Web Issues

In this post I will be explaining about website design issues and what kind of things make me and others click off websites that are uninteresting or hard to understand.


All websites have flaws, even the most popular websites. You can't please everyone but there are websites out there that are very bland and uninteresting that nobody uses or if they do its just for information in college or schools.


A good example of a bad website is reddit.com. This site is to dull and boring and only has txt all over it. I know that the website is for teens and mature adults but it doesn't mean it has to be dull, all the site really needs is some colour and maybe not so much writing.


I think that one of the things that makes people return to websites are pictures or videos, a good example is youtube. Youtube is a very popular website because users can access information and entertainment through videos instead of text.


Like a child people get distracted by imagery and moving objects. Blank TXT would bore the user and click off the site within seconds so keeping a site interesting with some images and a video would keep viewers active.

Above is an example of a bad site.

Too many ads can really make your website disgusting. To many flashy images can also cause viewers to leave having seizures. If you do decide to have ads on your website organize your ads to the side of the webpage to make them in a orderly fashion.

Make your websites Menu bar visible for viewers to see rather than hidden to one side or behind an ad.

Avoid having Hyperlinks all over your website. This looks ugly and un professional.

So What Makes A Website Good?

Before we start not all websites are good. In fact some can be very poor and badly displayed as they user(s) who made the website have actually not followed the guidelines. The more guidelines the user(s) follow the better and professional looking the website will look and attract other traffic towards their site taking the users more seriously rather than a child school project in ICT.

Some websites have templates for users to use if the user is not so familiar with "coding" coding is often found in scripts such as HTML and XHTML. These are the most used codes to be used for making a professional website by big companies and coders. In order to use these codes users must have a basic understanding of ECMAScript or Java Script.

Majority of websites tend to have pictures to lure people into their websites. The human eye and brain tend to observe moving objects rather than stills which instantly creates an interest. For example when a child is in a room and there is a poster and a moving object next to it. The child will look at the moving object rather than a still object. So if you were to create a professional website I would highly recommend a moving picture to attract an audience (Not to many as this can be too much and not many visitors enjoy watching a blockbuster on your website header) also remember visitors do NOT want to be flooded and spammed with lots of popups, Images and Videos.

Choosing a colour for your website is key. Everyone likes to see some colour but do not over do it as we want this to look professional and not a 3 year olds painting. Websafe colours are a good choice as they are used on all systems so you would not have any trouble. If you pick a New/Custom colour then the system might not recognise it and you will be prompted with an error

When making a website you will need consistency. A hotbar for users to navigate through pages easier. A hot bar is more professional and easier to use for users who browse from page to page all the time. This hotbar system is more user friendly and will prevent you users having a fit or headaches.

Final step for making a great website is making the website accessible for all browsers. For example your website could work on Internet Explorer and Google Chrome but not Safari which is used on a Mac computer. This will be a problem for Mac users as there are a few people who use Macs rather than PC so if you wish to gain more traffic towards your website you will need to tackle this problem and make your site accessible for all browsers.

Below is YouTube this is an example of a good website. The tabs are easy to use, No pictures everywhere and the tabs are able to customize to your liking.

Web Techniques

PHP(PHP Hypertext Preprocessor) :

PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.

There are three main areas where PHP scripts are used.

• Server-side scripting. This is the most traditional and main target field for PHP. You need three things to make this work. The PHP parser (CGI or server module), a web server and a web browser. You need to run the web server, with a connected PHP installation. You can access the PHP program output with a web browser, viewing the PHP page through the server. All these can run on your home machine if you are just experimenting with PHP programming. 

 

• Command line scripting. You can make a PHP script to run it without any server or browser. You only need the PHP parser to use it this way. This type of usage is ideal for scripts regularly executed using cron (on *nix or Linux) or Task Scheduler (on Windows). These scripts can also be used for simple text processing tasks. 

 

• Writing desktop applications. PHP is probably not the very best language to create a desktop application with a graphical user interface, but if you know PHP very well, and would like to use some advanced PHP features in your client-side applications you can also use PHP-GTK to write such programs. You also have the ability to write cross-platform applications this way. PHP-GTK is an extension to PHP, not available in the main distribution.  

Cookies

A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, is usually a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser while a user is browsing a website. When the user goes on the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie can be retrieved by the website to notify the website of the user's previous activity. Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember the state of the website or activity the user had taken in the past. This can include clicking particular buttons, logging in, or a record of the pages that were visited by the user even months or years ago.
Although cookies cannot carry viruses, and cannot install malware on the host computer tracking cookies and especially third-party tracking cookies are commonly used as ways to compile long-term records of individuals' browsing histories a major privacy concern that has prompted European and US law makers to take action.


ASP(active server pages)

Active Server Pages (ASP), also known as Classic ASP or ASP Classic, was Microsoft's first server-side script engine for dynamically generated web pages. Initially released as an add-on to Internet Information Services via the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack , it was subsequently included as a free component of Windows Server (since the initial release of Windows 2000 Server). ASP.NET has superseded ASP.


