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Back Track to Week 1 websites

Now that this blog is up and running I can post comments on the week 1 websites.
The Principles of beautiful design site has a great homepage. Although beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the beauty demonstrated here is in functionality. Jason Beaird demonstrates how to hold the users attention. For. one: Less is more. Another feature that can be useful is the “roll over”- where subtext appears without having to double click. On some sites it can be annoying but Beaird shows how useful it can be. Without a roll over, a lot of a websites contents might be overlooked.
The Creating Websites site offers a well organized list of software links- basically everything we’ll need to develop our sites.
Smashing Magazine- offers useful critiques of applications and current trends in design. It also provides links to lots of free stuff. Free is for me.
These sites give excellent guidelines to what is considered good and bad design:

2Advanced Studios http://2advanced.com/
FWA – Favorite Website Awards http://www.thefwa.com/
Web Pages that Suck – good examples of what not to do! http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/
Some of the critiques are a bit harsh. Web Pages that Suck offers the Worst sites of the year with havenworks.com at #3. Yes its a bit cluttered and colorful, but perhaps not all websites should be sterile or minimalist. It depends on your patrons. The havenworks target audience appears to be political news junkies who might be used to navigating through massive amounts of text and data. Besides, the carnival like colors convey an well suited political circus/theater motif.

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