Turning the Pages

The current DoE public website has well over 1,200 pages - and so far different organisational units have agreed to archive or move to the staff Intranet over 500 pages.

I've discovered that archives exist of the Department of Education website going back to 1999.

LINC Archive of Tasmanian Education Department Website

It's interesting to reflect on changes in web design over the years and to plan forward. I built my first website in 1992 and although it's been updated it still fundamentally reflects old design principles. 

Apart from the cute animated gifs one can see a shift from very long web pages in the 90s as documents were 'dumped' online to much shorter 'screen size' pages over the last decade. 

But some believe the pendulum may have swung too far and that is better to have an informed balance of small web pages and longer downloadable documents that is driven by user need and purpose. Currently some documents are broken down to so many web pages that editing and navigation have become very challenging.

National web design guidelines point to accepted best practice - and mandatory requirements. Tasmania also has a Government framework for web design and publishing. Accessibility and usability are key national issues with WCAG 2.0 compliance high on the agenda. There is also recent advice on the accessibility of PDFs.

Much to consider...  :-)