Archive for Usability

CSS and issues of Accessibility

{ January 10, 2008 @ 11:33 am } · { Accessibility, CSS, Katie Butler, Usability, web design }
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CSS essentially encourages web designers to create more accessible web pages and hence more accessible websites overall - due to the nature of their functioning. CSS as I have outlined in some of my previous blog research, gives designers more control over their HTML pages, for instance they become more flexible, and elements of design can be changed relatively easily to suit a user’s requirements.    Having done some Internet research into accessibility beforehand, I can now identify how my web pages and CSS designs have been made accessible. 

  1. Each page conforms to general usability guidelines, i.e. such as making links distinctive through colour, underlining etc
  2. Each page is cross-browser compatible, and so looks almost identical in IE and Mozilla Firefox etc (http://www.browsershots.org/)
  3. Each page has been optimised to a certain extent (meta tags) so that search engines would be able to prioritise the site more easily.
  4. CSS has allowed me to control content via ‘DIVS’ which effectively separate content, yet still present it in user-friendly ways.
  5. The use of CSS also means that an alternative font will be displayed with regards to all text, if the current one is not installed on a user’s computer.

 In my designs I have also used a wide colour range, and it is always useful to check these colours with VisCheck.com to guarantee that people who are visually impaired (i.e colour blind) can still see some form of colour at least, ensuring then that they are not missing out on any important information as a result of this, for example the page’s links. This is a quick task that I have used before in previous projects and is another valid way to enhance accessibility. (See Appendix 1 for results of this testing)

Inspiring Websites

{ November 2, 2007 @ 11:34 am } · { Marc Taylor, Usability, Web 2.0 }
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(Http://www.last.fm) The redesign of last fm doesn’t include the switch button that changes the navigation and the heading text to black. I think this design would work well as there is limited colour, and so when audiences upload their work, there wouldn’t be a huge contrast or mess in colours and design. I like the navigation, as it is a standard tab layout like that of Amazon.com, Play.com, Facebook.com and Myspace.com

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(Http://www.myspace.com) Myspace’s new home skin replicates a design similar to that of Last fm and Facebook, offering users a layout that is becoming more universal with web2.0 (customisable) websites.

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(http://www.facebook.com) Facebook has become a generic website in its blog like structure. It has a very busy interface, in which I feel is too cluttered.

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(Http://www.purevolume.com)  Purevolume is an inspiring website, because I like the layout of the website, as well as the design aspect of it. The website contains a lot of information on bands yet the minimalist look works well (compared to that of facebook and myspace).
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(http://www.monster.co.uk) Monster.co.uk Design is the biggest competing website, however I feel the design aspect of the website is terrible. It has too many colours, combined with far to much to look at, making the website look unappealing to audiences.

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(Http://www.jobcenterplus.gov.uk) Jobcenterplus is another competing website in which the design aspect I feel could scare away student clients. Its colours creates a few accessibility issues with colour blindness, and the website as a whole looks uninteresting and unappealing to students within the arts industries.

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Appendixes

(Appendix1- Windows Vista) http://www.vista-skins.com/downloads/Aerox-1-0-For-Windows-Vista-large.png
(Appendix1 – Windows Media Player 11 default skin) http://www.rinero.it/public/Windows_Media_Player_11.jpg  
(Appendix 1Http://www.apple.com website) http://www.apple.com

(Appendix 1) These are the design inspirations as mentioned in the proposal. All these designs are popular at the moment in the design industry. Web2.0 as mentioned however focus’s on minimal interfaces (as in the graphic design aspect and not how much information they can fit within a page), which I feel works well for CMS systems, but it also needs to include some style and look to attract artistic individuals to join the website.

Marc

http://marc.izonedesign.co.uk

PHP Project

{ October 25, 2007 @ 1:25 pm } · { Lee Aplin, PHP, Usability, Web 2.0, web design }
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After spending a couple of weeks looking into PHP in some detail, obtaining materials to help me get started, and getting all the necessary knowledge, I have decided that I would like to do my project in PHP.

I feel that I have a good base to work on for learning PHP, with good knowledge of HTML and CSS. I also think that learning PHP will be a good advancement of my skills. With more and more websites becoming increasingly interactive, users may feel cheated to visit a website which has no interactive content at all.

This experience with PHP will also be extremely useful to contribute towards my final year project which is a PHP heavy online community.

My idea for this module is to build a small PHP based website which will have a user login option where users can enter their own areas and upload material such as music or small files. This will mean I will also have to learn and gain experience using MySQL. As I mentioned in a previous post, MySQL has given my problems from the installing stage, but I hope that when everything is working properly, there will be less problems.

The subject of my website, I have yet to decide, but I think that it will be easy to base the website on anything I choose closer to the deadline. The HTML element of my website should not pose too many problems, so I am free to experiment with PHP a little more. This means I may be able to add small extras to my PHP script which makes the website that little bit better. For example, adding a remember me feature onto the login section makes the website easier to access for regular users. Small additions such as this encourage people to visit the site more often, as well as making the experience easier and more enjoyable for them.

My next step will be to further research online communities and see how they work, in order to begin planning my own project. Hopefully I will be able to lift a lot of the work from this project and save myself time in my production project.