Journal entries in the "Webdesign" category
Tutorial: Multi-page, multi-column web pages
At some point in the redesign process of Arpia.be, I started to consider the idea of a “book-like” feel, where the content would be presented in two columns, and users could flip to the next page of content seamlessly.
The way I see it, this is something that has so far only been done using Flash, so it may be of interest to web designers & developers to see how they can achieve this without Flash, in a cross-browser compatible manner.
Arpia.be design refresh
As 2010 kicks off, it is time for me to unveil a new website design on which I have been working for a few months. It was a long process, involving several radically different ideas and long hours getting it all to work (especially on Internet Explorer), but here we are, finally.
I recommend trying things out, to find the hidden easter eggs and so on, to get used to the new functionality.
[Tested in Firefox 2-3, Safari 4, Google Chrome 4, Opera 9-10, Internet Explorer 7-8]
But to truly understand the design, I think a more extensive portrayal of the design process is in order.
A new webboard design: critique?
Now that I have defended my Master Thesis, I “only” have three exams to prepare (one of which is basically a 15-page paper). As such, the Master Thesis was by far the largest work to be done for university, and I therefore took a small break from working.
That break turned out to be spent on another kind of work, web design. In July, I will normally become the administrator for our Law Faculty student webboard & website, and I grew somewhat tired of the Cobalt theme for phpBB2, which is currently used.
I therefore got to work on another design, something fresh.
The result is a working board on www.arpia.be/droides/, only a test so far. The board is in French, but I’m looking for feedback on the general design, which shouldn’t require a great deal of linguistic skills. There’s a test user, “Test”, with the password set as “testpass”.
Anything that desperately needs changing? Suggestions? …?
There are two working themes, and you can switch between them in the footer (“Droïdes – Droïdes2″). Just click, and a whole new layout appears.
Edit: updated.
Google’s new favicon, again
Well, here we are, folks: Google have decided to update their favicon, again.
Last time they did that, back in May ‘08, it spurred a whole lot of reactions all over the web, and if you take a look at the poll results in that older post, you’ll see lots of the reactions were negative.
With time, however, I’m sure everyone got used to it, whether they initially liked it or not.
So, now that the new one has come, I’m starting to regret the previous one. Despite the fact that it wasn’t as good as the one before, I still prefer it to this current one.
Out with the old, in with the new…
Speeding things up
I decided to take a look at possible optimisations for this website, in order to make it load faster, and so on. I’d already done a bunch of this some time ago, but I rediscovered the Firebug plug-in for Firefox, and in particular its YSlow extension.
YSlow is a set of guidelines that Yahoo! published a while ago to help web-designers in their quest for the optimal code, and Wordpress hasn’t ever been very YSlow-friendly.
Design change
It’s kind of obvious, but arpia.be just underwent a change in design. The main goal is to make it cleaner and more… “professional”.
To whomever reads this, all positive & negative criticism is welcome (as long as it is constructive).
Google’s new favicon: the end of an era (poll)
There are times when a company decides to change its logo. And there are times when it decides to change its favicon.
Either way, it has a huge effect on the consumer, because he/she has to adapt to the change.
Ambrosia Software did this recently, to illustrate, and it showed that “ASW” was letting go of its “sketched” look to go towards a new “modern” look.
And now, Google is doing the same thing.
Read the rest of this entry »
Lessons of web design
I could have easily titled this "What I learnt while making this website" (yes, "learnt" – British English, my friends), but it felt a little long.
The website has only been truly complete for a few hours now, because I now believe no more changes are needed (though the past week has been just about tweaking). This means I haven’t yet received any real feedback (except from a couple of friends), and so I cannot say I’ve learnt anything from the potential users.
But as a web designer (an amateur, really), there are so many things I’ve learnt over the past month that I feel it necessary to write down the most important of them.