The most important page on a website is the homepage. The homepage on southoldtown.northfork.net is divided into three frames. Although these frames are displayed together, they are actually three separate webpages. This use of frames not only fails to serve any useful purpose, the division of the homepage interferes with both appearance and functionality.

Every successful webpage has a dynamic integrity, a focus and purpose connecting it to the website it belongs to, and to the entire web. Neither the homepage nor the entire southoldtown.northfork.net website have any integrity.

Throughout the website there are technical difficulties and basic missing content (not the least of which are links to the rest of the web), but the main problem is lack of any overall organization. The more that is added to this incoherent foundation the harder it will be to sort it all out.

On the home page, frame #1 is supposed to be a static navigation menu. Frame #2 is supposed to be a static page header. Frame #3 is supposed to contain contents introducing and leading to the rest of the website.

• The first menu item, Search, should be the last resort, not the first
• The second menu item, Directions, jumps to a page containing basic information (address, telephone # & hours) which should be on the home page.
• Both the third and fourth menu items, Town Boards and Committees, jump to the same page,
  titled “Town Board” and subtitled “OFFICERS, BOARDS MEMBERS & COMMITTEES OF THE TOWN OF SOUTHOLD” which contains a long list including The Town Board, other town boards, committees and departments as well as Town Officers. The pull down menu at the top of the page links to 10 items, there are 41 items on the page.
• The fifth menu item, Moratorium, leads to a page on which there is a menu of links to other pages. Instead of simple text links, the links used on this page are Microsoft hover java applets, simple text links, perhaps formatted with cascading style sheets, would be easier to use than these hard to read white graphical text links. The high tech fancy links obscure the content.
• The sixth menu item, Departments, is confusing because it is not clear how it compares with the immediately following 15 direct links to departments (menu items seven thru twenty-one), and the page linked to, the “Department Directory”, mixes up 27 Town departments, Town officials, Town boards and other entities, not to mention that it represents a version of the same content as is on the “Town Board” page linked to from both the third and fourth menu items without any apparent logic to the variation.

      Frames #1&2 are not displayed on most of the other pages on the website because their contents are not worth the screen space they take up. When you search for “southold” in Google, the first link is to the home page, the second link is to frame #3 of the home page, frames #1&2 are unnecessary. The contents of frames #1&2 should be improved and all 3 frames incorporated on one frameless page.

      Frame #3 is essentially a catchall of content that is considered important. That would make sense if southoldtown.northfork.net were a one page website. Because frame #3 extends way past the visible framesize it can not be viewed at once, nor can it be printed, it is afflicted with a disease known to the cognoscenti as scrollitis. Most of the contents of the home page do not belong there since they could be more clearly presented on separate pages connected to the home page by clearly defined links. As more contents are being added this situation is worsening.