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02/23/2004 07:15:20 AM · #1 |
Hi, it's survey time again! As part of my school coursework I need to ask some people to fill out a(nother) short questionaire. This time it is about web-design. I would really appreciate if anyone could take the time to fill it out, or if any of you know know any web-designers, could you perhaps ask them to fill it out? Tell them it's for a student in need ;)
If you have time, you can either answer it in the forums, or email me at ben@konador.com. Thanks a lot.
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Name (optional):
Age (optional):
How long have you been doing web design?
What are a few of the sites you made that you are most pleased with, and why?
What other sites on the internet do you particularly admire aesthetically, and why?
As far as screen resolutions go, what resolution do you usually build your sites to cater for?
What general �rules of thumb� have you found useful to follow when designing the:-
Layout:
Graphics:
Navigation:
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02/23/2004 01:48:50 PM · #2 |
*bump* for the night crawlers ( relavent to GMT time anyway :P )
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02/23/2004 01:50:28 PM · #3 |
| Do you want any info from "semi-pro" designers? I've set up some relatively simple sites, but it's definitely something I'm usually doing in my "spare time." |
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02/23/2004 01:54:59 PM · #4 |
woohoo, I've just received my first commission (£400), I mess around with php & MySql for people normally, does this make me a professional now?
cobol is dead, long live cobol!
edited for the old 'i' before 'e' unless... thingy
Message edited by author 2004-02-23 18:56:14.
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02/23/2004 04:09:18 PM · #5 |
I have been building websites for about 8 years, full time for about 5. You are asking some good questions. If you ask 10 web developers those questions you will get 10 completely different answers. SO with that in mind, here is my two cents!
First off, I have known a bunch of developers. Most are currently starving. The few that are successful have one of two things in common; they either have incredible design talent and skills or they hand code. I have average design skills, but can hand code DreamWeaver jockeys in to the ground! LOL! So, I farm out a good amount of the important design work, mostly to a guy named Luis Lopez who is just amazing. A couple of the designs he has designed are:
//www.specialtiesinc.tv/ (BroadBand site)
//www.buyaudiogear.com/
For people that are not super designers like Luis, why do the ones that make it all hand code? Can't say for sure, but my theory is that it gets you inside the guts of things much better, then you learn what can really be done instead if being stuck with gibberish code and limitations of some WYSIWYG editor. This goes 10 times if you are going to do any programming at all. Personally, I live by Cold Fusion. It is simple, powerful and very fast in development.
The sites we build here are almost always for 800x600 minimum. Account for the browser hogging a little real estate and that leaves you at about 760 pixels wide.
Most sites we build have navigation that is either on the left side or across the top. While this is not the most creative solution some times, it is almost always the most usable one. I very highly recommend studying up on web usability. Conventional wisdom is that the top dog in the usability field is a guy named Jakob Nielsen. He used to write a weekly article at ZDNet and has at least one or two books. A word of advice about his stuff: He can write something so incredibly brilliant and simple it leaves you thinking "Why didn't I think of that? It's so simple and so obvious". Then the very next paragraph will be one of the most idiotic things you have ever read. The guy is an absolute genius/idiot LOL! Another guy who is really sharp on usability is Jared Spool. If you can find his book, get it, sleep with it, make it your new best friend.
It is also very good to have an established workflow. Create naming conventions that make sense to you and to other people and you will save yourself a lot of grief. Without a good naming convention, you will have a hard time when the client asks you to do some more work 6 months after the site has gone live, after you have worked on countless other projects. And unless you are the super deisgner type and opt for the WYSUWYG route, establish coding standards. That would include little things like tab indenting tables, not using colspan and rowspan unless you absolutely have to, and so on. Oh, and test your code on IE of course, but also on Netscape. We still test backwards to Netscape 4. Oh how I wish NS4 would just die, but some of my clients site logs still show 10% NS4 usage and higher.
And Flash...don't let Macromedia or any other developer convice you that Flash is a good format for presenting data. Sure it can be done, but it is just not the optimal format for large areas of text, especially if they are database driven. You can cut down on Advil consumption by using Flash for what it does best, Flashy stuff!
And have fun! Being a web developer is the most fun and the coolest job in the world!