File Sharing

File sharing is the public or private sharing of computer data with various levels of access. While files can easily be shared outside a network (for example, by handing or mailing someone your file on a diskette), the term file sharing almost always means sharing files in a network, even if in a small local area network. File sharing allows a number of people to use the same file by some combination of being able to read or view it, write to or modify it, copy it, or print it. Typically, a file sharing system has one or more administrators. Users may all have the same or may have different levels of access privilege. File sharing can also mean having an allocated amount of personal file storage in a common file system.


Server Side Scripting

Server Side Scripting is basically a programming language which makes your web pages more interactive. The main Server Side languages are Active Server Pages (ASP), PHP HyperText Preprocessor (PHP), Java Server Pages (JSP) and Coldfusion (CFM). Each of these languages has pros and cons, what they all do is allow a web page to interact by connecting to databases and files, processing and validating forms and serving page data dynamically.

Server-side scripting is described as “web server technology in which the user’s request is fulfilled by running a script directly on a web server to generate dynamic web pages.” In simpler terms, a server-side script runs on the server rather than your computer. When you visit a website, the script will create the web page dynamically.
Dynamic websites have become very popular because they are so much easier to maintain. Rather than having to edit HTML pages on a local computer and then upload them back to the server via FTP, websites with server-side scripts can usually be updated right on the server. The files themselves do not change, as they only contain the scripts. Instead, the information is stored in an SQL or flat file database.

Website Design Research

All websites have different purposes. Facebook being one known as a social site allowing others to communicate with one another and uploading pictures and videos for others to view. Youtube being a different kind of site allows others to Watch, Upload, Share videos, Like, Favourite and Dislike videos of your choice.














HTML 5 is language used in code for the internet. HTML has various versions over the few years and HTML 4 was made back in 1997 a standard history version. Since after HTML was made other codecs came around such as Java Script, DHTML and XHTML. HTML 5 though showing to be more dominant and supposed to be "The Future of Scripting" has really high expectations and is still in development.

Java is a programming language but is often used in mobile games and online games. It was highly influenced by many other languages so it has a mixture of several to do more than just one thing. Java was developed by a man named James Gosling in Sun Microsystems which is still in distribution to this very day.

Evaluation on Web Design

During my college course activity we have been asked to go through an Adobe Tutorial on how to make a web page that can be accessible through any web browser such as safari for MAC users and internet explorer and more for PC users. We followed a step by step guide which instructed us on how to make a website. We were then given a folder with with all the pictures used to create the website in an embedded folder.


Throughout this tutorial I have learnt many new skills and techniques such as a basic understanding of how to use Adobe Dreamweaver both using the design and code view. If I was to apply for a job in web design the skills I have learnt on how to make a websites through CSS would be more greater than someone who makes websites from templates. With these skills it has helped me feel more confident in creating websites. It has also helped me gain a simple understanding on how websites are formed from scratch and has helped me understand the software a bit more than before when I started the tutorial.


The point of this tutorial is to show that i can follow instructions well and to a set deadline, it is also to see if i can produce a good quality piece of work/website where everything can function properly and correctly. The skills i have learnt from this could easily aid me in the future when i want to apply for a job that includes web design and could give me an advantage over other applicants when i have the experience in coding and making a website when other wouldn't have the knowledge. It can also give me a good head start and also my employers saving them time in educating me and training me in the simple use of Dreamweaver and other similar webpage making programs.


Throughout the tutorial i ran into many problems. Mostly some to do with coding and other parts were to do with the design itself. This is simply because i found the tutorial to be complicated and very confusing in some parts and it would not do as it should have (through no fault of my own) but at the time this was very frustrating and took its toll on my capabilities and put a great strain on my concentration on getting the web page completed in time.

Most of the tutorial was hard to understand but after a few steps in i quickly got used to it and began to work quicker through it.

When the tutorial got difficult to understand i took my time to read through it a few times just to make sure i completely understood what it was asking me to do, then I would follow it word for word until the step was properly completed.





The only way I think I can properly analyse and overcome these problems that I regularly face whilst using Dreamweaver is to get a more of a developed understanding on how Dreamweaver actually works and to learn how to use it on an intermediate level not just following steps. This should enable me to learn for myself and learn how to overcome certain problems without the help of a tutor to guide me through out the procedure. This will help me later in life when I come to design a website of my own or for a company if I wished to create one. A way to improve would read up on some more techniques and tutorials to familiarize myself more with the coding and design view in the program, another way would be trial and error, just to try a few ways to experiment and see what happens and then I can also learn different techniques that way as well.

Through out the Tutorial I completed the task then I had to make my own site. When making my own site it was more challenging as I had to create my own design. I found this very challenging but managed to pull it off. Being very basic I did how ever manage to change the font, font size, and align the sites menu bar to the center. Although the website is basic I spent much more of my time having to work on the Tutorial which I found challenging.When I had to finish off my website I only managed to achieve just a homepage which was not properly finished. I am glad how ever I still have an operational site with the clickable menu bar and able to view my site on a URL which was a success on my behalf.