current merchandise or services catalogs |
| • | Job openings, with an online application database |
| • | Financial information about your company |
| • | Interfaces to corporate accounting systems--expense reports, supply orders, and so on |
| • | Software tools and information |
| • | Employee information (like that elusive employee phone list...) |
| • | Client lists, contact information, and sales reports |
| • | Best-practices documentation |
| • | Employee newsletter--a fun way to keep your site up to date and interesting! |
| • | Information about corporate events--schedules, holidays, pictures from the company picnic, and so on |
When you have defined your content set and written your content wish list, organize these items into groups. Try your best to get the number of groups to five or fewer. Research has generally shown that five or fewer options at one time seem to be the best number to present to a user. These five groups will form the top levels of the information architecture for your Web site. Document the groups and the items within them in your content plan.
If you're having trouble getting a set of information together, try taking a look at what your competitors or organizations similar to yours are doing. As you go through their Web sites, ask some questions. Can you tell what the company is? Is it clear what customers the company is targeting? Can you tell the purpose of the Web site? Can you tell where the company is located? (Remember that this is the World Wide Web--people could be accessing the site from just about anywhere.) Can you tell if the information is up to date? Did you find what you were looking for? Remember what you liked and didn't like about these sites, and do better!
Define the Technical Needs
When the content for your site is defined, it is relatively easy to determine the technical needs of the Web site. Determine whether any parts of the Internet or intranet site need to tie into other systems, such as an existing corporate database. What user data do you want to collect and use? For example, you might want to receive online customer registration for services. In most cases, for an intranet, information will be tied to some sort of corporate database or existing application. On the Internet, if you are going to sell products or gather information of any kind, you need to build a database infrastructure or tie into an existing one.
Some of the most useful and cost-efficient Web applications are sales and support systems designed to allow customers to conduct business with you online, thereby cutting your customer service and support costs. If reducing costs is part of your Internet or intranet goal, ensure that you design and build a system that is easier for a customer to use than other, costlier alternatives for contacting you. If your application makes it harder for your customers to do business with you, they will either resort to tried-and-true methods of contacting you, or they will go elsewhere. In both cases, your business loses money.
Also consider this: if you are building complex Web applications, your Web server has to do much more than send Web pages to users. You will need to do capacity planning and performance testing to make sure you have a strong system in place. For more information about Web servers and performance testing, see Chapter 5, "Web Server Basics," and Chapter 7, "Site Management."
The more complex your Web effort is, the longer it will take to develop and deploy and the more maintenance it will require once it's running. Plan early for the most time-consuming parts of the project, such as those mentioned in this section.
Establish an Ongoing Content-Development Process
If you remember only one thing from this book, remember this: it makes absolutely no sense to spend the time and money to build an Internet or intranet site and then never update it. Many companies devote a lot of time and resources to building Web sites that quickly go out of date and become useless to customers. If you don't have the time, money, and people assigned to maintain your site, your company or organization will very quickly be dead to the World Wide Web. Think about it this way: would you buy goods or services from a company that was still advertising its spring '97 sale prices in your local newspaper? No, you wouldn't. Customers on the Web won't, either.
Develop an Editorial Voice
It may seem strange to say that a Web site needs a voice, but often a site that attracts the most return visitors is one that continually voices a specific personality within its pages. This personality can be humorous, informative, critical, or even self-honoring, but most importantly it reflects the personality of the people who are meant to view it. If the site builders themselves represent the customer that the site is trying to attract, you have a winning combination.
A way to look at the development of a voice is to think about how targeted advertising works. These campaigns work hard to establish a tone that reflects the target market. Think about how your site can do the same over the long term, and build toward that. One of my favorite examples of this is the Site Builder Network site at http://www.microsoft.com/sitebuilder/ . Because the people who publish the information also are the people who run the site, you get an entertaining and informative idea of how actual site developers really feel about the Web technologies from Microsoft.
Consider Presentation
A big part of developing a voice on the Web is content presentation. Print media are full of examples of well-presented content. For instance, most advertising in print magazines and newspapers aims to attract the passing viewer's attention by using a simple, easily grasped concept, contained in a short phrase or striking graphic. Most newspaper paragraphs are relatively short to help the reader scan easily. In the last two decades newspaper publishers have learned to incorporate color and aggressive, magazine-style graphics. Material is structured into quickly scanned digests and info-graphics that augment the more traditionally written news stories.
