About the Domain Names

Notes from David Adams

This site serves identical content for two different domains: www.island-data.com and www.4dcompanion.com. When I formed my business in Hawaii (see my mini-biography) I picked the name Island Data. Since then, I've released four 4D-related products and have become increasingly associated with 4D. I've established www.4dcompanion.com to make it easier for 4D developers to find this site. The name is based on my most recent two books, The 4D Web Companion and The 4D 6.5 Companion.

About the Design

This site’s design is based on these four goals:

Pages should download as quickly as possible.
Content should be easy to navigate.
Pages should be easy to read.
New content should be simple to add.

I discuss each of these goals briefly below. I would love to hear your suggestions on how I can improve this site, so please send comments to dpadams@island-data.com.

1: Fast Pages

A fast Internet connection is not always available. There is almost no way to make a Web site fast enough. I’ve made this Web site as fast as I can:

The HTML is simple.
There are no decorative graphics.
The site runs on a fast hosting service.

User satisfaction and page load speed are related. See these articles by Jakob Nielsen for more information: The Need for Speed and Response Times: The Three Important Limits.

2: Easy to Navigate Content

This site supports hierarchical and lateral navigation. A bread crumb trail at the top of each page shows your relative location in the site hierarchy, as illustrated here:

A topic list at the bottom of each page lets you move laterally amongst the major areas of the site, as illustrated here:

Both navigation tools include a Site Index link that takes you to a list of every major page on the site.

3: Easy to Read Pages

Computer screens are hard to read. This site uses a white background and black text for page content to preserve as much legibility as the screen allows. In a few cases, a light color is used behind tables and notes for contrast. The darker color used behind the navigation bars reduces their legibility but highlights their special nature.

4: Easy to Update Content

HTML is time consuming to edit. The site structure allows me to add new pages and categories with a manageable amount of work.