Birzeit University
Planning and Design Issues

• Planning:
  
  • Understand terminology:
  • Define your purpose: personal, social, comunity, publishing, career, business
  • Know your audience: support sites, intranets, hobbies
  • Develop an approach:
  • Determine committment level:
  • Create appropriate structure: chunk info: alphabetical (whatis.com?), atlas (geography)
  • Review your plans:

• Design issues: I [force a style guide?] [Yale style guide] [IEEE style guide]
  
  • Be Consistent: logo, bg/textcolor, fonts, bg, navigation, bullets, layout, rules
  • Be predictable: navigation position, emphasize text, not many deviations
  • Have a design grid: title (web/page), in same place, navigation, paragraphs
  • Use white space effectively: readability, balance
  • Pay attention to screen width and depth: fixed tables, images, horizontal scroll!
  • Use tables for layout: align text and iamges (Yahoo?)
  • make pages stand alone: title, link to home, info page
  • Stick to optimum page length (text, size):
• Design issues: II
  
  • Color: Browser-safe palette
  • Graphics: needed? transparent? format? animated? anti-aliased? size and dimensions? imagemaps? alt=
  • Typography: upper/lower, sizes, emphasis, text color
  • Typefaces: example, special effects: drop caps, shadow, emboss ...
  • Contrast: text stands out from bg
  • Stylesheets/templates?:
  • Introduce your design and anticipate questions: who? credentials, how fresh? purpose? depth? further info? contact info? usage policy? privacy?
  • Visual presence: balance, contrast, movement, unity
  • Navigation?:
• Design issues: dos and dont's
  
  • do provide info, not hype
  • do use links inside text
  • don't say "click here"
  • don't say "under construction"
  • do sign and date your pages
  • do respect copyrights
  • do respect visitors' privacy
  • do keep graphics to a minimum and repeat icons
  • do spell check before publishing
  • do test and validate your site
  • do promote your site on a regular basis
  • do account for special needs
  • do provide clear and adequate navigation

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