African and American Website Browse (Lab 3, Part 2, Question 4, 5, 6)

Common traits that I observed from some African websites are as follows:

1. White space is a common feature amongst the African websites. There appear to be gaps where there is no text, no images or adverts.

2. In terms of options for navigation, most of the sites are very limited in what they can do. I also noticed that sometimes I may click 'World News' or 'Home' and then I would be sent to some gambling site or dating site. Which brings me to my next point.

3. Security. The majority of the websites I tried to access either did not open or opened some 'dodgy' domain in which I had to specify what part of the site I had to access. And again, I was bombarded with adverts or dating sites.

4. In terms of content, I found that the majority of African news websites tended to focus more on African news and display very limited world news.

Common traits that I observed from some American websites are as follows:

1. I think the main similarity that the majority of American websites share is the sheer volume of information that is presented. Every square inch of the page is filled with text or photots. Its a tsunami of information!

2. In terms of colour, white seems to be the dominant background colour. The title bar usually seems to be a dark or striking colour such as red, blue or black (which makes sense).

3. The majority of the American sites appear to have very lengthy webpages ie the amount of lets all it 'scroll time' you spend on a page is very long.

4. The refresh rate and response rate for the American sites appears to be very high.

Difference:

The main difference that I observed when veiwing both the African and American websites was the contrast in which the information was presented. Americans websites throw information at you. You have no choice. The moment you click onto one of their websites you are bombarded by it. This is'nt necessarily a bad thing as some people would argue that that is their preferred way to view information. Comparing this to the African site where information is more spread and whitespace is present throughout. One other major difference was the presentation of information. Like I previously mentioned, Africans news websites had a tendency to display more national news then international. I n contrast I found that American websites tended to have a good balance between displaying their national and international news.