Since I only have 3 words, I’d say “This Is Bland!”
I would replace “bland” with a ruder term if this was not school work.

Who do you think the site is created for?

People who want affordable yet somewhat stylish clothes from a chain outlet that need to find the
location of a store or its phone number to ask for enquiries. There’s no list of the products offered-
limiting its use. You can’t order online, you can’t ask for oversea delivery, you can’t even see any of
thier products offered! Therefore its main use is for contact and location information.

What are the good attributes of the site (in terms
of usability, aesthetic issues, etc)?

First of all, if you are living in the 1990s, the site is well suited for a lower resolution monitor- it is
rather simple. It is so simple, that it is hard to point out usability errors- all the links provided are in
plain sight, and makes sense. The tab system works, it requires low bandwidth and loading times,
some of the text is easily readable.

What are the bad attributes of the site?

Time for me to rip this site to bits. First of all it’s really bland and uninspiring. A pale yellow background
is good for readability, but if most of the space is taken up by it, it looks like a complete washout.
If you are going to market fashionable clothes to picky youngsters, a bland website is not going to help.

It seems a person designed it in 1998 and never bothered to update its design, thinking “this is sufficient!”
BUT NO, it says Copyright 2005-2006! It was recently made!

This person also had no idea what he was doing- a validation check reveals a whopping 111 errors on the
main page! This is partly because of no DOCTYPE set, but this is 2005we are talking about. DOCTYPES
where available for use by then!. Therefore poor future compatibility.

Also, although the images are well optimized, some of them are crap. They SCANNED in their “This Card”
at ridiculously low quality and put it there, when it would be simpler to just open illustrator and make a new
, perfect looking card. Especially when the card’s design consists of just text on a pink background.

The gift vouchers look horrible, with no design or color theory applied- just a random pile of bordered text
in sickening colors on a head-whacking background that gives no aesthetic appeal at all. It’s supposed to be
fashionable! some of the text is light gray on pale yellow background. Hard to read.

You get the distinct feeling that the people at the shop did not want to hire a web designer, but tried to do
it themselves some free web design tool that they leaned to use overnight.

If you can’t see the PDF files, blame WordPress’s media upload system. It stays at the crunching message for HOURS.

I’m not very happy with this upload system. The pdf files arent that big!

On top of that, I found editing the PDF file incredibly frustrating because the interface is completely confusing. I spent more tinme trying to figure out the form functions than actually doing the homework. It will be easier to print out the form and write on it and scan it than attempting to edit it in acrobat.

Update: They are all is up now, after 3 hours!
site_obj
users

Image version

Click for larger image.

I was seriously surprised when i got the sms, although I handed it in immediately afterwards. The resulting panic didn’t help much.

In more news, we started to learn some basic html, with my resulting webpage looking like it belonged in 1996! No worries, it will get better.

What is web-safe colors?

Back in 1996, people had Videocards that were only 8-bit and many displayed graphics in 256 color mode. This means that they can only see 216 colors on thier web browser, and these are the web safe colors, with no dithering invovled as the videocards were simply incapable of doing so.

Relevant?

Simply put, if your website is not designed to be viewed by people with ancient computers, web safe colors are not really emphasized today.  Almost all modern PC are capable of dithering, and that is what most people online have today. If you limit yourself to the 216 colors today,  your website will be limited design-wise and will look outdated in today’s context. You can still do so, if your entire target audience is for people who never bought a computer after 1996, display everything in 256 colour mode and 640×480. So few people even use these old computers online, it’s just simply not really relevant in today’s context anymore.

Common fonts on mac/pc

Here’s some:

Arial

Times new Roman

Trebuchet MS

Tahoma

MS Sans Serif/Serif

Impact

Georgia

Courier New

Comic Sans MS

Lucida Console

Lucida Sans Unicode

Palatino Linotype

Verdana

symbol

WingDings

Webdings

Page loading time

A webpage is loading when its data is being transfered from server to reciever. If it takes too long, the viewer will get fed-up, and subsequently give up and close the window. If it is really fast, it will be more desirable, but the page may contain less graphic content. Then there is the issue of people that still have a 56K modem- large webpages will take a really long time to load. Your design is therefore infuenced by how large your webpage is, and your target audience.

It is best to optimize your webpage filesize so that loading timesare short but it still contains a good amount of content.

150 word super essay time!!

After reading the list of processes, I think it will be good if you have a step-by step guide to refer to, as it will streamline your design process and keep you on track. It will work really great on people who have just started web design (like me) who have little idea of the whole process of web designing. After all, planning is important as it will prevent you from making mistakes later on or prevent unforeseen circumstances where it will be difficult to resolve in a later stage.

I like it it shows several different processes to choose from, some from a design or production standpoint. Also, one can read all te processes and decides which steps will be more applicable to the website he is designing. Ideally one can develop his own process that suits the person and depending on the situation. For example, some of the Design emphasized processes lack steps like testing, which can be important in a later stage.

I have already paid for the textbook and Domain.

Also here are the answers for the first week:

1) name as many browsers as you can

Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, IE7, Opera, Netscape, AOL browser

2) what are browser wars?

Browser wars is the competing of the various browsers for the largest userbase and therefore overall dominance.

3) what is IP address?

It is an address given to a computer when it goes online.

4) what is a URL?

A URL is the location for a given resouce, such as a website.

5) what is a good website

A good website is one that is elegant, with good design choices, is maneuverable, easy to navigate.
It also must be compatible with all browsers.