Content presentation is just as important on the Web. In fact, content presentation may be even more important in this new medium, where speed of information access is key for users. Paragraphs need to be well organized and clearly and concisely written. Tables of contents and site maps should be used where appropriate to get users to topics quickly. Highlighted contents help to get your newest or most important messages across. Hypertext links and anchors can be used to jump users to more information on a topic. Organized lists of hypertext links with introductory text help users understand what information is available before they click. Building text in logical pieces and then inserting those pieces into a well-thought-out navigational structure make navigating around your site a quick and pleasant experience for users.
Plan for Editing the Site
Where would we be without writers to write and editors to rewrite? Because your Web site is all about communication, hire someone as a member of your team who has the editorial experience to understand how to give your site a common voice, communicate the right message, present the content well, and spell things the right way.
Tip On a Web site, the job of "site editor" is much more than correcting grammar mistakes. It's keeping the site useful, developing the correct content, providing education about the site to users, and learning and responding to customer feedback about site content.
Consider the following questions about the continuing life cycle of your Web site when figuring out how to maintain it on an ongoing basis.
| • | Who will ensure that outdated content is removed from the site? |
| • | Who will ensure that content from all the different groups in the organization looks and sounds as though it came from one company? |
| • | Who will continually post changes and updates? |
| • | Who will listen to what customers are saying and respond appropriately? |
| • | Who will ensure that your corporate message is communicated clearly without grammar or syntax errors? |
| • | Who will ensure the site is always fresh with new content? |
| • | Who will add the very important "last updated" dates to every page on your Web site? Someone needs to make sure that editorial standards are in place that will help maintain consistency across the site. |
Date your content. Update your content. Have fun with your site. Use it as a flexible and engaging tool to teach customers about you and your organization. Not only will that attract customers to you, but it will keep them coming back. More about what needs to go into keeping your site running smoothly is discussed in Chapter 7, "Site Management."
Powerful Communication Through Graphic Design
You've spent a lot of time gathering together and organizing the useful and compelling content that you want to publish on your Web site. Now you need to figure out how to tell your story effectively to your audience. That's where creative design comes in. Human beings have at our core an extremely powerful need to communicate with others like us. (We also talk to our computers and our pets, but that's another book altogether.) A powerful way to share information is through graphical representation of the concepts we are trying to communicate. Carefully chosen graphical components and good layout choices on your Web site make the difference between a site that communicates its information loudly and clearly, and one that loses the user in a confusing, conflicting, hard-to-use mess.
Graphic Elements Should Tell a Compelling and Consistent Story
The graphic designer is responsible for taking the content set you have defined and making it into a usable multimedia experience. He or she will define cross-site graphical components that will help your customers understand
| • | That they are still on your Web site |
| • | Where they are in the site |
| • | The most important messages they need to take away from the site |
Many of the graphic artists I've worked with define common fonts, colors, and navigational structures that apply across a site.
For an example of cross-site graphical elements, take a look at the Microsoft Site Builder Network site at http://www.microsoft.com/sitebuilder/ . The colors used across the site are within a palette of shades of blue. A graphical representation of each page's topic appears in the top left corner. Standard fonts are used across the site, and many graphical and navigational components are always positioned in the same place on the screen to make things easier for a user. Users not only know that they are within the Site Builder Network site, but they also know that they always go to the same place on the screen to navigate through the site.
Sometimes graphic designers develop themes that run across a site. The Microsoft Internet Explorer team built its Web site around an exploration theme, using appropriate imagery to communicate the concepts. Take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ . (While you're visiting the Internet Explorer Web site, download the latest version of Internet Explorer.)
Graphical Components Should Help Users Use Your Site
The graphic designer on your Web project should be a great user advocate who really understands issues of Web site usability. Listen to the designer's advice about how to organize and graphically enhance the site so that users get where they want to go. In this role, designers not only make you look good, they can help ensure that users understand what you're trying to communicate with your Web site.
During the process of building your Web site, you will see the value of working with people who understand how to communicate with your users in the way that a qualified graphic designer does. Make sure that the person you hire understands the important concepts of consistency, usability, and communication of your message on the site.
Working Effectively with Graphic Designers
Graphic designers are invaluable to your project, but they also can be quite expensive. It is extremely important to have your act together before you begin working with a designer. Not only will it make the job less frustrating for both of you, but in the end it will be a bit less intrusive on your budget.
