Why are website re-designs always worse...

[Banshee16]

It's because right now too many people are starting to cater to either the elitist bloggers, the youtubers or the myspace/facebook/community-site crowd. As a result, instead of breaking out of the box and experimenting with site design, too many web-designers are trying to make things become as grid based as possible because of the "need" to place rss feeds onto a page.

The sad thing is that there has been so many improvements to the way you could display a webpage that it should be possible to experiment with layout in such a way that page doesn't appear too grid based without having to resort to using flash for everything on a site*. Of course, the problem is that to do so you need to know how to program in multiple web based languages..




* I remember seeing one flash website which theoretically scrolls forever without running out of content to place on the screen.

Those are some of the reasons, but they're not the only ones. Variable width sites are all great in principle....but if they don't have sufficient content, then people who are using a wider monitor end up getting a rich, full site appearing as a crappy, wide site with a few lines of text stretched across the screen. Then you have design elements going down the page, with no text to anchor them.

With a fixed width design, the designer can ensure that every user can see the design the way that it was intended. The site appears "complete" rather than like something's missing.

Banshee

 

[azhrei_fje]

Perhaps. But what about font size changes? If the design were not statically sized, when I increase the font size so that these tired, old eyes can see the text clearly everything should flow properly. But it doesn't. Because designers use "width: 400px" in their CSS, so when the font goes up by two or three sizes, the text starts to wrap really weird or overflows the DIV and starts to overlap with the imagery just to the right of the DIV. Sigh.

<rant>
You'd think that designers would have taken a Human Factors class in college or something that would've taught them something about designing a user interface for USERS. Too many designers spend time designing web sites for DESIGNERS.
</rant>

 

[Relique du Madde]

<rant>
You'd think that designers would have taken a Human Factors class in college or something that would've taught them something about designing a user interface for USERS. Too many designers spend time designing web sites for DESIGNERS.
</rant>

Part of the reason why that is a problem is the fact that a lot of designers do not take the time to do usability testing with the website's target demographic in mind and when they do, it usually happens in the form of dumping the alpha and prealpha version of the website on the web sort of like what happened with GleeMax.

 

[azhrei_fje]

...sort of like what happened with GleeMax.

+1

LOL!

 

[ssampier]

...

<rant>
You'd think that designers would have taken a Human Factors class in college or something that would've taught them something about designing a user interface for USERS. Too many designers spend time designing web sites for DESIGNERS.
</rant>

Amen, brother. I'm an amateur web developer, but I'm really interested in human factors stuff. I'd love to take a class or two.

 

[azhrei_fje]

If you're interested in that stuff, then you may already have the book, "GUI Design Bloopers" (or something like that; I know "bloopers" is in the title).

It's a funky looking book -- deep purple with weird graphics on the cover IIRC. But it covers the major areas of UI design pretty well and gives examples of what NOT to do and then describes what the RIGHT thing to do it.

It's been many years since I bought it but I remember thinking at the time how so much of what's in it is common sense, but not until you read it does it strike you as obvious. It has some very insightful comments in it...

 

[Thanee]

GUI Bloopers

Apparantly, there's also a 2nd Edition out by now...

Bye
Thanee

 

[ssampier]

No books, yet. I usually try to get as much free advice online as I can. Some that really helped are Web Design from Scratch and Web Style Guide. WDFS is really shallow in some areas, but I like the Web 2.0 feel. Web Style Guide is a bit older, almost outdated style.

I will take a look at that book.

 

[Thanee]

Then check out the website http://www.gui-bloopers.com/, as it has a few samples and the whole table of content, which on its own might give some insight already.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Generico]

Oh Flash, your complete resolution independence and ease of dynamic layout control give you such amazing potential. Too bad 90% of web developers are too F'in stupid to use you for anything but annoying ads, or just hang themselves with the epic Rope of Power™ you give them.

Rope of Power

Any character with Wish on their spell list may activate a Rope of Power with a command word once per day. For all other characters a Rope of Power requires a DC 50 Use Magic Device check. If successful, the Rope of Power acts as a Wish spell. If you fail the check by 5 or more, the Rope of Power instantly wraps around your neck and kills you (no save).

Cost: Too much