Information Design: Common Rules for Gateway Pages
Site Navigation
- Every web
application must have a gateway,
even if the gateway is only one page.
- Once an end user enters a product from the gateway,
all pages are accessed from within the same browser window.
- It is only appropriate to open a new browser window
when it is used as a "dialog" that interacts with the parent
window, for displaying online help, or for taking the user to an external
web site from within a help page.
- It is never appropriate to open a maximized window
that swallows up the user's desktop.
- Every transaction page has an online help entry accessible directly from the feature navigation area.
Common Page Elements
Figure 1: A gateway
page from the SAPweb web
application.
Banner
All pages have a visible page header (not to be confused with the HTML <head></head> tag). The standard MIT-IDD header is a title bar placed at the top of the web page. It includes the product name or logo, the title of the transaction accessed or the <title></title> of a content page, and the date. The banner heading and the page title (the text between <title></title>) must be identical.
Navigate Feature
Below the header, right-justified, is the navigation area. This consists of hypertext links with navigation options for the current feature, plus links to the current product home page and to help documentation. All pages must have a navigation area except where noted, even if it only includes links to the home page and to help. Specifics include:
- The gateway page for a web
application must provide access to a "getting started" page
for beginning users. This page helps a user check for the right browser,
get web certificates, obtain a kerberos ID, etc.
- Transaction pages that require a specific programmatic operation to end a transaction should not have any links in navigation area other than "help." Instead, a form control should provide "exit," "return," or other appropriately labelled user action. Because this kind of navigation is related to the transaction, this control should be placed with the rest of the form controls.
Figure 2: The navigate feature element from Create Journal Voucher in SAPweb.
Navigate Site
Gateway pages should have a navigate-site element. A gateway page should provide easy access to all of the features of a product. For Administrative Computing products, this is done in the style of a tabbed palette. It is permissable for this tabbed palette to disappear once a user drills down into a feature. It should be located either directly above or directly below the Navigate Feature element, with consistent placement throughout the product.
Figure 3: The navigate site element from the SAPweb gateway.
Note the feature names in the tabs.
Footer
The bottom of every page must contain the MIT logo and MIT copyright below a horizontal rule. It can also include sponsor logos, such as CAO or HR. No user-interface controls are placed below this rule. See the graphic design section for specific information.