Make sure the designer meets your needs...
Because design work is expensive, it's important to hire the right person. Find someone who works well on a team, who knows how to generate great ideas, and who shows an understanding of your business needs. The designer you hire should have some multimedia or interactive design experience. Traditional graphic artists who are familiar with tools such as Adobe Photoshop may work well to design specific graphics for the site, but they may not be able to handle designing a complete interactive and navigable environment such as a Web site. Ask to see the portfolios of potential designers, and question them about the work they did. Then be sure to check references to confirm that the portfolios are accurate.
Tip Look for a designer who can build effective navigation, organize content, and create a design that can be expanded as your content set and needs grow.
...Then make sure you meet the designer's needs
Before I wrote this section, I sat down with two professional Web designers, Craig Kosak and Sharman Armstrong, who have spent the last year working on Web sites for Microsoft, such as the Internet Start site, the Active Channel Guide, and the Internet Explorer product site. I asked these designers what the perfect project manager would provide to them at the beginning of a project to help them get started in the most efficient way. The following is their list.
| • | Clearly defined priorities for the project and the preferred user behavior for the site--making a purchase, remembering the goals of your organization, and so on |
| • | The content plan and flowcharts that walk through these expected user scenarios |
| • | A clearly defined description of the expected user |
| • | Information about which browsers and platforms you are specifically targeting |
| • | Demonstrations of any technology you want to see integrated into the site, including everything from existing corporate databases to interesting CSS (cascading style sheet) effects |
| • | Examples of other Web sites you like |
| • | Electronic versions of corporate logos or other corporate-specific artwork that needs to be published on the site |
| • | A clear description of the site's navigational structure (the five groups discussed earlier in this chapter) and other important site-wide components |
| • | Printed information from your company--brochures, posters, sales promotions, annual reports, or anything else that shows the personality behind your organization and gives a clear idea of your customer |
| • | Your final content set (if possible) to make building headings and navigational elements easier; changes made to the content set later can cause the design costs for your project to increase |
When you deliver this information to the designer, expect to answer questions about it. For instance, your corporate logo may not work well in the online environment and may need to be changed appropriately. Your user scenarios may be very different from what the designer believes a user will do, or your logical groupings may not translate to a usable scenario. Listen carefully to what the designer has to say about issues like this, and weigh his or her opinions carefully.
Put design in the schedule
You've probably put together project schedules before. In many ways the development schedule for a Web project is similar to any other development schedule. However, one new component to consider for a Web project schedule is allowing time for the design process. Ensure that the graphic designer is communicating with you and understands the schedule. Missing deadlines and changing content can make graphic design a much more expensive part of the project than you had anticipated.
Help cut costs on the project by assembling a design committee, composed of people from different parts of your company, who are responsible for reviewing the designer's work at several points in the project. Usually five to six people is a perfect number. Also get someone who is not a part of your organization, but is a potential customer, to take a look at early designs and comment on them. Integrate the reviewers' feedback into the designs to help ensure that the final product will meet your goals.
Graphics gotchas
It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words. For the Web, you have to think about this a little differently. Too many pictures cause a thousand problems. Graphical elements on a Web page add to the download size of the page (in KB) and, if not used carefully, make it unusable. In this new world of information distributed worldwide over slow phone lines, the speed of your user's connection to the Internet is something that you should be concerned about and should communicate to your design staff.
People accessing the Web from home tend to have the slowest connections to the Internet. They mostly are using modems with transmission rates of 28.8 or 14.4 KB per second, although faster modems are quickly becoming widely available. High-end home users tend to have faster home connections through specialized modems and high-speed (56 KB or faster) Internet connections. Corporate users tend to have the fastest connections to the Internet and fast access to their intranet through the corporate LAN (local area network). The faster the user's connection, the faster the pages of your Web site will load and run for the user.
Here again, it is important for you to understand your customers' demo-graphics and what type of computer and connection they are using to access the Internet. Use this information to plan the size (in KB) of your pages to ensure that they download to the user's machine in an acceptable time frame.
Design and Content for an International Audience
If your customer demographics include multiple regions of the world, you need to carefully research the Internet connection speeds that are available to your target audience in those markets. Remember that your Web server most likely will be situated in a place near you. Information from that Web server may need to travel thousands of miles over questionably reliable phone lines to get to a user who requests it. Make sure that your Web site provides a good experience to these users by making the international experience a graphically lightweight one. You can choose either to develop international "versions" of your site or to try to keep the number and size of graphics small on your site. There are many options for you to use here that are discussed in later chapters.
