Follow up from week 5

It would be helpful if you could get a number of things done by Monday 6th November:

• comment on the post “Things to do this week” to tell me what you have understood so far and what needs to be followed up;
• complete the activities from week 5;

I will comment on your work on your blog posts.

I look forward to seeing some interesting work over the next week or so.

Using different types of positioning

I have set up this post as an example of what might be done for Activity 501.

---

By setting one box within another and giving the inner boxes relative coordinates with respect to the outer box allows such things as headers to be displaced from the content.

As relative positioning is being used in the inner boxes then the outer reference box can be moved to another part of the screen and the positioning will still work.

You can see the HTML by loading the example using the link above and using view source in your browser.

The CSS can be seen by linking to it on the wiki.

---

Notice that I have put additional explanations in the page itself, and as comments in the HTML and CSS codes. You can do this or put more explanation here.

Things to do this week

Hi everybody

I think we got a lot done in yesterday’s session but as a consequence it might be a useful time to reflect on what we have learnt and what we still need to learn.

Comments please

Would you please comment on this post giving me:

• up to three things you feel confident that you understand so far;
• up to three things that you you need to do more work on;

Things to do on your blogs

• complete activity 402 making an entry on your blog and linking it to your web page which you have uploaded to your wiki;
• comment on at least one other post as soon as possible;
• at the end of the week take a look at who has commented on yours;

Remember that when somebody comments on your post you must comment on their post.

Finding out about usability

This is an example of the first activity for session 04.

The web site I have chosen is Usability First

They say:

---

What is usability?

Usability usually refers to software but is relevant to any product. Some ways to improve usability include:

• shortening the time to accomplish tasks,
• reducing the number of mistakes made,
• reducing learning time,
• and improving people’s satisfaction with a system.

---

On the whole I think that these comments are much too general and need to make reference to particular aspects of usability such as navigation. Also they make no reference to an important aspect of usability which is about allowing the user to locate themselves within the site. All of these statements seem to be generally about speeding up the use of the site without taking account of these other qualitative factors. It is no use being able to find your way easily from the top page if you find yourself somewhere down in the site and don’t know where you are and how you get out.Also the web site is supposed to be about web site usability and the examples given are generally about software usability. It would help if at least some of them were more specific to a web site.

As an aside, not sure if it relates directly to usability but I find their jobs box really irritating.

Further Useful Links

The Browser-Safe Web Palette by Lynda Weinman is an interesting discussion that reminds us of the nature of the palette and discusses whether we still need to use it.

Here is some further information about web colours including web safe colours from W3 Schools

Have a look at this web site which makes suggestions about what are good design features and what are bad ones. Take a look and see if you agree with them.

You might find some useful tools here at code style.

Please let me know by making a comment if you find any of these useful.

Catching up with this weeks activities

Hi everybody

I was pleased to see how well you all got on with this weeks activities.

Please don’t forget to create your web page, style it with CSS, load it to your wiki and then link it to a blog post on your blog, as described in activity 303.

I will read all of your blog posts and make some comments if I think that might be useful for you.

Rowland

Some useful web links?

Here are a few web design tool you might find useful:

• if you want to play around with colour schemes for your web pages then you might find Color Blender of some use to you. You can download it or use it off line;
• a reminder about NVU on their home page. Great if you want an open source web site editor. Also available as a portable version;
• you can see how different font styles look by using font tester . You can also grab the CSS styles to find out how they work;
• accessibility Tools & Wizards which you might find useful;

Please comment if you find these tools useful

Your web page designs – updated on Thursday 5th October

Hi everybody

I have been taking a look at your designs for web pages and found some interesting ideas from a number of people in no particular order:

• Sammie Jayne
• Moheeb
• Ryadh
• Rich
• Mike
• Craig’s Place
• Ross’ Blog
• Stuart’s firefighting page
• Kate has looked at different colour schemes
• Boz has done some interesting design using tables
• Marie has used the wiki for her web design

One thing that strikes me about these web designs are that they show that although there might be guidelines about “good web design” there is no correct way of designing. It depends upon such things as the subject matter of the site, the site user, the purpose of the site.

There seems to be a problem with the links to the web pages from the blog to the wiki. If you open the wiki first then the link to the web page seems to work.

Reminder for this week

Hi everybody,

As I remember it we agreed to do a number of things by next week:

• finish producing a web site, uploading it to a wiki and making a link to it from a commentary about how good a web design it is;
• comment on other people’s blog post;
• respond to my feedback post;

I will use your feedback on the session to look at over the next few weeks. I will also take a look at some of your posts about your web design and make some comments over the next week.

Rowland

What did you learn in Session02?

Please comment on this email to tell me:

• up to three things you learnt this week;
• up to three things you think you need to do more work on;