40 creative blog footer designs

When we design a website, we usually miss a very little part - the footer where a place for copyright notices and credit links. But after making reference to some of the design on the following, it actually astonishes me a lot. As you might be able to see, you can make good use of this traditionally underused part to some many other purposes. Here, I would suggest twitter updats, sharing to popular website like Facebook, Delicious, popular posts, recent comments, etc. you could also make the event more appealing and eye-catching by placing animated gif or static vector graphics like these examples.

reference:

http://www.crazynfunny.com

http://www.wearenotfreelancers.co.za/

http://www.catalyststudios.co.uk/

about the information architecture

After reading material about the information architecture, I think I gain its basic concept. I am trying to explain my understanding in this way. It is just like the way you take the MTR and attempt to find exit. The process of reaching your destination will be the job of information architecture. It is not taken for granted or by luck that you could find your route subsequently. But rather it is because of your past experience (ie. walk according to the instruction indicator)that directs you to the MTR exit. All in all, this past experience is so-called usability - the ability for users to figure out some information by common sense. And information architecture is how you present the exit indicator into the most readable way that leads the passengers to their way. I hope this example can somehow give you an idea of what information arhitecture is.

Table good or bad?

Recently, I have searched a lot of information and getting some idea of the disadvantages of using Table in HTML.Then, I summarize them into the following view points.

1. They result in load times that are longer than necessary.
2. They encourage the use of inefficient “placeholder graphics” that further slow performance.
3. Their maintenance can be a difficult.
4. Inaccessible to the partially disable person when coding table by screen reader.

Tables Mean Long Load Times
When designers began to rely on tables to contain all or most of the content of a Web page, they were also saddled with the consequences of this design decision. In addition to the apparent delay that many users experience as a result of tables displaying all at once, the sheer volume of HTML code that’s required to create Web page layouts with nested tables can also add load time due to the increased page size. Table-based layouts almost certainly account for more user concern over long page-load times than any other single factor. Avoiding this significant load time would obviously be A Good Thing.

Use of Transparent Images Slows us Down
Even when using tables as layout mechanisms, designers could not quite attain the detailed level of control they wanted over page design. Sometimes, for instance, a designer might need a bit more breathing room around one part of a table cell—something for which tables do not allow. This kind of precision was unachievable.

Early on, someone came up with the notion of creating a transparent.gif image file—a tiny GIF image that had no visible content. By creating table cells that contained these transparent images, we could force extra vertical and horizontal “space” into tables whose cells were designed to remain in close proximity to one another.

The problem is that, given a table with dozens (or even hundreds) of these images, and depending on a variety of other factors, the performance impact of transparent GIFs on a Web page can be significant. More importantly, though, this technique often restricts the page to a fixed pixel size, and clutters the page with images that are irrelevant to the meaning of the page content.

Tables Cause Accessibility Issues
The fourth reason why tables are bad lies in the way non-graphical browsers—such as the screen readers used by many visually impaired users—read an HTML document. When a text-only device reads the content of a site, it starts at the top and works down the page line by line. When it comes to a table, it starts at the first (top-left) cell, then continues along the top row, then moves to the second row, and so on. In the case of a table that’s used correctly, for tabular data, this is rarely a problem. However, where nested tables have been used to display chunks of text in the desired layout, that content can become nonsensical when read in this manner.

When it’s Okay to Use a Table
There’s one notable exception to the cardinal rule that Tables Are A Bad Thing. If you have tabular data, and the appearance of that data is less important than its appropriate display in connection with other portions of the same data set, then a table is in order. If you have information that would best be displayed in a spreadsheet such as Excel, you have tabular data.

In general (though, undoubtedly, there are exceptions to this rule as well), this means that the use of tables should be confined to the presentation of numeric or textual data, not graphics, multimedia data types, forms, or any other interactive user interface components.

User Experience

Recently, I am searching about the facebook api and visit a word "User Experience" most frequently. Then I immediately bump into Wiki and get some idea of its meaning. With the fastening changing telecommunciation pace, the whole IT industry are becoming to concern user's perception of their device/system. This concern is directed at affecting all aspects of the users' interaction with the product - how it is perceived, learned and used.

In the web world, user experience is sometimes conflated with usability, information architecture (IA), and user interface (UI) design, all of which are components of it. User experience addresses and integrates all user-facing aspects of a company, from email and web sites to off-site presence in print and on other sites.