If you are targeting an international market, be careful when using culturally specific references or terminology in major areas of your site. Sometimes these types of references may not be understood, even by those who speak the same language. For instance, if an Irish Web site has a major section on crack, do you know what they're probably referring to? Crack or craic is an Irish term for fun or good times. The phrase "The crack was mighty!" means a great time was had by all.
Also be careful to make appropriate use of imagery and to use care when publishing religious, political, or other culturally sensitive material as part of your content set. If you have access to people living in the regions you are targeting, consider asking them to be part of the review process for your site. They can provide valuable feedback for your content set and design, and they can help ensure that you target an international market correctly.
Content for the Web Men Shopping Site
An important part of using a book like this is seeing in action the technology that you're reading about. It doesn't mean much for me to talk on and on about Web concepts and technologies without showing them in practice. Here I'll introduce the Web Men Shopping site that is going to serve as an example through most of this book. For those of you who don't know the Web Men, they are the Microsoft Site Builder Network's fabulous answer guys who research and find the answers to reader questions in their monthly column, Web Men Talking, on the Site Builder Network Web site. For this book, they've agreed to help build a sample Web site where we sell Web Men souvenirs. You can access it at http://www.webmentalk.com .
The following sections describe the content decisions we made for the Web Men's site, the customer demographics for the site, and the technical issues we dealt with.
Content
First we figured out the goal of the Web site and arranged our content groups. The core concepts behind what we were trying to do included
| • | Introducing both this book and the Site Builder Network |
| • | Fully documenting the site's development for readers of this book |
| • | Getting a few people to buy some Web Men souvenirs |
With an understanding of these concepts, we came up with this goal: provide the readers of Survival Guide to Web Site Development and other users of Microsoft technology with a fully documented, commerce-enabled Web site that showcases Microsoft's products working together to form a complete Web solution.
The five groups of content turned out like this:
Who Are the Web Men?
| • | Web Men Sitings reports |
Buy Some Souvenirs
| • | Directions for ordering and information about eligible customers |
| • | Order forms/Shopping cart/Checkout |
| • | Guarantees |
| • | Customer service |
What Is Survival Guide to Web Site Development?
| • | Overview |
| • | Where to buy it |
Site Documentation
| • | Complete sample code and pointer to site documentation |
Introduce the Site Builder Network
| • | Technical content |
| • | Membership |
| • | Community |
Customer Demographics
The site is targeted toward English-speaking computer professionals, mostly in the United States.
These users get to us from the Site Builder Network site, from this book, and from Microsoft software products that use the site as a sample. They come to the site to help them learn about Web development, and they may even buy a souvenir while they're visiting.
Based on what we know about the current Site Builder audience, we can assume that their Internet connection speed is 28.8 KB or higher. They use a 486/33 or faster computer. They run Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows NT, or a Macintosh operating system, and they use Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 or 4.0 or Netscape Navigator 3.0 or 4.0 to view the site.
Technical Considerations
Important technical considerations for the Web Men's site included building a secure site where users would feel comfortable shopping online. That meant ensuring that Windows NT Security was set up correctly and that Microsoft Site Server was configured properly. The site also needed to make appropriate use of Dynamic HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS technologies supported in Internet Explorer version 4.0 browsers, but needed to function on 3.0 browsers as well.
I'll discuss the graphic design process we went through to build the site in Chapter 2, "Web Publishing."
State of the Art: Quicken.com
Some of the most interesting new technologies on the Web have to do with the concept of "pushing" information to users. The idea behind push technology is to deliver requested information to users in a manner similar to the way they get their printed newspapers and magazines. Active Channel technology is how Microsoft implements push technologies in Internet Explorer 4.0, using the CDF (Channel Definition Format) standard proposed to the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). You use the Internet Explorer 4.0 Channel Bar to access channels. When you subscribe to an Active Channel, you can choose to be notified whenever information from the channel is updated, or you can choose to have updated information downloaded to your computer regularly for offline reading.
One of the first organizations to build a channel with Active Channel technology was Intuit, which built Quicken.com, a personal finance channel. In the following interview, Karen Weiss from Intuit discusses the process behind building Quicken.com, with an emphasis on content issues.
