This school site is a prime example of why I discourage my students from using frames in the design of their instructional web-site. The site uses frames, which can cause all types of havocs on the visitor's navigational schema (Tips 6)

The left frame is used for navigation and the right frame is used to display the inserted page. In the scheme of the world, this type of navigation is fairly logical until the visitor drills down to a specific page and the book marks it. Using this site as an example, I use the left frame to click on contact information and display the contact page in the right frame. When the page is displayed, the email link (not address) and telephone number of some of the key players in this district are displayed. Now that I've found the page, I bookmark it so I don't have to use the district homepage to find my contacts. The next day I decide to contact my district representative using my bookmark and this is the page that comes up. The page is the district's home page and not the contact page.

One can not bookmark a framed web-site unless the designer assigns a unique url to each and every frameset. One other item of note, you might say ah-ha, I'll just copy the contact page URL, open it into a new browser window and get the contact page in that manner. When you do, this is the page that is displayed. Do you notice any navigational links on the left?. You won't, because you now have the URL for just the contact page and not the frame set and as such, can no longer navigate the district site because all navigational links are missing.

There were two other issues with this district's web-site:

1. They recommend visitors to have their monitor set to 800 x 600 ppi resolution. They probably don't realize that many of their own schools, especially elementary schools have older computers with 12-13 inch monitors set to 640 x 480 ppi. A page designed to an 800 x 600 ppi standard will require horizontal scrolling on a 640 x 480 resolution monitor. Inceasing the resolution, reduces the size of the page, making all images and text display to a smaller size. Have you ever seen an 800 x 600 ppi designed page on a 12 inch monitor? It is small, and if one has a vision problem, reading the smaller sized text can be challenging. When this section was written (approximately 1999) most computers were set for 640x480. Technology moves on which is why this site is being redesigned for the 800 x 600 format :-).

2. The other issue with the site is email. If you recall I mention the district displays personnel email address with a link and not the actual address. My students recall from my first tip (Tip 1) that many districts and organizations, will not provide the browser with any of the email preferences. When this has occurred, no email can be sent.

No one in this district can send any other person in this district or else where email if they are using the browser. So how does one email someone in this case? The best thing to do, is to highlight the email link, write down the displayed email address, and then type the address into one's own email program.

Of course life would be a little easier if organizations such as this district, provided the actual email address of its people. Providing an address in this manner allows one to copy the address and paste it into one's own email program.