How do I find the site:

Wrong colours, Disorganised

What do i think the site is created for:

The site is created to promote their company, but it seems to be mainly for regulars and members who always shop at This Fashion because the main text of the homepage was directed to members. Other than that the other pages of the site seem to be telling the viewer more about the company, their branches, its member card and promotions, and contact information. So I think that it is more for people who have yet to be fimiliar with their company.

Good attributes:

The usability of the site works fine, the links to other pages are at the top of the page so it is convenient to click.

Bad attributes:

However at some of the pages, there are other links  at the left of the screen, I feel that it is too far off left and needs more emphasis because it might be missed out by the viewer. Also at the “outlets” page, there is a long list of their outlets which are then classified into which zone they are in, I feel that the list is too long and makes it hard for users to find the nearest outlet even though it is already classified under different zones. The phone numbers seem to be in weird text of different sizes, it is hard to read. The colours chosen for the text often do not contrast with the background and it often makes it illegible.

Answers to week 3 lecture questions.

users

site_obj

Answers part2

1) Web safe colours are a set of 216 colors that is considered to be the “web-safe” color palette, developed during the time when most computers only display 256 colours. A set of colors was needed that could be shown without dithering on 256-color displays. Only 216 was chosen partly because computer systems have reserved sixteen to twenty colors for their own use; it was also selected because it allows exactly six shades each of red, green, and blue. These colours were chosen also because they were the closest to the colour palettes that most browsers are using.Web safe colours also also defined by RGB hexadecimal values, eg. #000000 for black.

2) As of today, web safe colours are less commonly used because most machines can display at least 16-bit colours, so they would display Web Safe Colours without a problem. However web safe colours can all be diffrentiated by human eyes and therefore often used in anti-phishing systems. Also as a design standard, web safe colours can still be found in many design programs, Illustrator, Fireworks etc. Designers use these to make sure that their colours are web safe.

3) Common fonts for Windows and Mac are fonts that are installed in both Operating Systems. Common fonts are used in web design so that both Operating Systems can display the web page. If the font used is not avaible in the system it will not be displayed, therefore its important to make sure that the fonts are common between the systems.

The common fonts between Windows and Mac are;

Arial, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
Arial Black, Arial Black, Gadget, sans-serif
Comic Sans MS, Comic Sans MS5, cursive
Courier New, Courier New, Courier6, monospace
Georgia1, Georgia, serif
Impact, Impact5, Charcoal6, sans-serif
Lucida Console, Monaco5, monospace
Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande, sans-serif
Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua3, Palatino6, serif
Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif
Times New Roman, Times, serif
Trebuchet MS1, Helvetica, sans-serif
Verdana, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif
Symbol, Symbol (Symbol2, Symbol2)
Webdings, Webdings (Webdings2, Webdings2)
Wingdings, Zapf Dingbats (Wingdings2, Zapf Dingbats2)
MS Sans Serif4, Geneva, sans-serif
MS Serif4, New York6, serif

4) Page loading time is the time needed for the computer to retrieve the HTML code or other data from the web server A long page loading time is because of heavy HTML, large filesizes, and a large HTTP request or response size. When the load time to too much, the designers might remove certain features or widgets from the website to fasten the load time, affecting the design and the page’s features. Large data filesize will also increase load time, image quality or amount of graphics is reduced to lessen load time, this affects the looks of the page’s design.

5) I think the web design process is a long process. There are many important procedures that should not be left out.

For example, under “Design Process Revealed”, we have things liek typography, composition, thumbnails, and research. These are all the very basic and important things in design. Typography being neccessary, because typefaces have to be legible to deliver content, composition to arrange the elements in a website so that the important pieces of information are in the focal point, thumbnails solely for the basic idea of how the site looks like and research for the appropriate and content for the site to provide for the readers.

Also, under the “seven phases of website development”, initially it was concept which is the idea of the website’s design. Then we have content development which is crucial for almost any site, without good content it will not be a good website. Another important step is post launch. Although the site is up and running it is still important to evaluate what happens after launching for further improvements.

