So here goes……

Q1) How do you find this site? (in 3 words)

My answer in 3 words, Kind of plain

But is it ok to add a picture? Cause I think the caption on this picture could very well account for what everyone would truely think about the site but not say it out loud….

Q2) Who do you think the site is created for?

In my personal opinion, I think the site was created for everyone both male and female and the reason to that is because the site does not have a catalog of it’s clothes for sale, so if it’s a persons’ first time looking at this site, they wouldn’t know that the shop caters to women fashion.

Also not only is it created for female shoppers(whom already know about the stall) but also for those who wish to get gift vouchers and the sort for family and friends, first time customers to the clothesline who need information on the type of clothes sold and where their outlets are, those who want more information on exchange policies of merchandise and those who wish to view and find out more info on membership etc. online rather than approach the staff at the outlets.

Q3)What are the good attributes of the site (in terms of usability, aesthetic issues, etc.)?

• Clear cut navigation – All the tabs are  named according to the information that’s to be shown when clicked)
• Neat – Everything’s aligned properly, the welcome page information and picture are placed neatly in the form of a table
• Good choice of font – Easy to read and no matter how small they go, it is still legible.
• Quick page load time

Q4)What are the bad attributes of the site?

• Too simple a layout – The layout looks too simple and gives users the feeling that the products sold are of very low quality or value.
• Bad choice of colour – The background’s colour is too bright and it’s really painful to the eye when looked at. Furthermore since it’s the background colour it sticks throughout the whole layout hence it’s really a pain to read continously without having to look away due to the glare. Also all the pages have the “This Fashion” title in dark grey but there’s a sudden change of colour to a bright pink  in the <outlets> page. The colour for the navigation links and the subtitles are also too faint and almost not legitimate against the very bright background.
• Little graphics – Lack of suitable graphics to flaunt the merchandise.
• Missing catalog – Don’t know if this counts but for such a site which sells clothes, lingerie and even perfumes, a catolog of it’s products would be really useful and a great boost to service as it will serve as a guide to customers on what’s available and allow them to make pre-dicisions before heading down to the outlet.
  I’m guessing there’s no catalog cause they think that this way, customers would be forced to head down to their outlets to view the available merchandise but this just really shows bad service or laziness in putting one up.
• Missing information – Another point that I’m not so sure counts but the current website has this line on the home page saying “Have you redeemed your Bonus Points?” and they colour coded the Bonus Points which usually gives the idea there’s a link to it to explain the supposed benefit, but apparently it’s just there without any extra information and everything about it is not even mentioned in any of the pages on the site.

In conclusion, this site’s plus points is its neatness and usability (as in the easy to use and understand navigational bar). However it’s just too plain, with the lack of pictures of their products, first time customers who depend on such clues to make final decisions will give up on this stall straight away, the site’s simplicity and plainess reflects upon the veryy products they sell and if the web were to have some site which critics and picks the worst websites on the web, this site could very well end up in the list.

Ok that’s the end of the analysis, hope the points I gave are allowed especially on the bad attributes part.

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Site analyzed : http://www.aceedu.com.sg/

This analyzing of a site is really hard but enriching as well since it makes you think from both perspectives, user and web designer/manager. This is almost like English Composition or GP (am I wrong in saying this? hope not….. )

Hope my answers are right or at least feasible though.

Just as a precaution, I don’t know why but I can’t seem to be able to preview or open up the pdf files when I try it myself, not sure about others but I’ll be posting up the jpeg files of the 2 worksheets just in case yep.

From the helpful sites I’ve read, web-safe colors basically refer to a fixed palette of 216 colours(used for web design) apparently introduced by Netscape that are used on platforms with a graphics mode of 256 colours. Why just 216 colours with 40 missing is cause the 40 missing colors are variable between the Mac and PC platforms. Hence by taking them out, it simple makes the palette usable for cross platform purposes.

This palette also caters more to illustrations or images which consists a lot of a one colour over photographs which tend to have a variety.

Here are some examples of the colors arranged by Hue and Value.

-Is it still relevant in today’s context? Why?-

Yes and no.

Yes cause 256 colors or 8-bit is still being used on devices such as PDAs and handphones which run on 1-bit or 8-bit. This means the palette would be rather useful still to web designers whom are designing websites to be viewed via such devices and even game designers if I’m not wrong.

No well cause since current computers can now view 16-bit and 32-bit colors, there is no more restraint thus the palette is almost dead useless.

Although some designers whom might want an easier way out can use this and restrict their colors to 216 colors.

