T-Log

http://24ways.org/

Making website to be attractive is important, catching web site visitors at their first glance can ensure visitor stays longer period of time in your site. And this web page mentioned about what you can do to make a webpage that impress other.

Here is the 24 ways that may help web author making web page that may impress other:

1. Gravity-Defying Page Corners
2. Cheating Color
3. Photographic Palettes
4. Scripting Carol
5. Intricate Fluid Layouts in Three Easy Steps
6. The Mobile Web, Simplified
7. Boost Your Hyperlink Power
8. Knockout Type - Thin Is Always In
9. Fast and Simple Usability Testing
10. A Message To You, Rudy - CSS Production Notes
11. Styling hCards with CSS
12. Revealing Relationships Can Be Good Form
13. Compose to a Vertical Rhythm
14. Showing Good Form
15. Writing Responsible JavaScript
16. Marking Up a Tag Cloud
17. Random Lines Made With Mesh
18. Making XML Beautiful Again: Introducing Client-Side XSL
19. Hide And Seek in The Head
20. Accessible Dynamic Links
21. Rounded Corner Boxes the CSS3 Way
22. Flickr Photos On Demand with getFlickr
23. Faster Development with CSS Constants
24. Tasty Text Trimmer

Some of the suggestions like “Tasty Text Trimmer” teach you how to make a simple JavaScript  component in making some fancy application, adding this kind of application may make people think you are so professional in making something in the web modifiable.

“Flickr Photos On Demand with getFlickr” teaches people how to make use of Flickr’s API in doing some Ajax based features. This give us an insight that for Web 2.0, we usually do not do everything of a web page by oneself, but to employ some API given by other service provider in creating new stuffs.

“Compose to a Vertical Rhythm”shos how to make use of CSS in controlling the page content to be more readable., such as making page with diary theme.

“A Message To You, Rudy - CSS Production Notes” further develop a smallweb memo using CSS with detail step by step explanation.

The site does not particularly mentioning much about web usability or accessibility, only few suggestion talk about this. “Fast and Simple Usability Testing” mentions about how to perform usability testing in a fast and simple way. Although the mentioned method does not look fast for me, it still show a guideline how you can perform such test in a more casual way without losing the point of having such test in improving you website.

And the site also mentioning the importance of following web standard to build site. “The Mobile Web, Simplified” dras the picture of how mobile device will stand for in the future. Which means how many majority people will use mobile device in accessing the Internet. And using web standard is necessary in ensuring your webpage can be shown in different mobile platform. The passage mentioned about WAP 2.0 which is based on XML syntax rule, but concentrating supporting mobile device. As mobile device has limited computing power (even though there are large improvement when comparing with the past), mobile device are now capable to render web page correctly if webpage is built according to web standard. Making webpage that can be loaded perfectly on mobile device will impress other also.

A point to be noted that not all the suggestion works fine for different platform, such as “Rounded Corner Boxes the CSS3 Way”, even though it is simple to apply and look fancy, it works for FireFox but not in Microsoft I.E.Although effect cannot be rendered by I.E. (CSS3.0 is not yet fully published), it shows how backward compatible run if web page is written following web standard (in this case, it shows CSS backward compatibility).

The site has 2 version of 24 ways for impressing your friends, the 2005 and the 2006 version, it is good for web authoring beginner to have a deep look so as to build a better web page with fancy stuffs meanwhile paying focus on web standard guideline.

Usually web 2.0 web page gives people a sense of interactive, dynamic in contents, but a web site which is dynamic in nature is not necessarily a web 2.0 web page.

Dynamic web page refers to web pages that is made of web programming language or the web page consists some client-side scripting. ASP, CGI, JSP, PHP are the common dynamic web page programming languages, these programming language, in addition with database at the back in advance, can allow web page to show dynamic contents. Newsgroup, forum, search engine, guestbook, all the stuffs are powered by one of these programming. Javascript, or HTTP request enriched Javascrip - Ajax which are client-side scripting that allow web page to have a certain extend of dynamic features. You will see there is approximity search drop list when you go to Yahoo! search, you can drag and drop to modify the layout of iGoogle, you can employ Google Maps API in making some elegant web goodies, or in simple seeing some flowers or snows flow from the top of the browsers, they are powered by client-side scripting. In a much simple way, putting some JAVA and Action-script written Flash movie also enriching the ste will some interactive effect.

Meanwhile, Web 2.0 empharizes a suggestion of s a new version of the World Wide Web, for which it is a Web-as-participation-platform that is driven by data, and collaboration resulted by participation/contribution. Usually Web 2.0 is mostly featured by some famous web site like Wikipedia, Google Maps, Flickr, which provide a platform for gathering data, in form of text, image or video, meanwhile these contents are totally owned by public without any hidden.