There is also a few things mentioned under “Breakdown of design process”, which are Knowing what one is doing, Knowing what the site needs to do, and Knowing what the visitors want. I feel that these three are important because the designer needs to be sure of what he is doing to have a website design that is organised and suitable. Knowing what the site needs to do, which is knowing the purpose of the site and what are its goals, this might also mean knowing what kind of information to deliver and what features are appropriate. Lastly, knowing what the visitors want, this is to cater to and please the viewers of the website, and not to have irrelevant information. I feel that, if the designing team does not know what the visitors want, they might end up with a website that visitors do not want to read or will not come back again.

Answers

1) Browsers are: Internet Explorer, Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape

2) The competition between Web Browser softwares in the marketplace. They compete with each other for popularity and dominance in the market.  Companies attempt to gain the upperhand by adding more features and gimmicks rather than trying to fix the bugs, this resulted in more features but more bugs accumulated because of the hasty attempt to implement features.

The first browser war took place in the 1990s, between Internet Explorer and Netscape, which Internet Explorer won. Then followed with competition between Internet Explorer and Firefox. Currently, there are several other browsers emerging in the market that is giving competition eg. Safari, Google Chrome.

3)  IP address is short for “Internet Protocol address”. IP addresses are assigned to computers within a network and are used for communication between nodes.  IP addresses are usually readable to the human eye.

There are two major kinds of IP addresses. Static and Dynamic. Static is whereby the IP address is permanent to the device. Whereas for the Dynamic kind, the device is assigned an IP by the host software, this makes it possible for the IP for the same device to change when the device is reassigned.

IP adresses are used to provide information about the device, it is often used to track or identify users.

4) URL is also known as “Uniform Resource Locator”. Another more common term would be “Web Address”. It specifies the location of a resource and the mechanism to retrieve it. A URL is consists of the following elements.

The Scheme Name or resource type, a registered domain name or IP address, the Port Number, the pathname of the file to be fetched or the program to be run, the Query String and with HTML files, an Anchor for where the page will be shown.

It will be something like this: resource_type://domain:port/filepathname?query_string#anchor

Scheme name. It defines the namespace, purpose and the syntax for the URL. IP address defines the location. Port number which is optional, and if not defined a default will be used automatically by the browser. File path defines where the neccessary files are to be opened from. Query string contains data that is to be passed to web applications and lastly, the Anchor part used with HTTP allows you to be directed to a specific location on a page.

5) A good website. The most important thing in a good website will be the information and content. Content has to be original and also credible.

A frequently updated website will also attract viewers to visit it again and return. Proper grammer and spelling is also important. However, when a site updates it should have good content in the new posts. When it is simply posting unimportant information for the sake of updating it will also lose its audience.

Sharing information. Setting up newsletters for the viewers and sharing information about the site helps too.

Catering to the viewers. Allowing viewers to view the website according to their own preferences is also important. For example letting them filter out the information that they want will make surfing for convenient for them.

Another part of catering to viewers is considering the strength of their computers. A flashy website would be tedious to access for users with low bandwidth. Also, having alot of graphics and flash will hampen older computers to access the site. A few examples on how to lighten the load of the devices visiting are; lessen graphics as they increase filesize and also require computer performance. Reduce graphics file size, this can be done by using JPEG extentions for graphics, minimize colours for GIFs or provide an alternative for low bandwidth users. Lastly, optimizing HTML by removing uncesssary spaces, commas etc.

Legibility. Website must be friendly to the eyes. A good application of typography and suitable typeface. Making sure that the text contrasts with the background.

Interactivity. This will help to make viewers engaged to the site and not switch off.

Organising information. Information needs to be well organised so that older posts can be accessible. A search function will greatly help viewers to quickly locate the information they want. A feature to show whats new is also good.

Have a secure, stable and automated server. Use automatic tools for site maintenance.

Graphics will spice things up and make the website look more appealing to the eyes, however, should not be overdone. Good choice of colour can also help to imply the mood of the information.