With over 5,000 employees spanning the entire province of British Columbia, the task of organizing BC Hydro’s Intranet effort is both massive and critical. As part of meeting that challenge, Steve Whan, BC Hydro’s Corporate Webmaster, produced several documents to help guide the process. Below, he shares the company’s key guidelines and standards for the design and subsequent creation of Intranet Web pages.
The internal Enterprise Web service was established as an alternative means for providing access to and distribution of business information. The Web service utilizes the enterprise data network. All workstations in the company that have standard connectivity to the enterprise data network can access Intranet web services. An Intranet web server is also provided as a prototyping tool for information and web content that may eventually reside on the External web server(s).
When web content will be appearing on both Intranet (internal) and Internet (external) pages, the Intranet policies and guidelines will take precedence. For example, large images and many graphical elements may be acceptable on our Internet pages, but they would not be acceptable for pages accessed over our enterprise data network.
The Web can potentially be utilized for many types of applications at a minimum of cost to the content provider. It is important to complete the approval process so that the cost and benefits of deploying the application or web page can be accumulated. These benefits will be used to support future expansions of the infrastructure.
Once departmental/SBU approval has been received, web page development must still follow corporate content guidelines. Pages must either follow these guidelines or receive an exemption from the Office of the CIO.
The following content guidelines will apply to all Intranet web content providers and web based application developers. These guidelines will allow for efficient use of our network resources so that everyone can take advantage of these services. In addition, using a standard template and following the approved Style Guide will ensure that users will view consistently designed Web pages.
Users connect to the Enterprise Data Network at BC Hydro which runs at a minimum of 28.8K bits per second. While network bandwidth can be upgraded to meet demand, there are upper limits. Many sites cannot be upgraded beyond 56Kbps due to site locations. Large files of data moving through this network will negatively impact all users (every application from e-mail through to mainframe access shares the same pipe). Because of this, there will initially be a number of data constraints placed on content providers and application developers.
The design goal at this time is for the user to be reading the page within 10 seconds using a 28.8K line, therefore:
No audio or video clips unless they are loaded directly from the local workstation. Client-side image maps should be used instead of server-side image maps (and only if there is a business justification for using a map in the first place). Graphics and images should be set-up as a thumbnail sketch in the source (max. 2000 bytes) with a link to the larger file (max. 30k bytes). The size of the larger image should be specified so that the user can make a decision to view it or not. The maximum recommended number of thumbnails or images is seven per page. The total page size including text, thumbnails and images should not exceed 30K. Any image or graphic element must have a business purpose for being in the document (e.g. a flow chart or process diagram). Graphics used to add colour or additional design elements to a page are not acceptable because they will directly impact network performance. Graphics and images should be produced using the following preferential order:
Textual information in documents should be limited to 7K (equals about six pages on the screen) in order to speed loading and minimize the impact on the network. Whenever possible, pages and documents should be broken up into chapters or sections accessible from a menu or index screen. Studies have shown that users will only go beyond two screens of information 10% of the time anyway. Images from the /images sub-directory should be used for logos, buttons etc. instead of creating personal versions. This will take advantage of images stored in the browser’s cache. Information > 6 months old will be considered “stale” and the owner will be contacted to verify the validity of the application or information. Information that is found to be out of date or inaccurate will be removed from access until it is updated. “No information is better than wrong information”. The content provider is responsible for guaranteeing the currency and accuracy of the information.
About the author:
Steve Whan is Corporate WebMaster for BC Hydro and can be reached at (604) 515-8674 or at steve.whan@bchydro.bc.ca.
Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020
Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020
Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020
FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020
How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020
Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020
The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020
CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020
Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020
Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020
NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020
Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020
IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020
Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 05, 2020
The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
August 14, 2020
Datamation is the leading industry resource for B2B data professionals and technology buyers. Datamation's focus is on providing insight into the latest trends and innovation in AI, data security, big data, and more, along with in-depth product recommendations and comparisons. More than 1.7M users gain insight and guidance from Datamation every year.
Advertise with TechnologyAdvice on Datamation and our other data and technology-focused platforms.
Advertise with Us
Property of TechnologyAdvice.
© 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this
site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives
compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products
appear on this site including, for example, the order in which
they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies
or all types of products available in the marketplace.
