What you need is...

...a little re-direction. This blog was set up as a dismal school project and has been discontinued I'm afraid. I blog regularly over at my website: wordbit.com.

Thanks for stopping by.

Colour, culture, web design

The cultural differences in the perception of colour are well known to anthropologists. Red, for example is bold and signifies anger in the West, but is considered lucky in the East, especially in China. But do web designers take the cultural colour faux pas into consideration? They should. Especially if designing for international clients. After all, colour is a tricky beast and just because you happen to be in love with mauve, it doesn't mean your client will. Even if your client doesn't live across the planet, chances are they might not be that crazy about the latest trends in web design (more white space, anyone?). The best thing you can do is create a colour scheme right off the bat, even before you dive into dreamweaver and blindly start clicking the colour palette. Once the client signs off on the colour scheme, you're good to go.

Jakob Nielson - usability guru

Jakob Nielson is a web usability consultant who believes that page loading times should determine how a website is designed. To improve the user experience, for example, he advocates against using large graphics or fancy flash animations (among other things) because most users don't have broadband. His work is important because it focuses on the most efficient way for users to navigate the web and websites. Partly as a result of his teachings, website designers have moved away from bloated graphic-heavy websites to cleaner, more intuitive interfaces.

Nielson left his job as an engineer at Sun Microsystems to become a consultant. He helps businesses maximize their ROI on web redesigns for usability. He has a large following in web design circles but has come under some criticism for rejecting aesthetics at the expense of perfecting the user interface.

A look at his website will tell you a lot about his design aesthetic.

Guardians of the web

What exactly is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)?

Well, they're an international consortium made up of member organizations who work together with the public to develop web standards. They want to make sure the web does not become fragmented by incompatible technologies and vested interests. To this end, they keep everything open source. They're also involved in education and outreach and see themselves as a forum for open discussion about the web.

Here's a quote from their website:

W3C's global initiatives also include nurturing liaisons with national, regional and international organizations around the globe. These contacts help W3C maintain a culture of global participation in the development of the World Wide Web. W3C coordinates particularly closely with other organizations that are developing standards for the Web or Internet in order to enable clear progress.

The WC3 was started in 1991 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the dude who invented the web browser, the URL, http, and html. He's basically the creator of internet life as we know it today. The WC3 is thus respected around the world as it moderates a consensus over how the future of the web should evolve.

Two of my favourite websites

If you want to see how a movie fared with the critics before you shell out your hard-earned bucks, check out rotten tomatoes. This popular website has recently been redesigned and has now gone into beta testing.

The new design isn't bad, but then again, I didn't have a problem with the old one either. I guess they were trying to go with a more community-based, web 2.0 format. The layout is still a bit cluttered, but looks lighter.

Anyway, it's not the design that draws me to the site again and again, it's the concept. Rotten tomatoes gathers critic reviews from across the country and adds them up. Enough positive reviews gives the movie a "fresh" rating, and too many negative ones garner a "rotten" rating. A sidebar on the home page lists current box office movies so that you can figure out what's worth watching at a glance. If you want to search for a movie, type it in the search box and within seconds you can see if you should pop that movie into your DVD player or toss it into the returns bin.

Another website I dig is wired news, and again I go there mostly because the content is interesting and is regularly updated. At wired news, you can read the latest headlines in technology, cyberculture, and our digital lives.

Ease of navigation makes this site a delight to visit. Large, bold headlines are easy to read and if they catch your attention, you're just one click away from reading the entire article. For those who like a little visual stimulation with their serving of words, there are plenty of well-chosen pictures to capture your attention and, in many cases, persuade you to read the article.

What makes a great blog?

One of my favourite blogs has to be Derek Miller's Penmachine. I really enjoy this blog because Derek writes well and he writes often. Derek usually writes about technology, gadgets, software, and other geektastic topics. After getting cancer a year ago, however, his posts have been a lot more personal. He has unceasingly blogged about his harrowing experiences and shared every tear and every joy with his readers, writing in a straightforward, honest style. He recently redesigned his blog and made it a lot cleaner, using a lot of white space and an elegant simplicity (which I like).

Another blog I enjoy reading is Tom Johnson's I'd Rather Be Writing. Tom is a tech writer who feeds his need to write by blogging on technical communication. He also runs a popular tech writing podcast. I like his blog because he writes clearly and is passionate about what he does. His website is also clean, with lots of white space and minimal clutter.

Welcome word slingers

Ooooh! Writer's forge is shiny and new. Welcome fellow writers - I look forward to blogging with you.