- In computers, interactivity is the dialog that occurs between a human being (or possibly another live creature) and a computer program. (Programs that run without immediate user involvement are not interactive; they're usually called batch or background programs.) Games are usually thought of as fostering a great amount of interactivity. However, order entry applications and many other business applications are also interactive, but in a more constrained way (offering fewer options for user interaction).
On the World Wide Web, you not only interact with the browser (the Web application program) but also with the pages that the browser brings to you. The implicit invitations called hypertext that link you to other pages provide the most common form of interactivity when using the Web (which can be thought of as a giant, interconnected application program).
In addition to hypertext, the Web (and many non-Web applications in any computer system) offer other possibilities for interactivity. Any kind of user input, including typing commands or clicking the mouse, is a form of input. Displayed images and text, printouts, motion video sequences, and sounds are output forms of interactivity.
The earliest form of interaction with computers was indirect and consisted of submitting commands on punched cards and letting the computer read them and perform the commands. Later computer systems were designed so that average people (not just programmers) could interact immediately with computers, telling them what programs to run and then interacting with those programs, such as word processors (then called "editors"), drawing programs, and other interactive programs. The first interactive human-computer interfaces tended to be input text sequences called "commands" (as in "DOS commands") and terse one-line responses from the system.
In the late 1970's, the first graphical user interfaces (GUIs) emerged from the Xerox PARC Lab, found their way into the Apple Macintosh personal computer, and then into Microsoft's Windows operating systems and thus into almost all personal computers available today.
Navigation is a key component of a website, relating directly to its success. Also known as a button bar, website navigation is the gateway into the different sections of content, and there are some general rules to follow to design it effectively.
1. Navigation Should Be Easy to Find (Very Easy) Web users are impatient, and they're not going to hang around a site very long if they can't find their way around. Navigation should be a prominent element of your design. Since it will often take up much less space than other elements, it should stand out enough so it doesn’t get lost amongst a sea of content. The most common location of a button bar is across the top of the page, as users should not have to scroll down to navigate further into your site.
2. Keep it Consistent Site navigation should appear in the same location on every page of a site. It should also maintain the same style, type and colors. This will enable users to get used to a site and feel comfortable browsing it. If navigation were to jump from the top to the left, disappear, or change colors from section to section, frustrated visitors are more likely to go elsewhere.
3. Use Obvious Section Names The section names of a site, especially as labeled in the navigation, should clearly state what lies behind them. Obscure, general words like “resources” and “tools” should be avoided when possible, as they only lead to users clicking on multiple buttons before finding what they are looking for. Stick to obvious button names such as “news” and “podcasts” to avoid confusion.
4. Less is More Too many navigation buttons, while leading into more sections, may just leave a user with too many choices. A long list of options keeps the visitor from getting into the most important content areas of your site. Instead, consider drop-down menus that break down top-level buttons into sub-sections. Also be careful about too many separate navigation bars. It is common to have up to three options for member-based content-driven sites (such as one main navigation, one for user accounts, and one at the bottom for legal disclaimers). However, if they aren’t clearly defined the user won’t know where to look, or click, and three separate choices is already pushing too many. For simpler sites, such as a portfolio, stick to one.
5. Remind the User Where They Are Once a user clicks into a site section, it’s a good idea to remind them where they are. Use a consistent method to highlight the section a visitor is in, such as a change in color or appearance. If the site has more than one page per section, be sure to leave the button clickable so users can use it to get back to the main page of that area.
Navigation Design
Once you have an idea of the architecture and organization, you're ready to think about the design of the navigation. There are several things you should consider in deciding on your navigation design:
Accessible The navigation of your site is possibly the most important part of any given page. So it should be as accessible as you can make it. This means avoiding special effects like Flash, Java, or JavaScript as your only navigation method.
Meaningful Keep your navigation meaningful. Make the links clear - don't try to get cute or use terms that are internal to your organization. Someone who has never been to your site before should know immediately where the link will take them.
Understandable If you want to use images for your navigation, make sure that there is some text associated with them. " Mystery Meat Navigation" is the use of non-descriptive images as navigation, and it's much more common than you might think.
Prevalent Your navigation should appear on every page of your site. While you don't need to have identical navigation, the basic structure should be the same throughout the site, with changes used only to indicate location within the hierarchy.
