Website - Week 2

For week 2, we are supposed to read three articles that give some tips to create a website. All of them were pretty straightforward which make me easy to understand, and I think all the information listed on these three websites will be very helpful as well as useful in terms of making a website.

1. "About.com: Web Design/HTML - Readers Respond: What Design Scares You?"
The first website is from About.com, and there are several responses made by different users, and they are based on a question that what factors make a website to scare them. The answers gave me an idea that what things that I should NOT include in my website design such as:

• Putting too much animation/flash - I often find out that some Korean websites tend to have way too much animation to 'advertise' their products, and I just get tired of waiting the main page to load. Too much flash make the users be annoyed for taking long time to upload the website, and it is not interesting of fancy at all but make your eyes get tired.
• Playing music that keeps playing again and again without any pause - I totally agree with this response. Whenever I enter a website and it plays annoying music forever, I really want to leave the website or I sometimes blame for the creator of the website for putting such lame music. If you are trying to put music to your website, your website should have at least a stop button to pause the music. For some websites that I know, they stop playing songs when I press the 'Esc' key. Maybe people should consider about using that way as well.
• Way too strong contrast between the background and the contents - It will just make your eyes be extremely tired if you have to read a text that is written in bright red or yellow from the black background. Well, these color contrasts would be suitable when you create an artwork, but for a website, wouldn't they be way too much for your eyes? Therefore, people suggest that a white background with black texts is the best way.
• Dragging the mouse over the text to see the content - I strongly think that people are supposed to 'view' the text from the website without dragging the mouse to see the content. Maybe some people did it in order to make the website to be more 'interesting', however, nonsense! It is just an annoying job to do.
• No Navigation - Some websites do not have navigation system, which makes website users have hard time to find the information that they are searching for. In order to visually aid the users, many people believe that there should be a proper navigation on the website which I also agree with them.

2. "Web Style Guide 3rd edition - Sidebar: A List of Reminders"

This website also tells me about some reminders to follow in terms of creating a web page. It tells some tips of website design, and how to put good quality of contents. There are some advice that I like which are:

• "Know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and for whom you’re doing it before anyone touches HTML or Photoshop" - Even though adding decorations and making your website look interesting are important factors, the first and foremost thing that you should do is to figure out the purpose, and the specific users of the website.
• "Do not overwrite" - People do not enjoy reading a web article that has such small fonts; small fonts are uncomfortable to read. Also, if a website is just full of texts, people will easily get bored of reading the contents. Therefore, an adequate amount of writing will benefit the website users and viewers.

3. "HTML Source: HTML Tutorials - Accessibility"

This website is about accessibility of websites. In order to access a website well, there are some major factors that I think people should take into consideration such as:

• Navigation - It is important to guide the web users such as where the information that they need is located. Navigation also shows the depth of your website such as how the information is demonstrated through the website. In order to navigate the readers, a good sense of structure and organization is required.
• Content Accessibility - With appropriate use of information and proper codes such as HTML, the content should be accessed to everyone even for those who are handicapped. The content will be better if its more objective than subjective because every reader is qualified to read it.
• Logical Style - Unfortunately, I did not understand the information of logical style fully, but what I have understood so far is that using appropriate logical elements (that gives functions to the web pate) and block-level elements (ex: <>, <>) would help the website be more organized and be in order. Basically, I think it is more related to the functions of website creation with using HTML.
• Testing your pages - Checking whether your websites have the same fonts, designs, sizes, etc. would help you to organize the information as well as the website, and it will benefit the readers to understand the content better in the end.

Works Cited

Kyrnin, Jennifer. "Readers Respond: What Design Scares You?" About.com: Web Design/HTML. 21 March 2010. http://webdesign.about.com/u/ua/webdesignbasics/what-design-scares-you.htm

Shannon, Ross. "Accessibility." HTML Source: HTML Tutorials. 21 March 2010. http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/accessibility/

"Sidebar: A List of Reminders." Web Style Guide 3rd Edition. 21 March 2010. http://webstyleguide.com/wsg3/1-process/5-list-of-reminders.html