In keeping with the theme of my home page, Early Nineteenth-Century Political Culture, I have chosen one site for political history and one archival site with documents pertinent to nineteenth-century constitutional history.
For my example of good design I have chosen:
Senate Historical Office
Why I consider this a good history site:
This site has an excellent use of colors with good contrast. It has an attractive logo and the navigation is consistent from page to page. The navigation is easy to use (only drawback is the non-obvious return to the historical office home). The text is easy to read with a good font and good font size. The layout of the site is well done with generous white space and good organization. All the links are well identified with descriptions of what I can expect to find there. And finally, all the graphics are fast-loading.
For my example of bad web design I have chosen:
The Avalon Project at Yale Law School
Why I consider this a bad history web site:
The description of the site is too spare. It has a huge and very distracting navigation box taking up the whole middle of the page with blue default links inside. The search feature is placed at the bottom of the page - you have to scroll to get to it. The navigation box blocks the documents list when 19th century is selected - you have to pan down to get to it. The links in 19th century are basically default blue links with a large font. There is no style to tell me which document links I have examined. There are two dead links under 19th century: "Agreement concerning trade marks between Brazil ..." and "Additional article to the treaty for suppression of the African Slave Trade." Finally, the graphic in the header changes from page to page.