Social Psychology of Web Architecture by Tony Pun, G11/Srping 1999, University of Hawaii

Table of Contents:

Instructions to this report

Introduction: HomePage Editor

Previous students' reports

Web Designer Principles As I See It: How to create a good HomePage?

Psychological Aspects to Web Design: Social Psychological Principles of Home Page Architecture

What It's Like to Become a Web Designer: How do I start to create a HomePage?

Annotated Index to Web Design: Sites for Web Architecture

Four years ago, I just came to Hawaii to study. I had no idea what internet was and I even did know what email was. So, When the first time I had chance to learn how to use email, I was so excited. Soon, internet began more and more popular. That's why I took an ICS class that taught people how to create a homepage. Actually, that class was very interested and I learned a lot of things about internet from that class. At the beginning of that class, we learned some graphic programs such as PhotoShop and CorelDraw. Then, we would scan some pictures and made some effects to them. After that, the instructor taught us how to create a personal homepage. At that time, there wasn't any homepage editor program such as FrontPage or HotDog. We just used notepad to type commands. It took a long time to make a table and links because we had to type many different commands. And it was really hard to adjust the position of each word and paragraph. It took long time to finish one simple page. After three years, I am taking Psy409 right now. I have chance to create my own homepage again. The feeling is totally different because nowadays, internet is very popular. Thousands of people know how to make a personal homepage. Obviously, HomePage Designing programs help a lot. Those programs make people easier to make homepages and don't have to memorize some specific commands. Because millions of homepages on the internet. People can communicate with each other faster. People can also design their favorite worlds on the internet and let other people to access. Maybe, it is so called "Cyberspace".

Lesie Francis: Her report didn't have many statistic or information how to create a homepage but she said a lot of her own feelings of creating and designing Webpage. Certainly, I can feel that she tried to encourage and convince us that starting to make a homepage was hard but after a while, we would get used to and feel easy to do that.

Comparing her report to other students, she had differ in the level of addressing her topic. She stated out the which HomePage editor was the best and also gave her friend's experience of using the HomePage editor. She said that Microsoft FrontPage would cause the computer crash. Personally, I am using FrontPage to create this HomPage but I never had any trouble of using this program and some of my friends have been using FrontPage for several years. They think this program is pretty easy to use and recommend me to use it.

Overall, I like the style of her report. Although she didn't conclude this report directly but she kept asking us to continue to learn more about internet at the end of this report. I don't find out that she tried to rephrase other other students reports and idea. She used her own style and words to finish this report.

Cherisse N. Eguchi: After I read her report, I found out that she talked a lot of her personal feeling of how to create a HomePage. I can say that she used her own feeling and opinion to address this topic. She mentioned that she knew nothing about HomPage and she even seldom used email before she took this class. She appreciated and never regretted to take this class because she really learned a lot of things from this cyber-psychology class.

As Lesie, she didn't conclude her report clearly but at the end of this report. She said that she got more experience of how to create homepage. I feel that she was pretty satisfied to learn more things about computers and internet.

As I mentioned before, she stated out her own feelings of internet and computers in this report. Her report was different with other students. She used the same quotation as Lesie used in the section of "Psychological Aspects to Web Design" but both of them had different interpretations of this quotation and topic.

Scott Chang: Obviously, Scott used different style to do this report. He talked a lot of interesting things like the Jeffrey Glover's HonePage "Top Ten to Tell If You Have a Sucky Home Page" and how he felt about this Website. He also gave good advices to next generation students. It am really touched because it is my first time to see that someone gave suggestion to the next generations.

Scott also concluded that Jeffrey Glover's page was very informative and useful. He recommend it to everyone who is new to website. If one has time, he should stop by and take a look for it.

His report was pretty informative and creative, so I don't feel that he rephrase someone else's report and ideas from other websites. Sometimes, When everyone does the same topic, it is hard to say one copies another one's idea. Perhaps, they have the same ideas and opinions to one specific. In this situation, we can't say or judge whether they are coping or rephrasing others' stuffs.

Surely, the purpose of this website "jeffglover.com/ss.html" is teaching us how to create a good Homepage. It doesn't teach us how to make a good pictures, what kind of music we should play or which effect is more attractive. In contrast, it doesn't recommend us to use those things. It points out that something are very distracted in a homepage such as background music, Java and large pictures. Those things would decrease the speed of homepages and it makes people no patient to wait. It emphasizes that the speed of a homepage is really important.

