The Print Test

Research tells us that somewhere around two-thirds of the material that is actually read from the Web is not read from the Web at all. Instead, folks print it out and then read from the printout.

This is worth five points. The reason it's here at all is that many folks haven't paid attention to it. Give yourself the full five if you can answer "yesä to the following.

When people print out a page on your site, do they get what they see on the screen? If they don't, it's probably because your designer used frames. Frames are bad for lots of reasons, and one of the big ones is that they can make it very frustrating for people to print out information.

If you go back to your designer and the designer says something like, "Well, the folks with the newer browsers won't have that problem.% You should know that they're right, but it's not relevant. The reason it's not relevant is that the leading edge browsers only account for a small percentage of the total browsers thatâll be used to visit your site. Forget it. Get rid of the frames if you have them, and make it possible for people to print out pages from your site without having a breakdown.

The other thing you should look for when you evaluate the print test is whether or not your name and some basic information about you appear on every page, so that it prints out on every printout.

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