As you see that dynamic web page and web 2.0 have 2 distinctive prospective definition, we can by then understand that why forum is not a web 2.0 site in general even they provide a platform but usually contents not owned by the public (membership is required, or not all data can be retrieved.)

http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200511/web_20_and_accessibility/

Even dynamic web page or web 2.0 eb site, they have to follow usability and accessibility guildline in constructing the web site. The above web site mentioned about the accessibility concern on Web 2.0 web site as web 2.0 website aim at “Ajaxify” their site. Usually Web 2.0 website has lower accessibility and usability, it is because most of them employ Ajax in generating dynamic result, while some specially designed browsers which are for certain disables cannot load the contents that generated by these client-side scripting. For dynamic web site that is programmed by ASP, JSP, CGI, PHP, etc., as the content usually change, it is also have difficulity in ensuring the whole site stable accessibility. Some dynamic contents may be generated with consisting some tags that break the page code structure. Some web 2.0 website may pay much effort in making their site’s layout elegant but pay less concern on accessibility.

So, when someday that you develop a web site, no matter it is dynamic or static, web 2.0 or even upper version-number alluded, effort should also be paid on web accessibility and usability.

More discussion about Web 2.0 accessibility and usability:
Web 2.0 a glimps
Communicating web 2.0 through design

[Google search result of ‘“CityU Web Hacker” turtle‘ ]

For those who participated the extreme web designer award competition, they must realized that at this moment it is really hard to get a higher ranking in the Google search result, as you will see there is a list of websites that with linked to some forums with similar so called “spam” posts.

To allow a website be famous, actually doing similar work with the above mentioned can greatly making oneself website being exposed to numerous places in the Internet. Even though you did much about SEO, nothing help in fighting this kind of scenario in a short period of time.

Why forum content usually being indexed so quickly? Actually, most forum are designed with consideration of SEO, making search engine robot to grab the site content, meanwhile, search engine also like to grab information from forum as the content usually more abundant as well as more updated, abundant contents means higher possibility in finding the targeted information. And when you post the same/similar post to several forums, search engine may think that pieces of information is important hence setting that entity’s ranking higher.

Even though this act can raise the possibility of exposing the website to others, people not happy with such act, similar with email spamming, such kind of act is web spamming. Such act swaps the useful pieces of information behind in the search engine, and keep showing duplicated information mean useless and wait time for filtering. Hence, there is ethics for web authoring.

In fact, promoting your site with SEO has ethics to follow:
http://w529.com/SEO-code-ethics.php

Some of the points are:
No SEO practitioner will intentionally mislead, harm, or offend a consumer.
No SEO practitioner will falsely represent the content of the client site.
No SEO practitioner will participate in a conflict of interest without prior notice to all parties involved.

Web author should all apply SEO for allowing the search engine to be easier reading the website contents, doing work on their own site and some proper promotion way, but not to flood the web(doing thing that out of the website boundary)

Here is a web forum debate discuss about:
“Adding Links To Sites You Designed Right or Wrong?”
http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=54670

Wish people will use proper way to promote the site, including this web design competition.

http://www.dontclick.it/

Website author want visitors to explore the website by clicking everywhere of the site. And there is a period in the Internet history that online advertising company persuade people to click onto their advertisements and giving money in return so as to attract more advertisement businesses. However, we generally decide our site with many links and visitors have to keep clicking the mouse for information/content. Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.cameronmoll.com/speaking/2006/webjam/essential_web_skills.pdf

This is a small presentation PDF file from Cameron Moll illustrating the different between the good designer and the great designer. For web design field, being a good designer is our goal, but it is not yet enough. We need to set our goal as “to be a great web designer”.

Here are the 9 skills that mentioned by  Cameron Moll:

Good designers:

• Decorate
• Believe “less” is more
• Fix problems
• Are inspired within a genre
• Macrodesign
• Treat text as content
• Use good typefaces
• Code for one instance
• Redesign

Great designers:

• Communicate
• Believe “less” and “more” co-exist
• Prevent problems
• Are inspired by their total environment
• Microdesign
• Treat text as UI
• Use good typography
• Code for many instances
• Realign

This presentation give me a very clear mindmap about how to push our mind of web design much upper so as to reach the great designer standard. Inside the presentation file, I think “microdesign” and “inspiration by the total environment” are the two most important points. Macrodesign stands for an important position in web design as good layout design give a good impression to web visitors, but if no focus are paid onto small places, visitors may not find interest with the site as not eye catching points for them to stay. “inspiration by the total environment”, mentioning that web site can be made by inspiration from poem, such as the balance alignment of the content, so as to enforcing the meaning of the content.

Cameron Moll is a graphic designer with proficiency in website interface layout, UI design, XHTML, CSS, typography, the mobile web, and traditional print design. He gives talk about web design and explanation about how to design in a proper way.