Personal Web Site-
Design
All web sites need refreshing from time to time. Webcasting is 24/7 programming.
Leaving them unchanged is like broadcasting (on all channels) reruns of 'I Love Lucy', all the time. Actually, it's worse. It's like braodcasting the same episode of 'I Love Lucy' on all the channels, all the time.
Simplicity (KISS- Keep it Simple)
Web sites need to be simple and self explaining. The beauty about web sites is that they hyperlink- so each page can be as simple and elegant as a door knob design. A door knob, when you think about it for a minute, is a pretty elegant piece of hardware. It self explains. If you watch an 18 month old child grab for one and try to twist it, you realize that the door knob is about the right size and at the right height from the floor- it just itches to be grabbed and turned. If you watch dogs turn door knobs, you really realize that the original designer go it right! All architecture should be so self explaining.
When we built the Corel Centre, we wanted the front door to self explain. We wanted people to immediately know where it is. We wanted them to come in at grade and we wanted the front wall to be a glass curtain wall with light spilling out. Not for us the barrier of 50 steps and steel doors and a circular concrete wall. Many arenas do just that- the whole circumference is studded with steel doors many of them locked.
Art
There is no doubt that architect's PWSs will have to be pretty good- they are artists too afterall.
Architects will undoubtedly bring their art to their PWSs. This is well and good. But don't make them so arty that they clutter up or become impossible to read. Remember that there are 50 year old eyes out there looking at your site- use good contrast and
larger font sizes.
Downloadability
Make sure you resample image sizes- the web is all about data. People will wait no more than 4 to 8 seconds for a page to appear. In fact, I typically will wait less than two seconds. If the site does not download in that time, I leave never to return!
There are still many (more than 80%) of net users who have dial up modem connections (56 kilobits per second). So if you put an autocad drawing up with 5 megabytes of information, you are talking 89 seconds of download time- way too long.
Images on the web and other bandwidth hogs like animation and video need to be carefully integrated in your web site design. Don't put animation in just because it is neat. If it doesn't have a real purpose, forget about it. It'll get old fast anyway.
Images, video etc. can be resampled and downloaded fast at lower quality levels. People will generally be prepared to substitute speed for quality.
Navigation
Make your site easy to navigate. Make each page consistent in formatting so that once people get used to the look and feel of your site, they will know how to use each page and hyperlinks.
Use a form to create a wraparound standard navigation tool and an embedded page that changes with each click.
You may want to suppress the source code so that people can not take the look and feel of your site. There are also ways to make it difficult for people to print from your site too if confidentiality or proprietary concerns are requirements.
(My personal web site is diificult to navigate and there are firewalls between different subjects because of these types of concerns. Freedom of expression, freedom from media harrassment, confidentiality and proprietary concerns may require that you to build most of your site behind and in password protected spaces. You can have one user id and one password for each space or you may have a utility that gives each person an individual user id and password.)
Some web sites make it difficult to navigate for commercial reasons. there are sites where you may download the author's work for free- a few pages ata time. For a student with a lot of time and not much money, they will be prepared to spend three hours to do this. For a busy executive, they would rather buy the book for $20. This is a pretty good net business model- the basicservice or product is 'free', upgraded products or services cost you.
Page Size
Each browser (IE or Netscape) behaves a little differently. To get your web site to be robust and behave appropriately in all media and with all PCs is non trivial.