Tech: Website Design

Subject: RE: Tech: Website Design
From: fiddler
Date: 22 Oct 04 - 03:45 AM

Foo for it FT!

Both of the recent threads have been pretty good and pretty informed and I seem to agree with you on all points -Scary Stuff!

Andy

Subject: RE: Tech: Website Design
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 22 Oct 04 - 03:14 AM

I know I am a Foole, but 'anonymous GUEST' is obviously a nasty idiot whose only talent lies in making snarky remarks due to jealousy and inability to do the things that the barbs go in... :-)

A WEBSITE is EFFICIENT, if the user can download the pages quickly without heaps of wasted junk, in order to access the info contained therein promptly and easily, especially as we here have been having conversations in other recent threads on sites intended for easy access by the visually impaired as as well Dick's Rant on 'Good Design'.

If, once you have reached the particular pages, you think the content is crap, well, you are entitled to your anonymous opinion: but since you don't want to show us your feeble efforts, you obviously can't do any better.

Robin

Subject: RE: Tech: Website Design
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Oct 04 - 11:26 PM

RE: websites...that are also efficent?

Hmmmm, Mr. Fool and your troupe....efficent at what????Mining browser/user data?

Subject: RE: Tech: Website Design
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 07:45 PM

Never mind, WYSIWYG, all is forgiven... ;-)

Subject: RE: Tech: Website Design
From: fiddler
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 04:15 AM

I've just written a lovely post on this and lost in in looking for the blue clicky thing.

I spend ages convincing penny pinching admin folk that web design isn't something that can be tacked ont o a secretarial role!

I is not just typing words and throwing in the odd picture! That goes for a lot of IT geeks too!

If you do do it, do it well, look at what the code does, keep off flashy graphics, use some artistic flare, find out if legislation affects what you are doing! This is a good thread

Don't rely on wysiwig tools which usually double or even treble the code! Keep Graphic sizes down...... I could go on forever....

Think about who it is trying to reach and what it is meant to convey and what it is meant to be doing not just what you think you want to say!

As you can tell a heartfelt plea, I don't want to discourage anyone - catters are general very artistic and bright BUT the WWW is full of cr*p sites and some really good ones - please please be objective and get yours in to the latter category - by having it checked out objectively by someone else, comparing it to some good sites.

Get it a level above my typing - rant - rant - rant

Good luck

Andy

Subject: RE: Tech: Website Design
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 08:38 PM

"Dick Gaughan's A Rant" - Couldn't put it better myself - we are pretty much of one mind....

Also - consider this - if you save a webpage to your PC, and you can't make sense of it when displaying it from your HD without the graphics as well, then it is poor design - unless the whole point of the page is that it is for a visual thing. This means that if the page is displaying pictures of great art, music dots, etc, then they are what the page is about. If the page is supposed to be 'just words', then the graphics...

Subject: RE: Tech: Website Design
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 07:54 PM

The swirly is like the 'blink' - everywhere till people got sick of it. Cute in it's place, but not everywhere! Cute & fun - for about 5 secs - then it annoys me - very visually distracting - come back Neko - all is forgiven! BTW, would love to find Neko again, but the code seems to have disappeared off the net... other cute tricks were the 'kiddies scrawl' font (from DOS days), the falling down text screen saver, and the 'you can't click on me' mouse ....

Also I don't like the coloured text on black background stuff - reminds me of my TRS80 days.... must be very conservative - prefer white or pale background with dark text except for a few highlights here and there!

First started computing stuff sometime in early 1970's - home PCs & a adult Ed COBOL course...

I do love your little piccie graphic you use as the header image - very artistic!

Subject: RE: Tech: Website Design
From: Fliss
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 07:15 PM

Ok Sorcha, I give in Ill take it off next time I redo page. Just pleases me to be able to edit bits like that. I just experiment with things - like frames, decided I didnt like them.

Subject: RE: Tech: Website Design
From: Sorcha
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 04:38 PM

And, Fliss, I HATE that swirly thing.....it bothers my eyes and equilibrium. I immediately exit any page that has it.

Subject: RE: Tech: Website Design
From: treewind
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 04:30 PM

I'm putting together a package of free tools for a friend to show him how to make and maintain his own site. I believe in writing your own HTML, but you can do much better than Notepad - I'm going to install PSPad which like many good editors has the most useful and unobtrusive HTML design aid built in - syntax colouring.

Nowt wrong wi'a Mac. SimpleText and Fetch, sorted. What's the problem?

Anahata
(who does his web design with vim, Linux, sitecopy and a bit of PHP sometimes tied together with bits of shell script.

Subject: RE: Tech: Website Design
From: Fliss
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 04:04 PM

wow hesperis,Im not adventurous enough, should have made serious money the length of time Ive been computing (from 1987).

I find web design a bit more constricting than DTP. Have tried turning Publisher files into web pages, but its all the little add on folders, same with MS word.

I too use Dreamweaver and notepad these days although I have used Front Page and Netscape composer.

Did you look at Dick Gaughan's website as well Teresa?

The worse things to use for websites are Apple Mac aagghh. Spent 6months teaching Btech webdesign on the dratted machines.

Subject: RE: Tech: Website Design
From: hesperis
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 03:28 PM

I use notepad and dreamweaver. Started designing pages for my own hobby sites 6 years ago, and now run my own hosting company!

I'll have to triple-check if my sites are accessible for impaired viewers though.

Subject: RE: Tech: Website Design
From: Teresa
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 01:47 PM

"For example, the most wonderful array of multicoloured graphic links is of absolutely no use to someone who is blind or seriously visually impaired unless
you provide text alternatives for their speech synthesiser."

Thank you, dick Gaughan. :) Hear hear. I agree entirely with all that rant.

I use Notepad to write my web pages. Granted, they are very basic, but they've worked. (I don't have them anymore, but I will be putting more up at some point.)

T

Subject: RE: Tech: Website Design
From: Fliss
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 12:57 PM

If you are going to design your own website have a look at Dick Gaughan's A Rant..... it will give you hints on how not to design a website. I show it to all my web design students... not that Ive taught any classes for a couple of years.

http://www.dickalba.demon.co.uk/rambling/rant.html

My website... started to show my students and is now a hobby. Dont stick to all Dick suggests.. I do love the swirly bit which I borrowed off a website and altered.
http://www.sabrinaflu.co.uk/ /

Page Tutor is another good site

http://www.pagetutor.com/

cheers Fliss

Subject: Tech: Website Design
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 12:59 AM

A lot of Mudcatters are wanting to set up their own websites.

Every experienced Techie who has achieved the level of a 'General Purpose Hacker' has usually been asked "How do you become a Hacker?".

The answer is of course, "Lots of hard word, especially lots of study of lot so techie things."

So if you want to design good looking websites that are also efficient, then you need to cover a lot of ground too. I had lots of links on my old box for this, but I have now found this new (to me) site which has lots of relevant information, and lots of differing opinions that cover most of the bases.

FYI: Visual Design at evolt.org

Dig in and get started!

Robin