Astrobiology: The Living Universe was created as an entry for the Thinkquest Internet Challenge 2000. Written by three team members from Canada and the United Kingdom over a period of several months, it represents an international effort that provides a shining example of what the Internet can achieve.

Focusing on the relatively new science of astrobiology - basically, life in space and in the universe - this site aims to make learning about astrobiology interesting, compelling and fun to users of all ages. What is Astrobiology? >>

Features:

• With over 100 individual pages, Astrobiology: The Living Universe has the largest store of high-quality content ever written in the Thinkquest competition.

• Every single page in Astrobiology has been redesigned and converted into Adobe Acrobat PDF format for trouble-free printing and reading. Visually stunning, the PDFs hold the entire content of the website and run at nearly 400 A4-sized pages. Screenshots of all the PDFs are available for preview. The PDF library >>

• 13 interviews with the foremost experts in astrobiology ensure that we have the most comprehensive and up-to-date information - what better way is there to learn about Mars than by talking to the NASA Mars Pathfinder Project Director, or about SETI by the Scientific Director of SETI@Home and Director of the University of California, Berkeley's SERENDIP programme? The interviews page >>

• Extensive user-feedback options. A dedicated forum is available for each page in the website, automatically creating structured discussion where users can comment and receive answers on relevant topics. In addition, page-rating options help to identify outstanding content, and the news room (which accepts user-submitted stories) keeps the site up-to-date. The News Room >>

• Teacher-friendliness. Every section in the website has a 'Companion Guide' ideal for use in the classroom, outlining the key points discussed in each page and suggesting topics for further discussion. The Virtual Classroom >>

• Interactivity. Several applets, Flash animations and quizzes help to illustrate complex concepts and test our users' knowledge. Interact >>

• Navigation. The hierarchical side-bar menu allows quick and easy access to every part of the site at the click of a button. From the outset, we created all the sections of the website in a logical and structured manner that allows for both linear and random browsing.

• Graphical design. The Flash Introduction animation movie (complete with loading progress meter) sets the tone that typifies Astrobiology - stylish yet informative and restrained graphics that help to captivate and hold users while not getting in the way of the information.

• Disabled-access friendly. All images in the website possess ALT tags for the visually impaired, and unlike other websites we do not restrict the text size using CSS tags - the text can be resized as large as is required, while still retaining the site layout.

Design ethos: Understanding is a three-edged sword

In our initial discussions about the design of Astrobiology: The Living Universe, we identified three distinct attributes that we felt all educational websites should possess. Many such websites contain at least one or two of these attributes, but none so far have been able to express all three perfectly.

• Content

  Educational websites should have extensive, comprehensive and well-researched content that is of a quality comparable to that available in good school textbooks, because if it isn't, what's the point of reading it? In Astrobiology, our 100+ pages of content - written by award-winning writers in our team - was based on a variety of reputable sources. Just look at the length and quality of our References page!

• Graphics

  Good graphical design and layout is essential to educational websites - plain text laid out in boring paragraphs simply doesn't cut it any more. Users demand relevant, captioned images explaining facts, and in some cases Flash animations and applets - and we've been able to fulfill every single one of those demands. Graphics and layouts should complement the content and accentuate it, but they shouldn't override the main purpose of the site, and that is education. Far too many sites go too far with graphics and end up with a whiz-bang design that is devoid of substance.

• Atmosphere

  This is the hardest attribute to define, and the most difficult to get right. Many sites have the above two attributes, but the tone and style of their content is often found wanting. Visitors to educational sites don't just want to read informative, but dry and boring text, they want concepts and information to be presented to them in a fresh, readable way. We've adopted an informal, conversational tone in our content that we believe will greatly help users understand the information and want to read on more.