Develop a well-written essay that addresses the ideas laid out in this document. The essay shall be written in standard academic form using the APA style manual for all references.

Essay Topic

Read the following concepts and ideas related to design and web page construction. Using these readings as the basis for a position paper outlining your overall philosophy of the principles of design for web pages. You may reference the textbook for this class for additional information.

Reading One

They say in real estate there are 3 “Ls” – location, location, location

I say in building web sites there are 3 “Ds” – design, design, design

We are often tempted to skip over or fly through the design phase of the project. We want to jump right to the creation of the page. But, careful consideration of things such as connection speed, layout, resolution, graphics, fonts and the like are key to having a successful Web site. Would you build a house without blueprints? Why then, should be build our “virtual house” without a blueprint?

How many of you have a high speed connection? The odds are good that all of you do, especially since you are taking an online course. Now, how many of the people who are going to visit your web sites will have high speed access? If you are building site primarily for US users, again, the odds are pretty high. What about if you are really building for a “global market”? This really depends upon your audience. If you are building a site aimed at Central or South America, what is the market penetration of high speed access? My guess is that there are not as many users with high speed access yet in those areas as there are in the US. Even with high speed access, how many of you will wait a long time for content to load? You have seconds, not minutes to capture and captivate your audience.

In addition to the challenge of speed, you must always remember the types of computers that your users may potentially be using. For those of us who always have the latest, greatest, fastest hardware and software it is really hard to remember that most people live in a “less upgraded” world. For example, you have no control over the user’s screen resolution. I have colleagues that have a 22” monitor and are still running at a lower resolution because the greater number of pixels per inch makes “everything bigger.” I run at the highest resolution my computer can put out on my 22” monitor. When I am designing Web pages, I have to keep this difference in mind. If I build for my preferences, ½ or more of my information will not even been on the screen for my colleagues in a fixed resolution design.

So,should I go with a fixed resolution or flexible resolution design? Centered or left aligned? Which is better? I believe that it depends upon the type of site you are building, the types of users that you are targeting and how you want your site to look and feel. In the text, you have examples of different kinds of designs. It is a matter of evaluating what you want to do and figuring out what will work best for your design.

Reading Two

Designing for the Web is not like designing for print. Many designers who come from a print background often make the mistake of treating design for both the online and print media the same way. Most of us are still steeped in the print world. We are used to how things look in print. Most documents in a paper-based world are in portrait orientation (longer than it is wide). The computer screen is in landscape orientation (wider than it is long). This alone makes designing for the Web a different proposition. Also, we interact with print media much differently than we do Web-based content.

In addition to carefully considering the medium, we must also make our designs portable. Our users are going to be using a wide variety of browsers, hardware and operating systems. Unfortunately this makes our job as designers much more difficult because the systems on which we develop our pages are probably not the same as the ones that our users are using. Today, our designs might not even be displayed on a computer screen. It is becoming just as likely that content will be displayed on devices such as telephones. Interestingly, these small smart devices can even vary the orientation of their display to accommodate the personal preferences of users and the existing content on the Internet.

Another thing to consider is having a unified site design that guides the user through the site. In addition to having unifying elements, using a grid can help ensure that elements such as the menu appear in the same place on each page. A well designed page will guide the user’s eye through the content. In the textbook there are some diagrams that show how users read text on a page and on the screen. It is important to think about how your users will experience the page. A positive experience can keep them coming back for more. A negative experience can make them feel bad about the entire company.

Finally, in addition to portability of the design across the browsers, we must also think about the file structure and link structures. It is not uncommon to have to change servers and/or hosting service. This can be caused by something as simple as finding a hosting service that is less expensive or your provider deciding to no longer offer your desired set of services. As you are building your Web site, you can create internal or external links, also known as relative and absolute links. Absolute links should primarily be used to link to pages outside of your Web site. For example, if you want to link to the FIU home page, you need to use the entire URL (http://www.fiu.edu). If you just put www.fiu.edu, the link will not go to the FIU home page and you will have an error. Any link that you wish to take the user to a page that is not on your Web site must use the full URL.

When linking to the pages within your site, you should almost always use relative links. That means that you only use the “path” and “filename” portions of the complete URL to specify how to get to the file. When you use relative links, the browser constructs the file request based on the currently displayed document and the link the user clicked on. Most tools will automatically construct your site with relative links so that the entire site can easily move from one host to another. Most content management systems will only construct the web pages that you build with relative links, which ensures that the management software has full control over what is published and where.

