Week 3

This is a busy week! There are a lot of readings and even more websites. This week, I am discussing chapters 5 and 6 in the MacDonald text, as well as chapter 1 in another text, The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird.

MacDonald's Chapter 5 presents XHTML and the Web. This is incredibly important, and seems simple but isn't so much: The way you type something is not necessarily the way it will look on your page. You need to know the language! MacDonald's presentation of "structuring" and "formatting" (p. 110) is very helpful with this. To put physical elements (italics, bold, etc.) you need to use the language to communicate with the browser on how to format the page (p. 111).
Cascading Style Sheets (as presented in last week's post) CSSs are the documents that translate what everything looks like on the website: font, colors, and makes it so that the web designer can save time and effort. Also, they ensure consistency between pages in a web site. MacDonald presents paragraphs, line breaks, horizontal lines, quotes, and other important formatting tips in this chapter.

Remember last week when I talked about making websites accessible to an international audience? Well, MacDonald even addresses "Non-English Languages" (p. 134) in Chapter 5. This seems like it would be rather complicated, but MacDonald shows that it isn't so bad if you know how to use your tools, especially the web editor.

Chapter 6 is all about Style Sheets (starting on page 137). Style sheets are a very, very important element in the construction of a website because they set the tone and are a foundation for the design and creative elements of the site. Chapter 6 offers an instructional presentation of basic style elements of a site, from color to font size to spacing and borders.

Jason Beaird's text, The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, is a book I've been looking forward to reading for this class. As interested and amazed as I am about the technical elements of web design, I am mostly interested in the creative elements. Obviously, these two things are related and in order to have creativity in the site you need to know the language, but this text blends the two. As an added bonus, the book is designed like a website in the way it looks and the organization of the text is easy to follow and clear. I like Chapter 1's presentation of "Web Page Anatomy" (p. 7) because it makes the page simple and consistent. Also, the artistic "Rule of Thirds" (p. 10). This rule ensures that your page layout is consistent and visually interesting. Oh, and BALANCED! If the page isn't balanced, it will just look weird.

There are several websites this week. They are all about Internet usage statistics. This is relevant to web design because you want to know who cans see your site and who your audience is.

Website 1: Nielsen http://en-us.nielsen.com/tab/product_families/nielsen_netratings

The link for "free Internet data" offers information about searching and search engines.

Website 2: Pew Research http://pewresearch.org/

If you click on "Internet and Technology," there is a lot of information about social networking, blogs, and other social and technological data. A great reference tool because of all the information.

Website 3: CAIDA http://www.caida.org/home/

A lot of complicated information about the Internet. In my opinion, the organization of this site is complicated and a little overwhelming for users.

Website 4: Internet World Stats http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Adding to the discussion of international accessibility of web sites, this page is useful for web designers looking to better understand an international audience with important statistics.

Website 5: ICANN http://www.icann.org/

The goal of ICANN as described on the "about" portion of the site is to keep the Internet safe.