Week 3 Entry

I enjoyed learning about HTML this week. As an Information Systems Student, often times people assume you know everything about anything pertaining to computers. This is far from the truth with me. I’ve always wanted to know how to code in HTML but never took the time to learn. It was fun to finally learn about HTML in class and I enjoyed trying different things with the homework assignment. Even though there are many web editors available today, I can see how beneficial it will be to know at least the basics of HTML when working with websites.


Web Site Reviews:

Example of a bad site
http://www.yogaunlimited.org

Starting out, the first thing I notice is you must scroll down to read the most important part of the page. This is true for most of the site’s pages. As mentioned in our Non –Designers Web Book, it is important to have the major content of at least the first page within an 800 * 600 area. The site appears to be unfinished. There is an empty block below the navigation bar…at least place a photo there or the address of the yoga studio, something! The title has the name of the business, but nothing else. There is so much empty space in this area and I do not feel the designer made good use of the space here. The address could have easily been placed in this area. Some other thoughts are the text is also too large in most places and they use too many different font colors throughout the site. Additionally, you must scroll horizontally to entirely view some of the pages.


Example of a good site
http://www.tigerbalm.com

Right away the site gives the impression of a non – cluttered, easy to navigate site. The pages are also laid out in a way where you can read and see most of the information without the need for vertically scrolling. Nowhere throughout the site is there a need to horizontally scroll to see the entire page. The color scheme is very pleasant to the eye and the same colors are used for all pages. Additionally, navigation is easy to understand and the information is neatly divided into like subjects. The viewer can see where they are within the site because the present tab is highlighted compared to the other tabs. The designer sticks with easy to read font styles and inter-mixes them as well as the sizes nicely.


I used a mix of everything I read about when evaluating these websites. Primarily I looked at the following:

Resolution, need for scrolling horizontally and vertically

Navigation as well as easily

Broken Links

Use of fonts – size and kind.

Proximity

Repetition

Content

Pictures loading timely and properly

All caps

Alignment

I will forever look at websites in a different way since learning about some the major does and don’ts. Whenever I open a site I find my self initially thinking about the above list vs. the actual reason for going to the site in the first place.

Everything we have learned to this point will guide me through the design of my website. I thought I had a great Idea about what I was going to do but now I’m second guessing it. I really wanted to do something with photography and recipes. I’m not sure how I can tie them together.