Chapter 8

Conclusions and Further Work




Introduction

This chapter contains the conclusions that can be drawn about the effectiveness of the system, as well as users impressions. It also contains some details about how the project could be improved and what work could be done in this field in the future. It finishes with a personal conclusion from the author. The chapter is divided into four sections:

8.1 Users Impressions
8.2 Limitations & Areas for Improvement
8.3 Further Work
8.4 Personal Conclusion


8.1. Users Impressions

Overall the impressions of people who have used the system were very positive. A number of people commented that the method of entering what categories they were interested in was slightly complicated. This is not an easy problem to resolve, and no one was able to suggest a better solution.


8.2. Limitations & Areas for Improvement

There are a number of areas that could have been improved, but were not feasible within the timescale of the project.

A useful feature would have been a checksum for pages that could be checked against a stored checksum to see if the page layout had changed since it was set up. This would have been an important feature, and it was unfortunate that the timescale prevented it.

A number of improvements could be made to the parser to enable it to handle a wider range of tags. On certain pages option boxes containing a list of the sections in a site are used. These could be supported by converting the options into a list of links as if they were normal links. Image maps could be treated in the same way, by converting each area of the image map into a link.


8.3. Further Work

There are a number of areas that could be extended in the project, and a number of items that could be changed completely if the project were to be taken further.

The project could benefit from being changed into a partially server-based application, that downloads various news pages onto a central server. The user’s application could then download all the pages from this server (which should be local, and therefore have a fast download speed), and parse them locally. This would cut download times, and allow some form of automated monitoring of the pages to see if their layout had changed.

Using a completely server-based system could eliminate the need for a local application completely by parsing the pages on the server, and e-mailing the compiled newspaper to subscribers. The subscribers could set up their preferences using a web-based interface, and their profile could be stored in a database on the server. This has the disadvantage that the user has less control over the parsing process, and therefore over the information they receive.


8.4. Personal Conclusion

During this project I have learnt about the problems faced by blind people, and some methods for minimising them. I have also learnt different methods of retrieving and manipulating information from the Internet. I have learnt how web pages are commonly made up, and how the structure of a web page can be changed to make it more accessible to people with disabilities. I have learnt a great deal about the problems faced when undertaking (relatively) large-scale software development projects, and I believe it has helped to improve my presentation and time-keeping skills.

I discovered that compromises had to be made in order to ensure the project was completed within the time-scale set. This has taught me that the best way of doing something is not always practical, and the next-best option sometimes has to be used instead.

I am very satisfied with how the project has turned out. I have shown that the system is possible, and with a little more work, could be turned into a system that can be distributed and used.