Content Management and Development of Quicken.com
Intuit currently maintains two major Web sites-- http://www.intuit.com , the corporate Web site, and http://www.quicken.com , a top personal finance site. Intuit also created the Business & Investing channel on Excite ( http://www.excite.com ) and provides personal finance content for the NetChannel set-top device.
Quicken.com provides objective and comprehensive information, tools, articles, and community discussions about topics such as investments, insurance, mortgages, taxes, banking, and retirement. Users can track their investments in a portfolio, do extensive research on a stock or mutual fund, comparison shop for bank rates and insurance quotes, see how much money they'll need to retire when they want to, file their tax returns online, and even prequalify for a mortgage online.
Intuit believes that its Active Channel, Quicken.com, provides such a valuable service that it could improve people's financial lives just as dramatically as Quicken, Intuit's personal-finance desktop software product, has over the years. Users can make the most of their money by understanding their financial situation, planning a course of action to improve it, and making confident choices when selecting financial products and services. Intuit is counting on steady traffic to the site for advertising revenue.
Q: Why did Intuit make the decision to use Active Channel technology?
We saw this as an opportunity to create an alternative presentation of Quicken.com that was less bandwidth-constrained than our Web site. Because users can download the pages at their convenience, it's possible to offer a graphically richer experience to channel subscribers.
The Channel Bar allows us to put our logo right there on the desktop. This is a great way to remind people to visit the channel and see what's new. Ultimately, we'd like a visit to Quicken.com to become a daily part of people's lives.
Q: What are the benefits and drawbacks of the channel technology?
Dynamic HTML gave us the ability to create a more engaging, interactive presentation of our content. It was challenging to build our channel while the technology was still under development. Often a new beta build of Internet Explorer 4.0 would be released that would break everything that had been working. (Intuit was building its Active Channel during the development of Internet Explorer 4.0.)
Ideally, the dynamic content we create using Dynamic HTML would be viewable in the latest Netscape browser as well. It can be seen only in Internet Explorer 4.0, though, and in order to avoid errors when running in other browsers, we have to add JavaScript browser detection to any page that has dynamic content. All this extra code on a page increases the download time, and it benefits only some users. For this reason, we need to maintain separate code bases for our general Web site and our channel.
Q: What customer are you targeting with the Quicken.com channel?
We imagine a typical Quicken.com channel subscriber to be someone who accesses the Internet mostly from work. Subscribers are interested in watching the fluctuations of the stock market throughout the day, and they like to know about any news that's released about the companies they're tracking. Because they're at work, they're presumably busy doing other things, so they want a more passive viewing experience than actively searching the Web--something that might catch their eye if it seemed interesting to them.
Q: What content did you decide to include in the channel, and how did you make the decision?
Because the majority of the traffic to Quicken.com relates to quotes and company news, this seemed like the right thing to offer our channel subscribers. We present quotes in the traditional scrolling-ticker format in our screen saver, and in a TV screen-like display in the Market Monitor feature, along with stock price charts and company news headlines.
We also wanted to communicate what's currently on the Quicken.com Web site. We fly in random teasers for our Web site's content in the screen saver, and there's an animated ticker of teasers in the Market Monitor. Our channel's home page is a great-looking slide show in which the producers of our Web site's different departments can show off their stuff.
Q: What features supported in Internet Explorer 4.0, such as Dynamic HTML and CSS, were of most use to you in your development?
The object model allowed us to access any piece of HTML on a page. We were then able to change the properties of the HTML elements, such as color, size, font, and visibility. The event model gave us tight control over the interaction with the elements on a page. We took advantage of the ability to add any JavaScript property to an object. Absolute positioning was also critical to get the graphical appearance we wanted. We used data binding to allow the latest-accessed quotes to be viewed offline. We used filters and transitions to create the special effects in the slide show.
Q: For your Web authoring efforts, what do you consider the most useful tools or programs provided by Microsoft, and how do you use them?
Microsoft Visual Studio combined with Microsoft Visual SourceSafe is a very effective combination for developing and maintaining source files. We've also used Microsoft Visual J++ to create Java applets for Quicken.com. Microsoft Project was the project-management tool of choice to keep us on schedule.
Summary
Once you understand the concepts behind content development and graphic design on the Web, you're ready to delve into the more technical realms of Web development that are covered in the rest of this book. Chapter 2 is an overview of Web publishing technologies and tools that will help you decide how to publish on the Web the content and graphical elements you've compiled.