Web Design – Page 2

Google Analytics+Visitor Trending+Design

In a perfect world we would all be using the same technology and wouldn’t have to design for older OS/outdated browsers/different OS/different browsers.We wouldn’t have to provide accessible websites because everyone would have perfect eyesight. We wouldn’t have to worry about our navigation systems because everyone would just get it.

But it isn’t a perfect world and some people are still using Windows 95 and MSIE 5.5.
So we can’t leave them out when we design websites anymore than we can ignore people with less than perfect eyesight. And we have to provide idiot proof navigation. I’m not calling you idiots but too many times with navigation we give more attention to design than comprehensive legibilty.
So I ask myself if someone’s Aunt Rose in Nebraska will be able to use this navigation.

We are up against a lot when we take on a new project, the biggest being taste. Our taste versus the client’s taste. Oftentimes a designer’s taste is tempered with the idea that the design ought to be clear and readable first, pretty last. I don’t think client’s want to skip clear and legible but they do often put pretty first. Personally, I believe it’s possible to have both.

Recently Matt of WordPress fame wrote about how the great day when we can all stop worrying about MSIE6 in applications or website design is upon us(actually I think he was only talking about applications).But because I do not author applications I focused on design.

So if you have signed up with Google Analytics, if you haven’t you ought to, you can see what percentage of your visitors are using IE6. If no one is using IE6 you can probably stop worrying about IE6. Lucky you.

I wish I could stop designing for IE6. But if I check Google Analytics reports for most of my website’s profiles (Visitors>Browsers>Browser Capabilities) sadly IE6 makes up almost half of the graph.

The Website’s Content Makes Design Decisions For Me.
Products or content that draw an older audience who likely have not upgraded to IE7 let alone IE6, have got to be presented in a design that IE5.5 and IE6 can render.

Many times this group won’t have the right version of the flash plugin needed so you might not want to make a flash website for this audience.
Older audiences tend not to upgrade as fast we’d like them to.
I don’t intend to stereotype older people. But in the long run it’s more important to consider what happens to eyesight when someone gets older and how that affects their experience when they come to the website I’ve designed. We have to provide legible, high contrast sites that an older audience (not as able to read small text with low contrast colors) can read. We can’t require them to download a plugin in order to see the website because chances are if they are coming to the website for the 1st time they will just leave if they get asked to download a plugin.

A Solution.
Many times when I am working on a new project I develop it on my own server. It can take weeks to complete.This gives me time to sign the client up with Google Analytics and install the tracking code into their existing website. After 24 hours I will be able to check what browsers are the top ones being used and I can factor that into my design.

Wider or thinner? Big or tiny?

I’m talking about the size of your web page.What do you like? A page that fills the whole screen or a page the size of a post card?
On Myspace the trend was tiny, tiny, tiny.Little ani-inspired teenyboppers wanted tiny little profiles with little butterfiles and tiny little emo band references.
I thought they were cute.They were cute.Except the over use of the small font font.Which is ugly.
Right now I can’t really tell what the trend is because I see a lot of both styles.It seems about 50/50.
Designing for small screens ,one kind of has to take this into account.
But the few times I’ve brought it up I have gotten huh? in response.
You know that the future is coming.The future is here.This is it:
Design with the small screen in mind or don’t.But maybe we’ll all be looking at screens the size of a postage stamp really soon.I guess we should be prepared.

Vast

Because the web is so big,there are folks writing 20 books a day about user interaction, interaction design, information architecture and the many other categories involved.
There are countless books on programming,design and web standards.
Then there are the articles and pages written for blogs and websites and blogging websites.
You could read all day for months and you may come out learning quite a lot but you won’t ever be able to learn it all.
I have tried to keep informed and am determined to do so,because I found out late in life(ok,I’m only 36 but that’s sort of late for picking a career)what I wanted to do for actual work.Which is to design web sites.

I say “actual work” because I always knew what I wanted to do:paint and draw. But I didn’t find a way to turn that into an income. A reliable income. In fact, it seems to be the main fate of most people in the Arts to have a thing they love to do but have a job that sucks their soul and pretty much destroys their energy for doing what they love.And they become evil, bitter and used.
It’s sad but it’s life and it’s face it or become evil,bitter and used.
I didn’t want to learn how to draw about 25% as well as I could by hand on some sort of software.So I didn’t go the route of a computer artist.(I simplify but you get the idea)
I didn’t have a computer until 2002.
I didn’t begin to learn anything about design until 2003.
I didn’t make my own web page until 2004.
I didn’t have my own website until 2005.
But once I got into it I was unstoppable.
So now I’m in the process of getting hired to do web design.
I found out pretty early on that this meant I had to know a lot more than the basics.
I had to be good.And I had to know how to improve and not get stuck on one method because it worked once about 6 months ago.
I’m always trying to improve and absorb good design practices combined with user interaction and common sense.

New Blog Look

I can’t stand having the same blogtemplate that 10,000,00 others have. Even though the template I used was the nice TicTac (Blueberry)-I had to go in and change everything.
Actually, I didn’t care to change the placement of #main #posts #sidebar #header. So if you think about it, it’s now just a smaller(thinner),pinker,greyer version of the original.
Still, it was a lot of work…a lot of deleting work,hah ha.
Then a few changes to the margins and paddings and fonts and background colors and voila:my version is cooler!
yay.
I really like the font Miriam.I used to exhaust myself trying to find out there type fonts.But the depressing news on out there fonts is that unless the veiwer also has this font-they won’t see your font.So you’ve got to use something widely used.
There are ways of embedding your fonts with PHP or Javascript but I haven’t had success with those,yet.