- What are the common fonts face found on PC & Mac?-

Apologies that the image is blur but the common ones according to the list are (in order from list),

• Arial
• Arial Black
• Comic Sans MS
• Courier
• Georgia
• Impact
• Lucida Console
• Lucida Sans Unicode
• Palantino Linotype
• Tahoma
• Times New Roman
• Trebuchet
• Verdana
• Symbol
• Webdings
• Wingdings
• MS Sans Serif
• MS Serif

-What is page loading time and how does it  influence our design?-

Page loading time refers to the interval of time when the browser searches for and receives information from the website being loaded.

As to how it influences design…very much I suppose. And this statement from (http://webjackalope.com/fast-page-load-time/) kinds of sums it up. The statement is “Fast page load times are crucial for keeping users happy.” which is totally true in my opinion. But going back to the topic on the design, well to optimize loading time to keep users happy, it is a must that one’s site be well designed but have a caps limit to the size.

With a limit to the size means the site should be good looking yet optimizing the limit of space given, thus careful thought must be given while designing. For example, some tips from the professionals are, optimizing image sizes as well as keeping images small or even placing them as thumbnails ,especially for product sites, if they are for show and nothing more. It is even suggested that a common image folder be used and to make use of tables wisely.

And as the old rule of thumb applies, nothing more than 15 seconds of loading time on a 56k. This means on a modem it should take no more than 2-3 seconds approximately.

-Web Design Process-

I found the articles rather interesting. First of all what struck me is how each company took different approaches to designing their websites or the clients’ websites. They are all similar in someway but it seems each company takes a variable number of steps before getting to the publishing of the sites. Some just make it in very short time while others seem to take really really long to design their sites.

But of course as it was said, they all took similar steps into making their sites which starts of with research and discovery or in other words the brainstorming sessions. However one company took this step as a pre-brainstorming which is to say, this was indeed a small session of brainstorming but the major one took place after consulting their client which is rather interesting cause it seems to give that image of a student double checking his work thoroughly before handing it in. An almost perfectionist kind of image if it’s the right term to use.

I feel though that of all the articles linked to the main article (http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/03/19/web-design-and-worflow-process-comparison/), this article especially (http://stopdesign.com/archive/2003/06/02/design-process.html) second in the list proved to be the most detailed in their process of web design. Why I say that cause I personally feel that they go through the trouble of discovery and exploration, consultation and even more brainstorming after that before even coming out with thumbnails where as the rest just consult and have a single brainstorming and the thumbnails are out.

Not only that, out of all of them, stopdesign.com is also the only one which even put emphasis on typography and imagery research and development in their design process. This two factors I feel are equally as important to the whole general design and feel of the site.

In conclusion, I feel that web design is something that really takes a lot of effort. Yeah we can always make it simple and good but can this “simple and good” please the users. With so many factors put into consideration, besides the planning and designing part of the website, it will take someone who understands his audience well to design something good. Then from there on content-wise could just as well be important as everything else.

Mozilla Firefox, Internet explorer, Safari, Opera, Google chrome

- What are browser wars -

Browser wars are basically the competitions for dominance over the web browser marketplace between two or more web browsers. Internet explorer is still currently dominant but is now challenged by the recently erected browsers like mozilla and recently google chrome which are attracting a wide audience.

- What is an IP address -

IP address also known as Internet Protocol address is a series of numbers that are assigned to devices within a computer network using the internet protocol as means of communication. It is supposedly stored as binary numbers but is shown in simple forms such as 216.55.66.123 for easy reading. It acts as an “address” of sorts for the the device it’s assigned to, similar to how we have our own home addresses.

- What is a URL -

From what I know, URL basically refers to the web address. In long it stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It consists the following items in one coherent hierarchical path, namely the resource type for example “http”, a registered domain name, the port number, the pathname of a file or program that will show on the site, query string, and for html files, an anchor to allow the specific page to be viewed.

I hope I’m not wrong in what I’m about to try next but I’ll try to decipher an example using the current address of the page I’m on now “http://vilavoluntas.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=3&message=6″

http = resource type

domain name = vilavoluntas.wordpress.com

port number = not exactly sure cause I don’t see numbers

pathname = post.php?

query string & anchor = action=edit&post=3&message=6

(hope I am sort of right)

- What makes a good website -

A good website usually starts with it’s visitors/viewers or basically the audience it’s trying to attract in my opinion. This is because one website could be considered good by someone but then again considered bad by another because it doesn’t provide the information that the audience is trying to seek for. However this is just based on the information part.

Then again a good website should probably be one that is simple yet fancy, have easy navigational assets as well as a user-friendly interface. Too much graphics could firstly make it “over-fanciful” and hard to look at and secondly it could affect navigation as well if there were too much graphics and in the worst case, they look like the buttons being used for navigation.

I also do feel that beside being user-friendly, especially for sites which contain large amount of text, good typography could be another factor.