Message edited by author 2004-02-23 21:10:18. |
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02/23/2004 09:46:46 PM · #6 |
Thanks somedude, that's some really helpful information :)
GeneralE and Ecce, if you could take the time to fill out the survey too it would be really good. Thanks!
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02/24/2004 12:06:33 AM · #7 |
| ben this is the laziest way i have ever seen course work done, why the heck did i not do it i been stood out on the street for 2 hours in the snow |
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02/24/2004 02:39:09 AM · #8 |
I suppose my reply will be different from most, and probably not what you're looking for. If this is the case, my apologies. You've probably completed your assignment by now anyway.
Name: Anand Singh
Age: 30
I started making web sites when Mosaic came out. I can't remember when that was exactly... my best guess without looking it up is 1992 between that and some guy from Finland bugging people to check out his new operating system, I didn't get much of my own homework done. I started getting paid for web work in 1996.
Most of the sites I've worked on are business automation applications for companies Nortel, Xerox and even our beloved Canon. These sites are not opoen to the public, for obvious reasons. The work I look most fondly upon was a project Bell. I like it because it was a relatively low-budget project with a huge return on investment for the client. Good design is critical for applications of this scale.
I have more of a technical background than a graphic design background, so I'm the wrong person to ask about aesthetics. If you ask me, more sites should try to be like Google. Clean, simple and functional. For example, Flash intro pages drive me insane.
Again, having a programming background makes me want to design for 1024x768. Graphics people tell me that 800x600 is better to maximize your traffic, but I don't believe them. If it were up to nerds like me who went through school using only Sun Sparc Stations, web sites would be designed for dual monitor systems running at 1600x1200 on each screen. ;)
I can't really give you any "rules of thumb" per se, but I'll just restate my belief in function over form. Heavy graphics and slick client-side scripting may be cool to watch, but they don't really do as much for boosting traffic as people think. Mostly, they just boost bandwidth costs. For web application design, emphaisis should be on business logic and performance. And for the love of God, don't use Java applets for navigation. |
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02/24/2004 03:22:20 AM · #9 |
Name (optional): Alan Freed
Age (optional): 36
How long have you been doing web design? I've been doing it professionally since 1995.
What are a few of the sites you made that you are most pleased with, and why?
//www.groundhog.org - mainly because it is fun. We've had as many as 85 million hits in a single day on this site on Groundhog Day!
//www.amber-brkich.com - it's also a site that is a lot of fun. Amber is a friend, and is currently appearing on "Survivor: All-Stars" I also do www.jenna-morasca.com for the winner of "Survivor: Amazon"
//www.simacorp.com - I'm happy with it mainly because it brings them a lot of business, and I like the simple layout.
//www.communitysupermarket.com - This is a recent site that is simple and has been very effective in its first few weeks. The store has plastered the URL all over the place, and they have received many, many online coupons at their checkouts since going live.
What other sites on the internet do you particularly admire aesthetically, and why?
I'll often bookmark sites as I stumble upon them so I can have some "inspiration" when I'm coming up with a new site. My favorites are often sites for car manufacturers. The big companies have big bucks to toss into their sites, and it shows. //www.chevrolet.com has a pretty cool opening nowadays.
As far as screen resolutions go, what resolution do you usually build your sites to cater for?
For the longest time I have made sure that even people with 640x480 settings would see the sites just fine, and to a large degree I still make sure sites will render at that resolution. I've been relaxing that a bit lately, but I'll still be sure that it's not wider than 800x600.
What general �rules of thumb� have you found useful to follow when designing the:-
Layout: Simple! I don't waste visitors' time with opening splash pages that have no functionality. My main goal is for people to find what they're looking for as quickly as possible, and that they can find that information no matter where they are on the site.
Graphics: Simple! People shouldn't wait all day to see a page heavily burdeoned with graphics just because I want to showcase my photos, etc. Keep 'em clean, attractive, and do so without interfering with the message.
Navigation: Simple! Keep the navigation consistent throughout the site so people can find their way around, no matter where they are in the site. I tend to keep my navigation across the top of every page so it's always there without scrolling. I also always keep a secondary text-only navigation at the bottom of every page.
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