WebTV
Development Checklist
July 26, 1999 The WebTV Development Checklist will help you build Web pages for the WebTV system. Use the checklist as a way to make sure your site functions well on WebTV, or to build a site that appeals specifically to the WebTV audience.
Make content displayable within 544 horizontal pixels Avoid small text in graphics Use supported code and file formats Keep page titles short and descriptive Write concise text Use TV-friendly colors Avoid complex tables or frames Simplify forms Don?t use server-side or irregular area image maps Create pages smaller than 250K Test on a real WebTV system Test your pages with the WebTV Viewer The WebTV Viewer is a free program for your PC or Macintosh that enables you browse the Web in much the same way as a WebTV user. The WebTV Viewer reproduces layout changes caused by the way WebTV displays your pages, such as narrowing of graphics and tables to the WebTV screen width of 544 pixels. However, the WebTV Viewer doesn?t reproduce the blurring effect of a TV screen, or its treatment of color. Use the WebTV Viewer to check your Web site for layout problems and to preview your Web pages under development. You can read all about the WebTV Viewer or download it for free. Make content displayable within 544 horizontal pixels All WebTV-based systems in North America and Japan (both use the NTSC television standard) display Web pages in a fixed 544 x 372 screen space. Pages may scroll vertically, but not horizontally. Pages that are wider than 544 pixels will be scaled to fit that width. For more details on screen size, read What is the Resolution of a Television Screen? Knowing these size boundaries gives you near-total control over where elements will appear on the page. While users have no trouble scrolling through a long page, you may want to try to make short pages fit the 372 pixel boundary. It can be frustrating to scroll down to find only an extra sentence or two for your trouble. If you want every last pixel
of screen space for your site, you can eliminate the
small buffer the WebTV browser places around all pages
by default. You can achieve a total screen size of 560
x 384 pixels by including the attributes Traditional television
technology is over 100 years old, and can show its age
when used to display Web pages. The display of a
television screen is simply not
as crisp as computer monitors. This will not make
much difference when displaying ASCII text or images,
but can be crucial when displaying navigational buttons
on a Web page. As a crude rule of thumb, try
to keep graphical text over 16 points in size to ensure
legibility on a television screen. Legibility is also
enhanced by bold text and high contrast between text
and background color. Be sure to test your pages on a
real WebTV system, and, to really cover all of your
bases, use mouseovers
on crucial navigational elements. Use
supported code and file formats The most important part of
designing any page is ensuring that your users will
actually be able to read and use the content on your
site. Check out Does
WebTV Support ... for specifics on supported image
and audio types, as well as our Authoring
page for specifics on HTML,
JavaScript,
and more.
WebTV users do not have any way to download and read
Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat files, so try to make
your content viewable in a supported Web format
instead. If you're designing pages
specifically for WebTV browsers, you will want to learn
WebTV-specific code that can enhance your pages. Our HTML
Reference Guide contains a list of WebTV-specific
HTML tags and attributes. You can, for instance,
use gradient colors in tables to create stunning
backgrounds for your pages. Or, experiment with the
"transparency" attribute of the image tag to
alter the appearance of your images right on the Web
page. With a few minutes of experimenting, you'll find
you can easily create pages that look great in the
WebTV browser. Keep
page titles short and descriptive The title for your page that
you enter in the You
should not use these numbers to try
to create a title of an exact
number of characters. Rather,
create your title so that the most
relevant and distinguishing
information is in the first 12 - 20
characters, and try to avoid titles
longer than 35 characters. The default
font for WebTV users is Helvetica,
approximately 18 points in size.
Although most users do not bother, this
default size can be changed to
"small" or "large"
depending on preferences. The only other
font available is Monaco, which is used
as a fixed-width font for tags that
require one, such as Due to the
smaller screen resolution and larger
font size, less text fits on a
television screen than a computer
monitor. This makes it even more
important to be concise when creating
content. Break large paragraphs up into
groupings of no more than two or three
sentences. Avoid small text sizes in
HTML or embedded in graphics. For more
details on this topic, read Making
Text Readable on Television. An NTSC television displays colors
differently than a computer monitor. No
color will ever dither, meaning you have
millions of colors to work with, rather
than just the 216 in the browser-safe
palette. That said, certain types of
colors should be avoided. Although full
white and red backgrounds are used on
many home pages, they may not look good
on a TV screen. Consider a dark
background with light text for best
readability on television. Read our
article Avoiding
Color Distortion on Television for
more details. Again, testing with a real
WebTV system is the only way to really
know how your visitors will feel about
your color choices. Avoid
complex tables or frames The WebTV browser converts
frames into tables ,
so design considerations are similar.
Avoid narrow columns. While columns of
text set to 25% width may be very
attractive on a large computer monitor,
the large font of a WebTV browser may
only allow a few words per line. If you are using a large (over 600
pixels wide) table for either data or to
splice images together, make sure you
read our article, Making
Spliced Images Work. Keep
forms simple. The WebTV browser can be
confused by extraneous or bizarre code,
and WebTV users can be confused by
complicated or inconsistent forms. To
ensure that your forms can be used by a
WebTV browser, test them on the WebTV
Viewer, and read Function
Follows Form. To ensure that your
forms can be used by a WebTV user, avoid
long pull-down menus (tedious to use)
and long values on buttons (they may get
truncated). Once your forms are working properly,
you can tailor them to your site's
appearance by changing their color. Read
WebTV-Specific
Tags and Attributes for more info. Don?t
use server-side or irregular area image
maps WebTV
users employ a selection
box to surf the Web. While this
selection box will work seamlessly on
client-side image maps with rectangular
hot spots, any other type of image map
can be incovenient to use. Read our
article on Seamless
Image Maps for more details on this
topic. Create
pages smaller than 250K It's difficult to recommend a solid
upper boundary on page size. How big a
page is viewable by a WebTV browser
depends on what type of browser it is -
WebTV Plus, WebTV Plus for Satellite, or
WebTV Classic - as well as how much
information is currently in the
browser's cache. The browser's cache can
only be emptied by turning off the
WebTV-based system. To be safe, don't
make Web pages any larger than 250K. To
ensure playback, MPEG and audio files
shouldn't be much larger than 400K. Of
course, the main problem with a 250K
page isn't the browser's technical
ability to display it; it's the user's
patience to wait for it to finish
downloading. Like everything else on the
Web, small size is a virtue. The
final step is to test your pages on a
real WebTV system. If you don?t have a
WebTV system of your own, go to one of
the many
retail outlets that have WebTV
systems on display to get some
"hands-on" time. |