الملخص الإنجليزي
The present study aimed to evaluate the content and usability of Gulf daily newspapers websites according to criteria adopted from the literature. The study also aimed to provide answer for the following research questions:
1. What is the reality of information organization on Gulf daily newspaper websites using content and usability criteria identified by this study? And that is through the answering of the following sub-questions: A- To what extent do Gulf daily newspaper websites respect content and usability criteria set by the present study? B- What are the usability characteristics of Gulf daily newspapers websites? The study adopted a qualitative approach through tools that were designed to evaluate the content and usability characteristics of Gulf daily newspapers in Arabic on the internet. The evaluation tool was designed based on a set of criteria derived from the literature on the topic. The study sample consisted of six Gulf daily newspapers websites namely: AlRay, Al Rayah, Riyadh, Al Wasat, Emirates Today and Oman. The most important results of the study were as follows:
1.It was noticed that all of the newspapers websites did not provide English language version for their contents with the exception of Al Riyadh newspaper website, which provided an English copy, as well as stating link in the main page, and all of them were keen to prepare the copy of the newspaper vide PDF with the exception of Emirates Today newspaper. 2. The result of accessibility of reaching the contents of the study websites and its compliance with International Hypertext Coding language HTML&XHTML through the World Wide Web Consortium(W3C). All of the newspapers websites made mistakes that hindered reaching the information in the websites. 3.The results of analyzing the METADATA of the newspapers websites showed weakness in using METADATA compared with international standards and was not used carefully to facilitate the retrieval of information from the websites. 4.It is appeared that the Gulf newspaper did not take into consideration the characteristics of Accessibility when designing their websites. 5.The studied websites varied in their quality of issues and it was noticed that all of them display the search results according to relevancy ranking with exception of Emirate Today's websites and Al Rayah newspapers. 6.The research results showed the studied newspapers made available a completed layout for all of 'navigation Systems" that could be seen in the websites. The most important recommendations made by the study are: 7.It useful to provide an English language version of the Gulf newspapers websites to make them easy for non-Arabic speakers. 8.The designers of the studied newspaper's websites must be sure of the site language compatibility with the International Hypertext Coding language standards and specifications, such as XHTML and HTML by adopting the standards of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). 9. The promoters of the studied newspapers websites must take more care in building MATADATA Tags on their websites in a way that makes results in compliance by Dublen Core standards. 10.The designers of the Gulf newspapers websites must adhere to the international principals and guidelines issued by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to avoid the making of mistakes and be keen of continuous of the sites testing. 11.Designers of the studied newspapers must adhere to the instructions for reaching (WCAG2.0), therefore they must design the sites to be used by those of special needs and the users in general. 12.Disigners of the Gulf newspapers websites should make sure the search engines can have access to the content of these websites and index as many pages as possible of the newspapers by organizing the websites appropriately and the good building of METADATA. 13.Designers should take care of employing the characteristics of the search system in line with the size of the content of the studied websites of newspapers, also developers should pay more attention to Navigation system characteristics.