In the front page of this site, there is a menu. There are three categories in the menu and the topics of those categories are pretty interesting. The first one is "Sucky List". There are ten things in the sucky list. From top one to top ten is: Blink, Background Music, Loud Background Image, Frames, Large Image Maps, Construction Signs, Scrolling Marquees, JavaScript Alerts, Ticker-Tape, Status. He explain each of them why they are in the sucky list. The second part of the menu is top ten "Savvy List". Suppose, there should have ten recommend things for creating a good homepage but there are only nine stuff in the list. I has tried to click to each of them and I discovered the order is totally wrong. Anyway, the nine stuffs are: Flexible Widths, Thumbnail Graphics, Height & Width Tags, Alt Tags, Contact Info, Be Unique and Optional Plug-In. The third part of the menu is Extra tips. He mentions about some more tips for us how to make a good homepage such as "speed Vs design, JPEG Vs GIF, GIF animations, Cookie Crumbs, Myth and mistake, META Tags, Planning your site, File Organization and Link Lunacy". There are also some links at the bottom of this page like FAQ, Back to Main Page, feedback and What's new. In his main page, it has four links. One of them is "Top Ten Ways To Tell If You Have A Sucky Home Page". Actually, it is similar to the page I mentioned before but it just talks about the top ten sucky things. "Sucky and Savvy" is another link that we just talked about. Disney Disaster and Learn More About Me are the remanded two links.

In my opinion, I would say that Jeffrey's site is pretty interesting. He teachers us a lot of stuff how to create and design a HomPage. As what he said, It is not his own opinions to say what is good or not in a homepage. It is the feedback from thousands of people. As a beginner of creating homepage. His opinions are really helpful. Especially the "Sucky and Savvy" section, it is really informative. When I told my friends his top ten "sucky List" and Savvy List", some of them argued that he is too subjective. Frankly, I don't think that he is subjective because I know that it is not his own opinion. I agree with some of his top ten of "Sucky and Savvy List". For instance, I hate to go to some sites with many pictures and JavaScript's because I am an inpatient person. I have no patient to wait everything comes up over 30 seconds for a site. But I would like a homepage with background music. Jeffrey said when we are working, we don't want our boss to know what we are doing. Actually, I believe that we are not suppose to surf net when we are working in office hour. If we don't want to be scolded by our boss, just don't do something wrong.

Nowadays, thousands of things are related to internet. If someone asks us why you spend so much time on internet, we will think that they are kind of outdated. As what Dr. Leon James mentions in the article Birth of Cyberspace, Homepage is his second home and thousands of people can access and share information from there. The emergence of internet is a new space for people to communicate with each other even though people are in different countries. It makes information spread out quickly. In order to let everyone can access our information quickly. We have to create a good homepage. A good homepage will attract thousands to browse. It also helps the development of internet. Because if there are too many sucky homepages on the internet, people will not be interested in internet anymore. And they will ignore the value of existence of Homepages. "My love is in My Home Page architecture-and this requires an inside view, a perspective obtainable only through doing the work of a cyberspace architect" is what Dr. James says in his article "HomePages are Loved". He introduces us to use different levels to view homepages. Certainly, Homepages are full of social and economic values but it is only the external level or face of Homepage for some people. For those people who design and love their homepage, it is the internal view to a homepage. Actually, I believe that many people still stay in the external to see internet because they only want to access what they want from the internet. They only concern whether they can get they correct data from websites but they don't love them. How can we make those people love homepages? Every Homepage Designer hopes people like their homepages but they don't know how to do. In the article of "Informational Content of Home Pages", Dr. James gives us some hints. he said, "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 entraining style". Many people tend to create a beautiful a homepage but ignore the context of it. A homepage without any context, it is like a human without soul. The homepage is dead. What are the most popular people in the world? Friendly, smart, rich, honest or well-organized... Likewise, in my opinion, a good homepage should be the above characteristics.

As I mentioned before, I have learned how to create homepages in a ICS class several years ago. After that class, I didn't make any homepage again. Psychology 409 is chance for me to create homepages again. After three years, internet has been changing a lot. Everything is new and I have to learn again. I have to learn how to use those hompeage editor programs and I also have to learn how to post my hompeage to the web. I never had any experience of posting homepage before. It really takes much time for me to learn so many new things but I believe that it is worth. Because I can't still stay in the generation of using Notepad to create hompage. Internet is standing for new technology. I can't let myself fall behind new technology. The beginning of everything is hard. As long as we get used to it. You will think that it is really interesting. At the beginning of this class, I often asked my friend to teach me how to use those homepage editors and I also bought some homepage designing books. Both of my friend and books help me a lot. Learning internet is not only for survive of this class but also for our future because internet is getting more and more popular.

I use a program called "Copernic 99" to search some web design and navigation sites. This program can help you to search a topic throught many popular searching engines like Yahoo, Lycos, Excite or Infoseek at the same time. It is really a good program and you can download it from www.copernic99.com . Don't worry! it is totally free.

I got many web design sites from copernic99. I tried to browse each of them and I found out that some of them are pretty useful for us to create homepage. Like the "100's of Web Design Tips", It provides one hundred tips of how to create a web. Another web design site is "Gill & Hoag Web Design". It doesn't only teach us how to design a hompage but also provide some free mages for everyone to download. It also gives us some tips to use "Photoshop". This site is very organized and clear. "Artists & Artisans" contains many links to different artists who give many tips and samples to create homepages.