I have been as guilty as anyone in talking about the fold — the invisible (shall I push and say "imaginary"?) line where scrolling begins. I even think about the fold when I design a web site. Why am I thinking of a concept that came from the newspaper industry? Perhaps I spent too much time on my school's newspaper staff!
If you are a graphic designer or Drupal themer, you don't need to be stuck using Arial on your website; you can easily use a great typeface from one of several providers and implement them using a Drupal module called @font-your-face.
You have a message to share, a product to sell, a service to offer — but it may be all for nothing if your website doesn't have focus. When we design a website, we are always looking to focus our client's message so that the message can be heard over the "noise" of our culture.
My favorite type of data in the world of user interface design/user experience is Eye Tracking. An Eye Tracking study tells us where people look. It can tell us the order that information is scanned and it can display a heat map to show where a sample of web visitors looked on your web page. Eye Tracking can be used for web content, print media, product packaging and anything else where you want to measure what is being seen.
The image to the right shows the difference in search behavior from 2005 to 2008. The data shows that people have learned to scan Google and not read every item.
Often I have a client who needs a lot of words on the page. At first glance, I feel like I can condense the message — but just as often, the nature of my client's industry requires specific language. Good design and marketing practices tell me to have a short page to read, but when I try to edit the page, there isn't much content I can trim (especially when there are product features or legally-required points to cover).
I recently attended DrupalCamp Austin and went to several sessions on mobile. It was a little funny how they contradicted each other. One session would talk about how mobile is the way to go then another session would talk about going responsive. I've been on the fence on which I think is the right approach. I've done lots of mobile sites, but I hadn't jumped into the responsive world yet. So for a recent project, I decided to give it a try.
By mobile, I'm talking about creating a site with a different HTML/CSS markup but serving the same content. When I do mobile, I generally use a tool to determine if the user is on a mobile device and then I serve the different content designed for the mobile device.
When we get a new client, we're excited. The designer can't wait to jump into Photoshop and make something beautiful. The developer can't wait to see the Photoshop comps and start programming. But we're missing a step!
A few months ago, I came up with an idea to design and build a Digett landing page that would break down the state of the San Antonio web design community and explain to the average consumer why the Digett way is the only way to go. Today, I'm proud to announce the launch of that page — San Antonio Web Design.
This comic about restaurant websites started me thinking about the way most websites are built. My experience over the past 5-6 years of building sites is that the motivation for a new site ranges from “our current site’s design is out date” to “it is difficult to use” or even “we need a website because we don’t have one.”
Last week I wrote about the anatomy of a header, an important piece to the website puzzle. This week, I want to scroll down to the bottom of the page and take a look at what makes up a footer.
