Inevitably as time goes on in cyberspace, new psychological and technological topics will emerge. Addictions, Cyber-Marriage, Cyber-Therapy, and many others have been born on the web in the last few years and have gained more and more attention and popularity. We must remember that "Virtual" can never take the place of "Reality" because most things in cyberspace tend to be intangible to senses other than sight and sound. Yes, we will tackle new psychological research dealing with these new problems and rightly so. We need to know how to deal with those topics effectively with knowledge and experience.
Web Designer Principles As I See It: You Can Judge a Book By it's Cover
For this part I visited Jeff Glover's page on Web Page design. Check it out for tips for your own web page.This page was really funny as well as informative on what your page should or shouldn't look like. There was a lot of information that can help with your web page design. The purpose of this page is to educate us--as the web designer, on not only how to create great looking pages, but to avoid the pitfall of bad looking and bad functioning pages. There are five links to go to when you get to his page:
1)About Him (sort of like a resume and a biography);
2) Top 10 Ways To Tell If You Have A Sucky Home Page (his way of teasing you to get you to buy his product);
3) Sucky to Savvy (list of what makes a home page sucky/savvy);
4) Disney Disaster (more pictures of him and his boyfriend Phil);
and finally his 5) Web Site Starter Kit (on sale for only $24.95).
This link talks about the really bad things to look for when you are making a page. Although there is lots of humor in this link, there are points to look at when you are making a page. Are we guilty of making a few of these mistakes? We are bound to because our personal pages reflect who we are and when there are too much pictures of your pets (#8), or your header is so big it can kill the rest of your page (#10), or you have obnoxious background music (which I have never had). Think about what we can do to rid ourselves of the pain of viewing these sights!!
This was the most informative link of the four because it went more in-depth on what really isn't good for the web in terms of design and how to turn the junky stuff into net savvy web elements.
This link is Mr. Glover having fun on at Disney World. I liked the link because of the effects he used on his images. I am going to try and do that.
This page is all about him.
Information You Can Use
Jeff Glover's links to "Top Ten Ways To Tell If You Have A Sucky Homepage"
10. Your header picture is over 50K!
9. You put up a 400K picture of yourself, and you
appear in the lower-left 20K!
8. We can only stomach so many pictures of your
pets.
7. Obnoxious background music.
6. You use bad, bad, bad, bad scans.
5. Ticker Tape Status Bars
4. You use Construction pics on your page.
3. Your home page consists of a desperate plea for a
job.
2. Blink
1. You're on your own Hot List!Scrolling Marquees can be irritating because they read at the same speed. I agree with Mr. Glover there. It's hard to read and sometimes annoying. I agree that construction signs suck because it is obvious to someone that you are still working on your home page if something is not complete. I agree that javascript alerts can be sucky because if you are trying to look at a home page numerous times it can get irritating after awhile. It also takes a long time load from past experience. I was looking at a friend's home page and found the java alert irritating.
What makes a page savvy
- Flexible Window Widths
- Use Thumbnail Graphics
- Use Height and Width Tags
- ALT Tag Your Important Images
- Include Contact Info
- Be Unique!
- Optional Plug-Ins
I like many of the suggestions that are given to make a page better. Thumbnail pictures can be considered savvy because they save space from the actual picture. Height and width tags tell the browser how to load an image. This is my understanding of what height and width tags are. I guess these can be considered savvy because then the home page will load faster. Uniqueness is always a good idea, people like things that are new to them. I tried to be unique, although I used many others ideas in hepling me with ideas.
Psychological Aspects to Web Design :
How Dr. Driving Percieves it
In this section, I discuss three topics that I liked from Dr. James' social psychology of home page architecture . His page was very informative, here's what I thought about...
"I find that Home Pages are always under construction for those owners who are personally involved. Constructing Home Pages on the World Wide Web is an exciting activity! Just think: you have the world at your finger tips. Because you determine what the browser sees and has access to, you are acting like a virtual god -- building a cyberspace architecture through virtual pathways to people's minds."
The thought of webpages always being under construction is true to a point. During the course of a semester, pages are always being added to and edited. Moreso for pages on the web that are updated daily or weekly. However the pages in past generations are, for the most part, untouched. It is really unnecesary for them to work on them after they get their grade. I agree that creating pages is a really exciting activity and I am constantly changing my page. I try different looks or find more info for a report, I feel that I am always at the computer nowadays. I continue to feel that excitement every time I press the upload button, just knowing that anyone in the world can instantly see my work. It's amazing.
Informational Content of Home Pages
"We need to look at our Home Pages with an objective eye. In general, we try to achieve two important results with a Home Page. One is that it should be clear (unconfusing), informative and useful. The other is that it should be beautiful, with a creative and entertaining style. These two aspects can be discussed as the informational and stylistic features of Home Pages."
Dr. James explains how important it is to have an organized home page. He says that we should try to achieve two important results with a Home Page. The first is that it should be clear and informative. The second is that it should be beautiful, with a creative and entertaining style. I have to agree. In order to maintain the interest of the users, these two results is a must. Some pages have either one or the other. Many home pages are one or the other. The trick is trying to combine both. This takes time to plan out. But if you want a page to be nice, you have to work at it. I have noticed that if there is a page that is ugly or unappealing to the eye, I would pass over it without checking out the content. Other turnoffs are when the text clashes or doesn't mesh well with the background. It is hard to read, so I usually wouldn't bother.
