Hope you are ready for a GREAT Thanksgiving Vacation!
Friday, November 20, 2009
Friday, September 12, 2008
Website as a Communication Tool
The school board has set improving communication as a goal this year. Our job is to look at school websites in the state of South Dakota and post a comment to this blog on the website you looked at, what you liked, what you didn't like, what could be added to ours to increase it as tool for parents to use.
http://members.k12.sd.us
Go here, scroll on the left and you will see a K-12 schools, click and see list of all K-12 schools in South Dakota. (If you choose to look out of state, that is fine, too!)
Click on some links for the website and if you find something you like, please come to this blog, pick comment. When the box comes up, pick anonymous, but the first line should have your first name.
Thanks! We will have a little time at our September in-service to work on this. By doing this, we won't have too prepare a report--the board can just look here for our comments about our website or others!
The 10 Commandments of Web Design
1. Thou shalt not use frames unless there is a need: Frames are websites that link two or three HTML pages into a single view. Why is this bad? Try saving a page from a frames site in your bookmarks. It's hard to do. Frames are also not accessible in some browsers, whatsoever, and frames don't work at all in text based browsers.
2. Thou shalt not use the scrolling Marquee that everyone else uses: Ever been to a site and see a piece of text scrolling across the web page like a stock ticker? That's because of the marquee tag. It is distracting and takes away from your content.
3. Thou shalt look up the word 'consistency' in Webster's Dictionary before the layout of all your site pages. The user should not be confused with a different page design every time they click to a new page: This means that if your homepage has a certain look and navigation structure to it, your child pages should have that same look. Take a look at good web design. Notice how the header and footer are the same for every page? Notice how every article page has the same sidebar? That's consistency.
4. Thou shalt not use horizontal rules that are rainbow animations unless you are hawaiian.: These were cool 7 years ago. They aren't now.
5. Thou shalt not use brightly colored patterned backgrounds that make the content impossible to read unless thou want to induce vomiting for someone that has ingested poison: I don't think this commandment would fit on a tablet, but it's an important one. Bright backgrounds make the text hard to read and hurt my eyes. Imagine a novel that had black text on a bright yellow and orange background. Do you want to read that for an extended period of time?
6. Thou shalt not apply for web-design jobs after a single community College class on using FrontPage: Analogy: Just because you took a course in carpentry does not mean you can build a well designed and constructed home. FrontPage is Microsoft's tool to develop web pages without using markup code.
7. Thou shalt not use a visible counter on a business page: Counters can be manipulated easily (hit the refresh button often). Another reason to avoid them is if you have an unpopular site. If a potential customer comes to your site and sees you have only have a few hundred visitors, they may be wary of purchasing anything from you. Use server logs instead.
8. Thou 'shalt not use "Best Viewed with Internet Explorer" or "best viewed at 800 x 600 resolution": Imagine renting a DVD and popping it into your DVD player only to be greeted by a screen that says "This DVD is not compatible with your TV and will, therefore, not play. You need a high definition TV with 1080i resolution."
9. Thou shalt not use animated gif files unless Moses himself appears in a burning pile of copier paper in your office and insists you should: How's that for a visual? Animated GIFs are cliche, tacky, and usually poorly designed.
10. Thou shalt be clear about what thou art presenting to the user: Think like a user of your website. Will they understand how you have laid out your links? Will they realize they are supposed to click something to go somewhere else? Even if something looks good, that is only half the battle. It needs to be functional as well.
After creation came evolution. The web is a constantly evolving delivery medium. The biggest push these days on the web has been standards compliant websites. Web standards in a nutshell is separating your content from your design. This involves creating a clean, structured web page and keeping all of your styling and layout information the same. (Not sure where I got this, but LOVED it!)
:)
http://members.k12.sd.us
Go here, scroll on the left and you will see a K-12 schools, click and see list of all K-12 schools in South Dakota. (If you choose to look out of state, that is fine, too!)
Click on some links for the website and if you find something you like, please come to this blog, pick comment. When the box comes up, pick anonymous, but the first line should have your first name.
Thanks! We will have a little time at our September in-service to work on this. By doing this, we won't have too prepare a report--the board can just look here for our comments about our website or others!
The 10 Commandments of Web Design
1. Thou shalt not use frames unless there is a need: Frames are websites that link two or three HTML pages into a single view. Why is this bad? Try saving a page from a frames site in your bookmarks. It's hard to do. Frames are also not accessible in some browsers, whatsoever, and frames don't work at all in text based browsers.
2. Thou shalt not use the scrolling Marquee that everyone else uses: Ever been to a site and see a piece of text scrolling across the web page like a stock ticker? That's because of the marquee tag. It is distracting and takes away from your content.
3. Thou shalt look up the word 'consistency' in Webster's Dictionary before the layout of all your site pages. The user should not be confused with a different page design every time they click to a new page: This means that if your homepage has a certain look and navigation structure to it, your child pages should have that same look. Take a look at good web design. Notice how the header and footer are the same for every page? Notice how every article page has the same sidebar? That's consistency.
4. Thou shalt not use horizontal rules that are rainbow animations unless you are hawaiian.: These were cool 7 years ago. They aren't now.
5. Thou shalt not use brightly colored patterned backgrounds that make the content impossible to read unless thou want to induce vomiting for someone that has ingested poison: I don't think this commandment would fit on a tablet, but it's an important one. Bright backgrounds make the text hard to read and hurt my eyes. Imagine a novel that had black text on a bright yellow and orange background. Do you want to read that for an extended period of time?
6. Thou shalt not apply for web-design jobs after a single community College class on using FrontPage: Analogy: Just because you took a course in carpentry does not mean you can build a well designed and constructed home. FrontPage is Microsoft's tool to develop web pages without using markup code.
7. Thou shalt not use a visible counter on a business page: Counters can be manipulated easily (hit the refresh button often). Another reason to avoid them is if you have an unpopular site. If a potential customer comes to your site and sees you have only have a few hundred visitors, they may be wary of purchasing anything from you. Use server logs instead.
8. Thou 'shalt not use "Best Viewed with Internet Explorer" or "best viewed at 800 x 600 resolution": Imagine renting a DVD and popping it into your DVD player only to be greeted by a screen that says "This DVD is not compatible with your TV and will, therefore, not play. You need a high definition TV with 1080i resolution."
9. Thou shalt not use animated gif files unless Moses himself appears in a burning pile of copier paper in your office and insists you should: How's that for a visual? Animated GIFs are cliche, tacky, and usually poorly designed.
10. Thou shalt be clear about what thou art presenting to the user: Think like a user of your website. Will they understand how you have laid out your links? Will they realize they are supposed to click something to go somewhere else? Even if something looks good, that is only half the battle. It needs to be functional as well.
After creation came evolution. The web is a constantly evolving delivery medium. The biggest push these days on the web has been standards compliant websites. Web standards in a nutshell is separating your content from your design. This involves creating a clean, structured web page and keeping all of your styling and layout information the same. (Not sure where I got this, but LOVED it!)
:)
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