Review of the Top 20 University Home Pages

Introduction to the analysis of the top 20 university home pages.

As part of the preparation for the redesign of the CSU, Chico home page, I decided to take a look at what other universities are doing on their home pages (following my personal mottos of "reinventing the wheel is for idiots" and "steal from those who actually know what they are doing").

Methodology

I conducted a simple Google search for "university" on November 27th, 2006, and took the first 20 sites that came up. I choose this approach because I didn't want to bias the results by selecting site that I personally liked, and because I felt that the top sites listed in Google would have a level of prestige and legitimacy that a truly random selection might not.

The top 20 sites were, in this order:

1. Harvard
2. Stanford
3. University of Florida
4. University of Michigan
5. Yale
6. Cornell
7. University of Delaware
8. University of Washington
9. Duke
10. University of Texas at Austin
11. University of Virginia
12. Georgetown University
13. Columbia University
14. UC Berkeley
15. Princeton
16. Indiana University
17. University of Pennsylvania
18. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
19. University of Wisconsin - Madison
20. New York University

I eliminated all sites with table-based layouts as being too old and non-standards compliant for consideration. This eliminated eight universities (highlighted in red, above). I then proceeded down the list of results in the Google search until I found the next eight CSS-based university home pages. I ended up looking at 45 university sites before finding 20 that were CSS-based, meaning that less than half of the top listed universities in the country have CSS-based home page layouts. The final list appears as follows:

1. Stanford University
   
2. University of Florida
3. University of Michigan
4. Yale University
   
5. Cornell University
   
6. University of Washington
7. Duke University
   
8. University of Texas at Austin
9. Princeton University
   
10. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
11. University of Wisconsin - Madison
12. New York University
13. Ohio State University
14. Boston University
15. University of Colorado at Boulder
16. Florida State University
17. Brown University
18. University of Arizona
19. Utah State University
20. Syracuse University

Basic Analysis

I took a look at the DocType for each site and ran the W3C HTML validator and the Cynthia Says accessibility validator against each page. I also wanted to see the minimum width of each page (the point where content would be hidden and scrollbars would appear). Here's what I found:

University	DocType	Validates	Sec 508	Min Width
Stanford University	XHTML 1.0 Strict	Yes	Passed	789
University of Florida	XHTML 1.0 Transitional	Yes	Passed	770
University of Michigan	XHTML 1.0 Strict	Yes	Passed	820
Yale University	XHTML 1.0 Transitional	No	Failed	783
Cornell University	XHTML 1.0 Transitional	No	Passed	809
University of Washington	XHTML 1.0 Strict	Yes	Failed	942
Duke University	XHTML 1.0 Transitional	No	Failed	718
University of Texas at Austin	XHTML 1.0 Strict	Yes	Passed	775
Princeton University	XHTML 1.0 Transitional	Yes	Failed	796
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	HTML 4.01 Transitional	No	Passed	770
University of Wisconsin - Madison	XHTML 1.0 Strict	Yes	Passed	762
New York University	XHTML 1.0 Strict	No	Failed	815
Ohio State University	HTML 4.01 Strict	No	Passed	767
Boston University	XHTML 1.0 Strict	Yes	Failed	795
University of Colorado at Boulder	HTML 4.01 Transitional	No	Failed	765
Florida State University	XHTML 1.1	Yes	Passed	797
Brown University	XHTML 1.0 Strict	Yes	Passed	765
University of Arizona	XHTML 1.0 Transitional	No	Passed	858
Utah State University	XHTML 1.0 Transitional	Yes	Passed	788
Syracuse University	XHTML 1.0 Strict	No	Failed	721

DocType
The most common DocType was XHTML 1.0 Strict, with nearly half of all sites using this DocType. Next most common was XHTML 1.0 Transitional, with 35% of sites.

Validation
Of the 20 home pages tested, only 11 (55%) actually validated, regardless of the DocType. Seven of the nine XHTML 1.0 Strict site validated, indicating that the people who maintain these sites are paying attention.

Section 508 Compliance
Only 12 (60%) of sites passed Cynthia Says automated accessibility validation. The most common problem was lack of labels on input elements.

Minimum Page Width
Minimum page width measures the smallest window width a page can viewed at before content begins to be obscured and horizontal scrollbars appear.

The narrowest page was 718 pixels wide (Duke); the widest was University of Washington at 942 pixels. The average minimum page width was 790 pixels, and the majority were between 760 and 800 pixels.

Use of Flash

Six of the 20 sites (30%) used Macromedia Flash technology on their home page. The most common uses were to provide rotating photos with stories and links and to provide pop-up menus. However, Boston University uses Flash to create an interactive recruiting environment with stories, photos, interactive maps, and multimedia pieces including video.