Evaluation

Evaluation via functional criteria

The different criteria used to evaluate a system are generally wide ranging and very different in order to ensure that all parts of a system are evaluated fully.

Supported functionality
One element of any system which is possibly more important than any other is the functionality it offers and how easy it is to perform the task being attempted.

Reading Articles
Articles can be read by clicking on the article’s subject line within a news group’s article listing. The system will then display the chosen article along with links to common tasks the user may require at this point, such as the ability to reply to the article or to navigate to the next or previous article within the thread or news group.

Individual user preferences
The system has the ability to remember individual user preferences based on the user ID of the currently logged in user. The user preferences stored are the real name and real e-mail address of the user, along with the ‘newsrc’ data required to identify which groups the user is subscribed to and the articles that are marked as read within each group.

Composing articles
Composition of a new article is achieved by using a HTML text area input box which can be seen in figure below. As is shown in the screen shot of the composition window, the subject line and news group can also be specified prior to posting to the NNTP server configured.

Posting articles
After an article has been composed the system will then post the article to the system’s configured news group. As each user has individual preferences and details which store their e-mail address and name, the system will automatically add these details to the article prior to it being posted on the NNTP server. This allows other users of the NNTP server to identify the author of the article being posted by name and real email address, rather than by the user’s e-mail address only.