Catholic Site Design

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The Challenge

Catholic comes from the Greek kata (according to) holos (the whole), the Church that speaks the whole truth to the whole world. A Catholic web site should speak to all who come to visit.

How the Second Exodus Site Meets It

Holy Mother Church has not given its faithful any specific principles of web site design. However, following broad indications in Inter Mirifica, examining the Vatican’s own web site, and reflecting on more general principles of Catholic evangelization, I have arrived at some principles of site design that I believe are consistent with the Catholic frame of reference.

Most web sites depend on the fact that the majority of users today have their monitors set to display 800 pixels (dots) horizontally, from extreme left to extreme right, and 600 pixels vertically, from top to bottom. This is usually called 800x600. If you add users at 1024x768, you have about 90 percent of all users, with most of the rest at 640x480. The number at either extreme today is very small, but they too have immortal souls. At the low end, the Pocket PC, which comes standard with Pocket Internet Explorer, has a 360x240 pixel display. At the high end, the 21” monitors can display up to 2048x1536 pixels. The largest displays have more than 30 times as much screen area as the smallest. Moreover, General Motors plans to have a telematics option in 32 of its 54 car lines by the end of 2001, possibly including web access. Ford has similar plans. Second Exodus is Catholic. It should be available to everyone, not merely those who have the most common configuration.

All of Second Exodus’ text conforms to the user’s video display monitor. Text goes from the left edge to the right edge of the screen, whether the screen is small or large. The Second Exodus site also lets the user’s web browser decide what the typeface will be. Each browser has a default font. For instance, I designed this site using Arial, but both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator default to Times New Roman. Whatever type face your browser is set to, that’s what you’ll see.

All web text is one of seven sizes. This Second Exodus site sets the standard size to “default.” Whatever size you set your browser to display “default,” that’s the size you’ll see. All other sizes are relative to the default. The size for all Scripture and Catechism references is set to “-2” which means they will display two sizes smaller than your browser’s default size. Where “AD” is used in dates it is set to “-1” or one size smaller than browser default. Each orange page title is set to “Headline 1” which means it will display at whatever size your browser reproduces the largest headline. The section headers, such as “How the Second Exodus Site Meets It,” are all set to “Headline 2” which means they will display at whatever size your browser reproduces the second largest headline. The subsection headers are all set to “Headline 3.” On the home page, the central page links are set to “+1” while the individual page links are set to “-1.” Whatever type size your browser is set to, that’s what you’ll see.

Where certain words are emphasized, this site instructs the browser to represent those words in whatever way it represents “Emphasis” or “Strong.” As before, the browser is in control. This site controls only type color, striving for maximum visibility, and Internet Explorer can override even that.

This relative page description allows each user to set personal preferences in Internet Explorer. Since the user knows what size his display is and how he likes web pages to appear, he should decide how his web pages look. Once set, they will work the same way with all sites that conform to this modern design approach of separating appearance from content. It helps all users, but especially the visually impaired.

Fast Loading

The Second Exodus web site also serves Catholic objectives in having most pages load very fast. That accommodates those with slower connections, even 14K and below. Moreover, it encourages the site visitor to look at more pages. A site visitor who has to spend a full minute watching a page load is not apt to take a chance on something he’s not sure of. However, I think most site visitors are willing to spend five seconds or so to see whether a page might be useful. Fast pages are part of evangelization.

Suggestions Always Welcome

If you have any suggestions, please e-mail me.