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Page Design
[^] CSc 302 Outlines
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<<Site Design Tables>>
  1. Home page.
    1. The first page, links to the rest.
    2. Sometimes preceded by a splash page.
      1. First page is often an ad.
      2. Move automatically to the home page.
      3. Put a link to opt out of the flash.
        No matter how nice it may be, impatient folks like me will not want to watch it.
      4. Flash is very popular for these things.
    3. Things to include
      1. Lots of links. One click to major site divisions.
      2. Contact information, including phone and snail mail.
    4. Important information should be accessible without scrolling down.
  2. Page structure: Grids.
    1. One-column. Very simple. Putty home page.
    2. Two-column. Google News.
    3. Inverted L. LUGOJ.
    4. Two narrow, one wide. Quite common. CSPAN.
    5. One wide, three narrow. Security Focus.
    6. Busier-than-thou. Clarion-Ledger.
  3. Navigation.
    1. Use colors and labels to tell a user where s/he is.
      Different color schemes, icons, or logos for each section.
    2. Make sure each page is identified.
    3. Have a link back to the home page.
  4. Color.
    1. Whatever you do, monitors vary.
    2. Color representation.
      1. Monitors combine red, green, and blue to make colors.
        Primary colors for additive combination.
      2. Represented by a number which indicates how much of each to use.
      3. Each intensity is 0-255, written in hex 00-FF.
        #FFFFFF       #000000       #999999       #00FF00    
         
        #0000FF       #FFFF00       #FF7F07       #9C07FF    
         
        #77A361       #66065A       #6DBFA7       #8B9174    
         
    3. Are there really 16,777,216 colors?
      1. Not necessarily.
      2. Original limitations: “Web safe” colors. Use 00, 33, 66, 99, CC, FF. As in #CC33FF. Allows 216 colors.
      3. This week's wisdom: “Web Smart” colors: Use any values that repeat the digits, as #7711BB or #CCFF99. Gives 4096 colors.
      4. Whatever you say, the browser will approximate with whatever it can provide. The approximation process is called dithering.
      5. To me, it hardly seems worth worrying about.
    4. There are also 16 named colors, some neither web-safe nor web-smart.
    5. Background colors should not usually be too glaring, but it's mostly a matter of what looks good.
    6. Text color needs to have good contrast. This is good. This is bad. This is worse.
<<Site Design Tables>>