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About Our Web site
As you know if you happened
to visit our Website prior to mid-December, 2000, we've made extensive
changes to the site. On this page, we'll briefly discuss some of the
goals we wanted to achieve with our new design. We hope that our Web
site is of value to you, and that you will
contact the Webmaster if you
have any problems with it.
Website design goals
We are trying to serve
several distinct groups of people—professionals in the electrical power
infrastructure, scientists and other researchers, teachers, students, and the public
at large. Attempting this has contrained our site's design, but we've worked
hard to make it:
| • |
Useful.
Much of the Lab's solar
radiation data are now available here, with more to come. Eventually, we hope
to provide a rich assortment of resources for everyone who has an interest
in solar resource assessment. |
| • |
Accurate.
Many people depend on our
data, which is of high quality; similarly we want our Web-based software
to be accurate and reliable. |
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Accessible.
Even though some of
our Website visitors have high-speed Internet connections and fast new
computers, we know that many do not. Consequently, we've avoided
technology choices and page designs that would limit access to our
site. Here are some of the specific choices we've made with this in mind:
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Limit
Java and JavaScript.
These programming languages can be extremely useful, especially for
interactive Web pages. However, some people use browsers that don't
support them, and many other people choose to disable them. |
| • |
No
cutting-edge page layouts.
For reasons similar to those mentioned above, we've avoided using
newer standards and newer features of older standards. As a result,
we think our Web pages will display properly on nearly any browser
in use today. |
| • |
Support
low-end monitors and video cards.
Our Web pages should be legible at screen resolutions
down to 640 X 480 pixels. No more than 216 colors are used—the
so-called Web-safe color palette. No one should have to
scroll horizontally to see everything on one of our pages. |
| • |
Support
no-graphics browsing.
Some people disable graphics when they browse the Internet; others
run files through speech synthesizer programs to access the Web.
We have tried to follow guidelines that facilitate this type of
interaction. For example, images have text labels, and full navigation
is supported through text-based links. |
| • |
Support
slow Internet connections.
Our site is perhaps heavier on text and lighter on graphics
than most. That helps to speed up file transfers on the
Internet. Where we do employ graphics, we generally do so in support
of text or to make
pages more navigable, and we are careful to compress them as much
as we can. | |
| • |
Efficient.
This point is discussed
above as it affects accessibility. However, increasing efficiency entails more than
just speeding up the delivery of a Web page through cyberspace—it has
as much or more to do with facilitating the way you usefully interact with
a Web site. We've attempted to make our site easy to explore and to navigate
within. The common "look-and-feel" of all our pages allows you to quickly
find salient page elements. |
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Printable.
Long Web pages (like this one!) don't have to be read on the screen just
because that's where they first appear. If you have a printer, it's often
best to print out long pages for off-line reading. We encourage this by
keeping our margins narrow enough for nearly any printer, and by our
choices of fonts, graphics, and colors. |
© 2022, UO Solar Radiation Monitoring
Laboratory.
Last
revised: March 4,2022.
Home
page URL: solardata.uoregon.edu |