Once you've designed your navigation, then you can begin to use it. Keep in mind that it is really tempting to change your navigation structure while you're in the middle of implementing it. But if you decide to do this, be sure that you're making the change globally and that it fits with the original goals of your taxonomy and information architecture. My recommendation is to implement the original design and wait a week or two. If at that point you still want to change it, and the change will work, then go for it. You might just find that your planning and preparation were ultimately correct and not change it at all.
What are some of the things you should look for when choosing a web host? The criteria for choosing a free web host and a commercial web hosting solution are slightly different although they do overlap.
Choosing a Free Web Host : 1. Advertising
Most free web hosts impose advertising on your website. This is done to cover the costs of providing your site the free web space and associated services.
2. Amount of web space
Does it have enough space for your needs? If you envisage that you will expand your site eventually, you might want to cater for future expansion. Most sites use less than 5MB of web space. Indeed, at one time, one of my other web sites, the freecountry.com, used less than 5MB of space although it had about 150 pages on the site. Your needs will vary, depending on how many pictures your pages use, whether you need sound files, video clips, etc.
3. FTP access
Some free hosting providers only allow you to design your page with their online builder. While this is useful for beginners, do you have the option to expand later when you become experienced and their online page builder does not have the facility you need? FTP access, or at the very least, the ability to upload your pages by email or browser, is needed. Personally, I feel FTP access is mandatory, except for the most trivial site.
4. File type and size limitations
Watch out for these. Some free hosts impose a maximum size on each of the files you upload (including one with a low of 200KB). Other sites restrict the file types you can upload to HTML and GIF/JPG files. If your needs are different, eg, if you want to distribute your own programs on your pages, you will have to look elsewhere.
5. Reliability and speed of access
This is extremely important. A site that is frequently down will lose a lot of visitors. If someone finds your site on the search engine, and he tries to access it but find that it is down, he'll simply go down the list to find another site. Slow access is also very frustrating for visitors (and for you too, when you upload your site). How do you know if a host is reliable or fast? If you can't get feedback from anyone, one way is to try it out yourself over a period of time, both during peak as well as non-peak hours. After all, it is free, so you can always experiment with it.
6. Perl and PHP
This is not particularly crucial nowadays for a free web host, since there are so many free script hosting services available that provide counters, search engines, forms, polls, mailing lists, etc, without requiring you to dabble with Perl or PHP scripts.
7. Bandwidth allotment
Nowadays, many free web hosts impose a limit on the amount of traffic your website can use per day and per month. This means that if the pages (and graphic images) on your site is loaded by visitors beyond a certain number of times per day (or per month), the web host will disable your web site (or perhaps send you a bill). It is difficult to recommend a specific minimum amount of bandwidth, since it depends on how you design your site, your target audience, and the number of visitors you're able to attract to your site. In general, 100MB traffic per month is too little for anything other than your personal home page and 1-3GB traffic per month is usually adequate for a simple site just starting out. Your mileage, however, will vary.
Choosing a Commercial Web Host
1.Reliability and speed of access
Not only should the web host be reliable and fast, it should guarantee its uptime (the time when it is functional). Look for a minimum uptime of 99%. In fact, even 99% is actually too low - it really should be 99.5% or higher.
2. Data Transfer (Traffic/Bandwidth)
Data transfer (sometimes loosely referred to as "traffic" or "bandwidth") is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your
3. Disk spaceFor the same reason as bandwidth, watch out also for those "unlimited disk space" schemes. Most sites need less than 10 MB of web space, so even if you are provided with a host that tempts you with 200 MB or 500 MB (or "unlimited space"), be aware that you are unlikely to use that space, so don't let the 500 MB space be too big a factor in your consideration when comparing with other web hosts.
4. Technical support
Does its technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (often abbreviated 24/7), all year around? Note that I will not accept a host which does not have staff working on weekends or public holidays.
Note that some commercial hosts do not allow you to install PHP or Perl scripts without their approval. This is not desirable since it means that you have to wait for them before you can implement a feature on your site. 6. SSL (secure server)
If you are planning on doing any sort of business through your website, you might want to look out to see if the host provides these facilities. These facilities normally involve a higher priced package or additional charges. The main thing is to check to see if they are available at all before you commit to the host. You will definitely need SSL if you want to collect credit card payments on your site.
7. Control Panel
This is called various names by different hosts, but essentially, they all allow you to manage different aspects of your web account yourself.
8. Multiple Domain Hosting and Subdomains
For those who are thinking of selling web space or having multiple domains or subdomains hosted in your account, you should look to see if they provide this, and the amount extra that they charge for this (whether it is a one-time or monthly charge, etc).