The User Experience is a highly multi-disciplinary field, incorporating aspects of
psychology, anthropology, computer science, graphic design, industrial design and cognitive science.


Knowing well about the User Experience, we should create the following deliverables later on including the following:

Site Audit (usability study of existing assets)
Flows and Navigation Maps
User stories or Scenarios
Persona (Fictitious users to act out the scenarios)
Site Maps and Content Inventory
Wireframes (screen blueprints or storyboards)
Prototypes (For interactive or in-the-mind simulation)
Written specifications (describing the behavior or design)
Graphic mockups (Precise visual of the expected end result)

Knowledge sharing about Computer Network

I would like to record my learning pace from the Computer Network Course here too. Learning should be based on interest. And I would like to develop my study interest through a series of doing after-class reflection. Computer network should have connection with the Web design and engineering at some point. And that is why I chooese to write something related out of the syllabus.

Now, I understand the key difference between a LAN and a WAN. A LAN (local area network) is a group of computers and network devices connected together, usually within the same building
A WAN (wide area network), is not restricted to a geographical location. A WAN connects several LANs, and may be limited to an enterprise (a corporation or an organization) or accessible to the public. The technology is high speed and relatively cost-expensive.

The reason for the LANS to base on broadcast but not WANs do so is their nature difference that accounts. For LANs, it only connects to one central point which requires to receive data only. But for WANs, the whole network requires not only data receive but also the sending action. This question actually leads to the second question.

Voice transmission are real-time but data transmission are error-free. The technology are specialized in separate network due to the nature difference. As what has mentioned previously, the nature difference tells us that we should utilize resource to its full dimension since data request from the access point is limited with the increasing demands.

Review of the first tutorial

I have undergone an one-hour tutorial yesterday noon. The question asked meanwhile was whether it is a good idea to format HTML by using frame. It is no sense to say yes as everyone knows the reason.

First, the format of frame may not be supported by every single browser and leads to information hiden in some website.
Second, using frame could downgrade the capability of search engine. In other words, the search engine may sometimes search the subframe rather than an entire of the web site.
Third, using frame is hard to control CSS style, which is the core of the website's layout, thus no good for future maintainance.
Fourth, our current location may be confused by the frame function when we have had been performing page-backward/forward at the sub-frame level because a subframe itself could produce several subframe contents like the parent and child contents together, which is not supposed to appear, when clicking some internal hyperlinks inside the subframe.
Fifth, we always need to pay attention on the setting of frame width and height so that our web site could be displayed properly unaffected by the size of monitor and internet explorer.

Last but not the least, our helpful tutorial tutor,Ken, had introduced another technical issue concerning about using frame - the accessibility of the web design will be lessened. Web usability emphasizes every users should be able to gain access to a web. Taking blind users into consideration, some of the current speech recognition device used to read text of website could not read out the content from frame, or authentically. However, they should have the right to enjoy those privilege. This unuser-friendly function may be a vital reason for the market to give up frame.

after attending the first lesson of cs3382

I have neither expected how the course was like nor fully understanding the words "Usability" until yesterday night. Before the formal lesson starts, our professor, Andy Chun, conducted a questionaire asking about what sort of learning outcome we expected to gain after completion of the course. I simply wrote stuffs like creative design(e.g. layout of the web, position of object placement...), multi-media knowledge(protocol, platform, web2.0, handling of sound, graphics, video stuff), usability principle, loading speed,etc. But afterall, I still had a vague concept of what is "Usability" in mind. Now, the concept is getting concrete. Most importantly, "Usability" focuses on the user's point of view. The way we put ourselves into the client's need and design an appropriate software/website to suit their needs is the course emphasis. That is why we are encouraged to make user profile in the coming lecture. We are also increasing our capability to increase user's satisfactory by means of carrying out User-centered design process( like card sorting, choosing focus group) through a series of learning. Another interesting point the tutor had raised yesterday is something that I miss normally - the Search Engine Optimization(SEO). I have never thought of the idea to improve a website's popularity by encoding the web to be a validate web site before doing publishing since it is troublesome and as a waste of time. However, the time sacrificed in early publishing will be offset by the SEO. All in all, I think I really hope that all kinds of these principle will be practised in the near future.