I learned some interesting design principles from the reading this week:
Consistent Alignment
You want to use a consistent alignment on your webpages. Don’t center some things and left-align others, and right-align still others. Choose one alignment and stick with it. You want strong lines in your design.
I feel like I mostly do this on my webpages, but I’ve never been following a conscious rule. Mixing alignments really does look funny. It’s nice to know my aesthetic sensibilities are (mostly) correct.
Proximity
Group like things together, so that it’s easier to visually discern relationships between page elements. Headings and subheadings should go with the text they relate to. Squint your eyes a bit and see if you can tell what goes with what, without even having to read.
Paragraph vs. Break
Using a <br/> code instead of <p>aragraph</p> can prevent a big gap between elements. The browser will treat lines that are <br/>oken up as a single paragraph, so it’s good for styling, too.
Repetition
Using a unified style across multiple pages make them all look like the belong to the same website. Since I usually use a CMS (Drupal) with specifically styled themes, this is usually a no-brainer, but having to code individual webpages for this class has reminded me of how important (and irritating) it is to keep everything consistent when you do it by hand.
Contrast
In photography, contrast is a difference between light and dark, and it’s those differences that create an image. In web-design, a similar analogy can be made, that using contrasting fonts and colors can draw the reader’s eye to where you want them to go. Contrast defines what’s important, and develops a logical hierarchy. If everything looks like it has the same priority, then nothing has priority.
Tweeting has never been my thing. I tried it a few times but never picked up on it and thought it was lame. Now that I’ve actually had to invest some time into it I actually kind of like it surprisingly.
I also downloaded the regular twitter app that’s used on most phones. Simple and easy to use however I did do all my tweeting from my PC at home.
I’ve had a Twitter account for several years, but I only post on it sporadically — in fact, until last year, I had a two-year gap in my outgoing timeline. I lurk on Twitter a lot, but I get a little bored with celebrities’ constant self-promotion. It is a nice way to share ideas and I’m going to make an effort to use it more. And, now, because of this class, I guess I’ll have to do!
I rarely if ever use Twitter on my computer; I’ve always used an iPhone app. I can’t remember which app I used in the beginning, but I’ve used Twitter’s official one since it was released.
The Internet has always been used for communicating.
1965 – Email is invented.
1969 – The Internet (Arpanet) started.
1978 – First BBS (CBBS)
1979 – MUDs precursor to MMORPG. (Like World of Warcraft.)
1979 – Invention of the emoticon!
1982 – Birth of Instant Messaging.
1990 – World Wide Web. (CERN)
1995 – Geocities and Tripod.
1997 – Weblogs. (Blogs)
1995 – Ward Cunningham creates the Wiki.
2001 – Wikipedia.
2006? – “Today,” 68.6% Americans are connected to the Internet.
According the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, as of September 25, 2013 85 percent of Americans aged 18 and older use the Internet.
In response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957, The United States formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defense. This timeline describes the events leading up to and following the invention of the ARPANet, the foundation of today’s Internet.
In 2002, high-speed broadband access became available to the public, but most Internet users were still on dialup. Back then, 569 million people (9.1 percent of the world’s population) used the Internet, for an average of 46 minutes per day. There were about 3 million websites online and it took about 16 seconds to load up a typical webpage. Ninety-five percent of users used Internet Explorer. These were the days of Napster and back then, it took 12.5 minutes to download a song on a 56k modem. Friendster, the most popular social network in the world had 3,000,000 users. Tower Records and Borders books were the most popular ways to buy music and literature and Blockbuster was the most popular place to rent movies.
In contrast…
In 2012, 2.27 billion people used the Internet (33 percent of the world’s population) for an average of about 4 hours per day. There were about 555 million websites online and it took about 6 seconds to load up a typical webpage. In 2012, only 39 percent of users used Internet Explorer; 28 percent used Chrome, 25 percent used Firefox and 6 percent used Opera. Napster was long gone, but digital music was as popular as ever; it only took about 18 seconds to download a song. Facebook was the most popular social network, with 900 million users. In 2012, iTunes and Amazon.com were the most popular places to buy music and books online, and Netflix was the most popular way to rent movies. Tower Records, Borders Books and Blockbuster have all gone bankrupt.
This swirly, avant-garde, artsy graphic describes how all the different web technologies are woven together to create the modern World Wide Web. It’s very interesting to play with, but any hard information it may convey is a bit muddled by its presentation.
This animated slideshow describes how a bunch of creepy spiders crawl around on webpages, collecting and storing the data in a search engine’s databases, which index it and serve it back to users based on the keywords they enter, as a webpage full of linked results.
This website very usefully explains how to “program” Google searches to refine the results in a very granular fashion. I’ve bookmarked it for future reference!
My new Twitter Activity
On Twitter, I started following @BradyHaran, because he’s one of my favorite video journalists — the guy behind the Numberphile and Sixty Symbols YouTube Channels. Also, I followed @danharmon because he’s one of my favorite television writers and @stephenfry because he’s just plain amazing.
