In order to evaluate Web sites, it is important to know something of the technical history of the Internet. The Internet is actually a worldwide collection of computer networks sharing digital information by a common set of protocols. It began in the late 1960s as a U.S. Department of Defense project to develop a computer network that could withstand nuclear attack. Initially, the Internet was used only by academic institutions and defense contractors.
Two technical advances opened up the Internet to widespread use in the early 1990s, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and the Web browser. HTML, which was developed at the European Particle Physics Lab in Geneva, produces multimedia documents. These combine text, images, and sound, and permits hypertext linking, whereby links in a document can reference another document. Students at the University of Illinois developed the first Web browser, called Mosaic, which could view and display HTML documents. The developers of Mosaic formed the Netscape Corporation and Microsoft followed soon after with Microsoft Internet Explorer. HTML and Web browsers remain the backbone of the Internet.
HTML is a set of embedded directions in a document that tells the browser how to display the text and images. HTML was designed primarily to display content. Various tags or coded directions have been developed to define appearance, but they remain primitive and inflexible. Also, different browsers read HTML code differently, so it is impossible to predict exactly how a particular Web page will display.
A major improvement in Web page design came with the development of cascading style sheets (CSS) in 1996, which allows a much richer document styling. It makes possible precise placing of all the elements in the document, setting colors and styles of fonts, creating borders around any element, and using images in more complex ways. CSS also allows for faster download times.
Another significant step forward was JavaScript (JS), a programming language that has been embedded in Web browsers. With JS a Web page is no longer static. JS can cause the Web page to change when the user interacts with the page. Forms in a Web page can be filled out, submitted and validated, and animation effects, such as blinking texts and moving objects, can be produced.
One more important innovation just starting to appear in Web sites is Flash movies, developed by Macromedia. These allow more sophisticated and complex animations to be displayed. For a good example of a Flash presentation, see the Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic Association Web site ().
Looking at a Web site, I am interested in two general elements, content and style. Both are always present, but one may predominate, depending on the purpose of the site. I use the following criteria to evaluate a Web site.
Does the site provide the information I want?
Is it presented in enough or too much detail?
Is the information easy to retrieve? This would involve ease of navigation through the site, clear links within the site, a table of contents or site map, the number of pages to get to the information.
Are there external links to other sites?
Are forms easy to fill out?
Is contact information, either by e-mail or phone, clearly displayed?
Is there someone to contact if you need more help?
Is there a unified theme holding the entire site together?
Does the home page pull you in?
Are there identifying icons?
Is the color scheme in harmony?
Does the mix of fonts provide unity?
Are the graphic elements used and placed well?
Does the use of scripts enhance or detract from the site?
Web sites are increasingly used in psychoanalysis. APsaA has an information packed Web site that gets thousands of hits worldwide. Other psychoanalytic Web sites are worth looking at; some can be found via links at apsa.org. Many local institutes and societies have developed Web sites, and we will report more on these efforts in a future TAP . Finally, individual psychoanalysts have found having a personal Web site useful in practice building and for other communication purposes. (See the box on page 38 for a sampling.)