The Internet as a Publishing Channel

1. The Internet as a Publishing Channel Teppo Räisänen LIIKE/OAMK

3. Web vs. Internet • Web (WWW) is one of the Internet’s services • The birth year of the Internet is usually referred as 1978 or 1983 • The Web was established in year 1990 • Web is nowadays the most used of the Internet’s services.

4. Web vs. Internet • Can you think of any other Internet services?

5. Expectations towards the Web • In the beginning of the 2000s large sums of money were invested into .com companies • The burst of the .com bubble increased suspicions towards the IT-field • There have been a lot of news about Internet scams and hoaxes • Many sites contain debatable or inaccurate information

6. Web 2.0, Social media • During the last 10 years the things like Web 2.0, Social media, cloud computing have raised a lot of attention • We are seeing another .Com bubble • Hopefully not as bad as the first one

7. Web Sites (1) • Web a common publishing channel for • individual people • businesses • other kinds of organizations • Web publishing is becoming more and more common • The reason is that we have more and more web users and implementing Web pages thas become easier and cheaper

8. Web Sites (2) • In the early days the role of common people was to observe the contents of the Web pages • Many sites were implemented in quite amateurish fashion • Even at 1993 the dictionaries referred to WWW as ”World Weather Watch”

9. Web Sites (3) • Nowadays Web sites are been built for many kinds of purposes: • Home pages of individual people • Information about organizations • E-commerce sites • Virtual reality sites • Download sites • Social networking sites • Etc.

10. Web Sites (4) • The amount of the sites has been growing rapidly: • Year 1995: 18000 sites • Year 2004 : 50 000 000 sites • Nowadays: over 200 000 000 sites • Billions of individual pages

11. Web Sites (5) • Also the availability of the Web has been expanding globally • Cheaper devices • Better connectivity • WiFi (PANOulu) • In New York there are homeless who can still utilize the Internet

12. Client – server model • Web uses a so called client-server model • Server-side consists of Web-servers • Client-side is Web-browsers

13. Client – server model

14. Client – server model

15. Web-clients • What Web-clients can you name?

16. Web page vs. Web site • A site consists of individual pages • www.oamk.fi/ is a site, which has many pages (e.g. www.oamk.fi/english/ouas/) • The pages of the site share • A consistent look & feel • Links between them • The pages don’t have to be located in the same server (Usually they are)

17. Information Search (1) • Information search from the Web has become one of the basic IT-skills • With faster connections, the users are requiring faster and more accurate results • Many Web sites also include internal search functionalities

18. Information Search (2) • Recognition of the correct information is often problematic • The Web users want to • find information quickly • see the information in an organized way • get help for finding more information about the search topic • Often the users don’t know exactly what they are looking for (= surfing)

19. Information Search (3) • When designing a Web site, it is important to offer an overview about the contents: • Header/footer texts • Images • ”Aesthetic minimalism” is often mentioned as a general principle of the Web design

20. Search engines • Often the Web users use search pages to find information • AltaVista • Google • Yahoo • The search engines are based on the use of the bots &/ indexing

21. E-commerce Sites • The popularity of buying over Web has been increasing quickly • The factors affecting to the popularity are • easiness of buying • large amount of products available • fear of getting hoaxed (credit cards, private information) • difficulties with returned products etc.

22. Web publishing (1) • Even if Web publishing is a separate area, it shares many rules & principles with the print publishing: • use of colors • fonts • layouts • On the other hand, there are special requirements and restrictions (e.g. designing for the browser versions & user settings)

23. Web publishing (2) • Nowadays implementing a Web site is technically rather easy • Implementing a site with a good usability and interesting contents is still a challenging task • The Web sites also require updates: • Contents • Web addresses / links • Etc.

24. The Representation of a Web Page (1) • Methods of viewing a page include: • Computer display screen • PDA device / mobile phone browser • Printed on a paper • Most of the pages have been optimized for computer displays

25. The Representation of a Web Page (2) • The browsers of different vendors (IE, Opera, Mozilla-based) do not represent the pages in an uniform way • It is possible to make the server recognize the client requesting the page and thus optimize the contents for different kinds of environments

26. Accessibility (1) • The users of the Web differ in • Cognitive skills • Computer use experience • Sensory skills • Motoric skills • Accessibility has been set as one of the Web’s general requirements (Compare to the public buildings)

27. Accessibility (2) • Many pages include restricting content like: • Plugin based functionalities (Flash, Java..) • Small, non-adjustable font sizes • Text contents that are difficult to understand • ’Universal accessibility’ is in practice impossible to achieve, but it is still a worthy goal

28. Markup • Web pages are based on the use of a markup language (HTML) • The browsers parse the markup and present the page in a GUI view • HTML is implemented by • the Web Editors (generated automatically) • Web designers (handwritten)