Web Site Evaluation - MSN.com
Design
Microsoft Network's web site, or, as it is better known, msn.com, is the site that I chose to do my web site evaluation on. The design of this web site is pretty simple, even though it is quite cluttered as well. There are various advertisements placed in a few places the site, most notably two at the very top and one that comes up about the middle-right of the screen and is quite noticable when you first visit the site. There is a search bar at the top, next to the msn logo, that allows users to search the World Wide Web, and even had various categories that someone can search in (e.g. Images, News, Maps, etc.). It even gives some recently popular key phrases to search for. Below this, there is a bar that lets one go to various different sub-pages within the web site that cover different topics (e.g. Careers, Election 2008, Lifestyle, Movies, Sports, Weather, etc.). Up to this point, the site isn't cluttered, in fact, it is very organized; the main part of the page, however, isn't so. It is split into 3 different columns with many boxes in each column that cover a different topic, so at least the information is organized. The left column has recent news, top picks, and stories that msn has recently posted. The second column has recent news stories in different categories, and also allows you to add or remove stories, so you can see more or fewer than are currently shown. It also has stock quotes and a way to customize what content shows up on the web site when you visit. The third column has advertisements, weather, shopping, and links to various msn services. Under the columnized content is a repeat search bar, and, below that, links to privacy, legal, jobs, feedback, help, etc. The overall site design, although somewhat cluttered, is quite good.
Code Validity
The code in this site passes the W3C Markup Validation Service. The Firefox add-on HTML Validator does say it has 12 warnings though. The warnings that it shows are: missing beginning or ending span tags, trimming empty span tags, a few problems with anchor tags, and a problem with xmlns:CP.Request. If someone was to look through all the code, it looks like garbage, it is an absolute mess, but it still passes validation. There is no indentation, the code for the whole page is written on one line. The validator doesn't care about indentation or whether the code is written on one or many lines, so the code is healthy.
CSS Implementation
Most of the CSS that is used in this web site is embedded in the page itself. There is some CSS that is linked to the page through an outside stylesheet, though most of that is just coloring for the page. There is very little inline CSS, and it's only used inline to display a few colors and to make pictures change. All of the CSS validates through W3C's CSS Validation Service. Without using CSS, the website still makes logical sense, although most of the content in the page is simply links, so it merely lists the links in the order that they are given.
Usability
Usability for msn.com is easy in some ways, and somewhat harder in others. The search bar is very nice because of the different categories you can search under as well as the recently popular searches. If you use the search bar and misspell a word, it automatically includes the search results for the correctly spelled word (presuming you get the spelling close enough), but also allows you to continue to search with only the incorrectly spelled word. The many links at the top that lead to the sub-pages within msn are very intuitive; easy to understand and find exactly what you are looking for. The boxes in the main content of the page have headings that help you find what you are looking and skip over what you don't need. The ways that it allows you to customize what shows up on the page are very nice, and it also allows you to control the look and feel: change the color, the text size, and even the width of the page. Overall, the usability is quite nice.
Accessibility
The page does allow ways to change the colors (and other things), and without the CSS, it reads pretty logically, so a screen reader wouldn't have too much trouble. The various boxes in the main content have different access keys that allow a user to skip to a few parts of the page that they might find most important or want to view. The search bar that has a spell check is handy for those who may not be able to spell or read so well. Without images the web site still makes sense, so those who aren't able to view the images are still able to navigate the site well enough. A mouse is the best thing to use on this site, because of the many links; a keyboard takes many tabs to get to different parts of the site, but it is still possible.