Design Guidelines
Issue 4 August 2006 163

Cookies

Cookies can be a useful feature in maintaining the state of a user when interacting with a Web
site. HTTP provides no state information, such as when or how often a user visits a site.
Cookies allow Web sites to track this information by storing a simple set of values on the
browser for the current session. Usually, browsers also provide the ability to save cookies to
disk, to retain this information between sessions. However, the 4630 IP Telephone Web
Browser has no such ability to save any data between sessions. Cookies do behave well within
the realm of the current session, and can be used if desired. The 4630 IP Telephone has a
maximum of 8Kilobytes of data available for cookie storage.
Design Guidelines
This section presents guidelines for developing a good model that effectively presents Web
pages for 4630 IP Telephone Web Browser viewing. The biggest challenge in designing pages
for this browser is the limited amount of space available for viewing the pages. The 4630 IP
Telephone screen is a 1/4-VGA display. Part of that screen is lost to the browser by the 4630 IP
Telephone’s main controls. Page layout must be effective and efficient, to avoid causing more
lost space through additional screen controls like scrollbars. Font sizing can make or break a
page’s usability. You must find a balance between fitting as much text as is possible, and
allowing users to read the text without straining their eyes.

Fixed-Width Objects

One of a Web browser’s primary functions is to present text wrapped at the browser window’s
right border. When dealing with internationalization, text would wrap at the left border. The
browser always attempts to avoid adding a horizontal scrollbar. However, if you use fixed-width
objects, like tables and pre-formatted (<pre> tag) text, wrapping becomes secondary to
presenting the data exactly as HTML dictates.
Web browsers do not resize themselves larger when you add scrollbars. Thus, if there are more
lines of text than can fit in the browser window’s height, a vertical scrollbar is added. This now
takes up some of the width of the browser, and less text displays on a single line. If text is wider
than the browser’s width, a horizontal scrollbar is added. This now takes up some of the
browser’s height, and fewer lines of text are displayed.
Given the small size of the browser, it is highly desirable to avoid causing scrollbars to appear.
Unless the amount of text shown in a page is kept to a bare minimum, avoiding a vertical
scrollbar is unlikely. However, avoiding fixed-width objects, or ensuring that the size of
fixed-width is kept small, gains some viewable space. If scrolling is a requirement, vertical
scrolling is usually better perceived by users than horizontal scrolling.