As you think about your designs, it is important to remember that the very nature of the web is transforming every day. Each new device with an embedded web browser is a potential new platform for delivering your content and the capabilities of these new browsers and their devices are becoming increasingly more powerful each day. The increasing commoditization of hosting services and the rich feature sets available allows business to make sound cost-based decisions on where they can host their content. Large enterprises often replicate the content of their web site across many servers to handle both continuity and performance concerns for the site, so keeping your site neatly organized and connected with appropriate links will allow your site to easily move between hosting servers and even hosting platforms.

Reading Three

The issue of copyright has grown from being merely contentious to being heavily litigious. (In English, that means it has gone from being something people disagreed about to something people sue over all the time.) If you were around in the early days of peer-to-peer file transfer, everyone could get copyrighted music (and sometimes video) for “free” on the internet. Today, if you try to download “free” music, you run risks from something as problematic as spyware being downloaded on your computer to a letter from a lawyer about your activities. Did you really think that your downloads were free?

According to Wikipedia, “[c]opyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works covered by copyright law, in a way that violates one of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.”

So, as we move our work onto the Web, what is fair use and what is not? Let’s start with a discussion of logos and trademarks. Ok, I have this really great idea for a Web site that will spoof a well-known company. I have learned how to use my graphic editing software and I can easily make my own version of the logo. This is fair use, right? First, an example… It appears that lawyers for Best Buy are now taking on a higher power. They have sent a cease and desist letter to the “God Squad,” proving that not even the Divine is exempt from the Lawyer. You can read the complete story at http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20013721-71.html?tag=rtcol, but the gist is that Father Luke Strand decked out his VW Beetle with a logo in black, white, and orange with the words “God Squad.” The Best Buy representative pointed out that they must defend their trademarks from everyone lest they create a loophole for some other group to use their logo.

So, what is fair use? Again, according to Wikipedia “[f] air use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as for commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching or scholarship. It provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author’s work under a four-factor balancing test.” You can read more about the Fair Use policy and the balancing test at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use.

What about my original work? Do I need to apply for a copyright? A trademark? A patent? If I don’t apply, am I covered? According to the U.S. Government Copyright Office Web site, a “[c]opyright protects original works of authorship, while a patent protects inventions or discoveries. A trademark protects words, phrases, symbols, or designs identifying the source of the goods or services of one party and distinguishing them from those of others.” Your work is actually protected by copyright as soon as it is created, but if you want to be able to ensure your rights in a lawsuit it is best to register. You can find out more about copyright at http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#what

Reading Four

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can offer a number of benefits to both the developer and the user. Today all major browsers support CSS. Unfortunately they do it with varying degrees of compliance, so there is still a need to test your pages in a variety of browsers to ensure that it renders the way that you expect it to render.

The main benefit to CSS is that it offers flexibility. If you design Web sites long enough (usually by your 2nd client) you will encounter a client that wants “just a small change” before the Web site goes into production. This small change could be something minor, such as the placement of a graphic. Often, the “small” change is something like changing the color and font size of the header text on all of the pages. This second change sounds easy enough, especially on a small site, but I promise you, if you have 10 pages on the site you will miss the change by hand on one page. That one page will be the first one the client clicks on when the page goes live. 😉

If you use external style sheets to set up your page, you can make the change once to the element or attribute in the style sheet and every page that is linked to that style sheet will automatically be updated. In addition, using the style sheet reduces the amount of code needed in each page. This translates to less code for the client to download which equals faster loading. In addition, you are separating the content from the presentation. You have one document that focuses on presentation without having to look at each page. It also ensures that you will have more consistency between your pages, easier!

Today, with so many people using broadband we don’t think about rendering speed with respect to text. In our earlier discussions, we did mention that some of your users might not being using broadband. Using CSS, the browser can begin the rendering process immediately. In addition, once it has rendered the CSS it has done so for all of your pages. With a table-based design the 30 page still has to render using the same amount of time as the first page of your site. CSS helps your pages load faster after the first page loads.

Finally, but no less important, is that CSS can make pages much more accessible. If you are using CSS, the pages are then almost purely content. If you have a table-based design the readers for the visually impaired person have to parse through all of the code/content while they have to listen to every element of the page. With CSS, much of the structure is “behind the scenes” allowing the readers to provide content to the visually impaired person faster.

CSS provides us with some very interesting tools to make our lives, as developers, and the lives of our users a little bit easier.