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Basics of a Well-Designed Web Page

July 9, 2011 by
An Apple MacBook in an aluminium casing.

Image via Wikipedia

Designing your own web page isn’t easy — especially if you’re not a professional graphic designer. But there are some basic principles that you can use to create a better designed page if you can’t afford to pay for a professional to design your site.

  • Text alignment: Something that makes amateur pages stand out is the text. There needs to be a logical flow so that eye of a visitor is attracted to what is most important, what’s second most important, and so on. This means that if you use columns, they’re used effectively and not randomly. If people visit your site and don’t know where to look, they’ll likely leave the site immediately.
  • Use of white space: Technically it might not be “white,” but basically don’t fill the page with words. Dense words turn readers off and will also cause them to likely leave rather than having to sift through it all to find what they want.
  • Fonts: Many amateurs use too many fonts on their home page. At most, you’ll have three, but most well-designed pages have two: one for headings and subheadings and one for body text. You might also have a stylized font for your company logo, but that’s separate and doesn’t really count.
  • Colors: It’s important to choose colors that don’t hurt the eye of the visitor (i.e. nothing too bright or garish), but at the same time you want something interesting. Most importantly, make sure the font color is easily readable.
Filed Under: Browsers, Computers, Technology Tagged With: , ,

iPad Looks to Maintain its Position

January 23, 2011 by

The Consumer Electronics Show debuted several new products meant to whet the appetites of electronic lovers everywhere. In 2010 the hot item was iPad the first widely successful consumer tablet. If 2010 was the dawn of the tablet then 2011 might be the beginning of its reign. Several manufacturers released sneak previews of their tablets — many that run on the Google supported Android operating system.

Plenty of companies are issuing products to challenge the dominance of the iPad. Some of the companies, including Motorola and Samsung, are major players in the consumer electronics market. Even with major companies backing entries into the tablet market competitors to the iPad face an uphill struggle. Even tablets that can meet and exceed the performance of the iPad must overcome the massive head start that the iPad enjoys on cornering the market. The word iPad has come to represent the tablet technology in the eyes of most consumers. Getting a head start on the marketplace has served Apple well with other technologies.

The iPod has been on the market for nearly a decade. Even though other companies have attempted to issue their own MP3 players none have been able to seriously challenge the position of the iPod. Creative Labs, Microsoft and Sony have all failed to gain a foothold in this market. The iPod has a powerful secondary market of hardware, software and services that are attached to it. Consumers are as attracted to familiar services such as the iTunes store as they are to the actual iPod.

Apple faces plenty of competitors in the tablet market, but the company appears to be in a strong position to maintain its market share. Apple enjoys the strong advantages of product awareness, a massive marketing budget and a powerful supporting system of products and services that will ensure that the iPad will remain a leader on the tablet market for years to come.

Filed Under: Computers

It All Starts with the Basics

December 8, 2010 by

People take their computer programs so much for granted that it’s easy to forget that someone made that program, and they did so using a programming language. Some programs seem to operate like magic but there is not actually a magic programming language. Be assured however that any program worth its salt required a large amount of work to assemble, whatever the language. Just like spoken languages, there are many different programming languages, and in fact someone could create a new one at any time. Some programmers prefer to write code (the foundation of a program) using an existing language, while others like to make their own to suit their own needs.

Each programming language has its own strengths, weaknesses, idiosyncrasies, and tasks to which it is particularly well suited. A programmer might decide to code in one language for one project because that language fits the concept of the program better, and then choose another language for another project. Similarly there are stereotypes about spoken languages, that one might be more effective at expressing one kind of thing while another works best in another context. Of course, as with any language, some people know only one and just use that as best they can.

Some examples of popular programming languages include:

C++ – one of the most dominant

Java – many programs on the Web use the Java platform, which is sort of a base to run other programs on

Python – which requires more sophisticated knowledge but offers an easier and more enjoyable coding experience for some individuals

Everyone’s got their favorite, of course. Some programming languages are more visual, easier to read when you’re looking over code and some even support leaving notes about what the code does, which is very useful. On the most basic level, there’s the Basic programming language, which is what computers communicate in and which consists entirely of ones and zeroes. Good luck reading it.

Filed Under: Computers, Internet