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Vertical Progression

July 26, 09

Not so long ago I was a big forum goer. Facepunch Studios (Garry’s Mod Forum) should have been my homepage because it’s where I spent a lot of my off-time just surfing around for nothing in particular except the social interaction. I would occasionally spread my wings to other websites to read about new topics and meet new people. Then rather suddenly I got sick of it, you could say I quit that partition of the internet.

Was it the people? The low average IQ of the commentors? Yeah that was part of it but a major aspect of my decision I believe had to do with the lack of progression not gained from scrolling through the seemingly endless pages of content laid out before me.

To maintain the interest of viewers I believe there needs to be a feeling of accomplishment gained from visiting a website. Obviously the core of the solution to giving this feeling to the viewer is having good content, but a simple method is to make the user feel like they know where they are on your/any site. Navigation is of course the overhead and probably one of the most important factors, but the design itself should also be there to guide the user throughout each page in obvious and not so obvious ways.

As I spoke about for horizontal spacing relating to backgrounds the same concepts can be applied to your allotted vertical spacing as well. The vertical treatment of your site has to move the viewers eye where you want it to go. All too often I feel disconnected from the content after scrolling down past the majority of a pages main design and want to either finish the article and leave or quit reading and return to the top of the site where I feel safe.

greyvoid

Designs such as these are wonderful and it’s truly a pleasure to visit, however, if too much content is placed on the page of such a site you find yourself in a void of gray as you scroll down to read. Subconsciously you know you want to get it over with and return to the top so you can see the rest of the site. That’s not what we want at all.

So back to our solution: make the user know where they are. We must think of our goal in many ways. Blogs for example must have obvious beginning and ending points for each entry with, preferably, an expected length. Every page needs a title for a sense of place and each entry should feel grouped together as a solid entity that when you are finished reading you feel accomplished at having read it and hopefully even gained something from it. I went one step further and experimented with a repeating gradient background to give a looping sense of progress as you read each entry. Play around with it, go ahead and scroll really fast and see how it makes you feel. I for one thought it to be rather successful.

There are many ways to fix the lack of progression from generic website scrolling. I’d love to see what your solutions are for this web design problem and if you have made or seen any elegant solutions then post them in the comments below I’d be really interested.

For a more detailed comment, click here.

Wallpapers of the Web

July 20, 09

Designing websites is a love/hate skill to have. All of the compatibility issues web designers run into really eat up time and usually hinder a design’s developability. A good designer knows while he/she builds a site’s design that it needs to be codable. This usually boils down to the inevitability of building within an invisible 800px by whatever boundary, but the piece of the puzzle that’s hard to click is the background.

If you haven’t created a website before imagine this; you have to fit all of a page’s content into every visiter’s monitor space while not making the site look boring for viewers who have very large displays.

size-example

The challenge is trying to design an area that (sometimes) half of our audience may never see. A challenge that can actually be rather inspirational at times.

twitterexample

Twitter embraces being viewed in all resolutions and asks it’s users to upload their own custom backgrounds for their profile. Any user attempting this realises quickly the difficulty and excitement in designing under these constrictions.

Backgrounds can convey information, enforce a theme, express feelings, keep consistency, and move the viewers eye. The trick is getting your website’s background to look nice while not taking away the focus of your content. Of course that doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun while you’re at it.

Gradients or textures, fixed or tiled, you have a lot of control over how your background functions for your site. High speed internet becoming the norm, you can design big to match. Modern browser advances are allowing you to have enhanced control over your backgrounds to open up more design possibilities with features such as transparency and multiple layered backgrounds.

kewlbackgroundexample

Using cascading style sheets a website’s background can perform many neat tricks while still being easy to create. Newer sites with that “Web 2.0 aesthetic”, as some would call it, have very appealing effects because they are simple. For fun, some beautiful examples of amazing backgrounds using basic tools can be found here.

Most successful sites have wonderful attention to detail which includes how their background plays among every user’s resolution. Some constrictions are involved in designing a good background but that’s what makes it fun to experiment and try something new while still being functional. Work from the ground up, start your next web design with a background.

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Let Me Give You Feedback!

July 6, 09

When I set out to make this blog I wanted the theme to be efficient. There was a lot of thought put into the layout and its features, including the features I would not have. Unfortunately, it seems many sites decide not to have some form of feedback.

Creating the comments page I spent more time on than I expected and it was because I wanted it to be as simple as typing, then pressing submit. I allowed for anonymous comments without any filters because I believe people will truly express theirselves in this atmosphere. Not every website should use this methodology, but I felt that it fit for my purpose and I believe in it.

To me, the real plus of a blog is that it is a “community” of sorts. On most of the blogs I read, there is the ability to leave a comment after the post. I often find as much, or sometimes even better information in the comments and conversation that takes place as there was in the original post. Different points of view and identification of other resources are the real nuggets that can come from good comments on a blog. (1 Slezak ).

The above quote by Jerry Slezak discusses blogs without comments but the concepts can apply to any website. If I like something I tend to let the creator know. I browse art, tutorials, news, everything you do and I have every intention of letting you know what I think about it. Upon viewing a comic or reading an article I love to tell you what I think. People interacting with each other is what made Web 2.0 in the first place. It really does disappoint me when I find myself looking for a text box to respond and only find the site’s footer.

Not to point the finger at Globex Designs Inc. but upon trying to compliment on what a wonderful Gmail skin they made I found the only option I had was to email them directly. I was disappointed when I couldn’t tell everyone the satisfaction I had while using it.

I shouldn’t have to think about how to give my feedback. The less hoops users have to jump through to give feedback the better. A jewel of a comic was made, yet I’ll never be able to give the artist the credit he deserves.

I encourage everyone; artists, developers, coders, and browsers alike to talk to each other. If you find something you like then appreciate it. Give a “thumbs up” or a “star rating” or whatever toy the site uses for user feedback. If you’re feeling brave think of some critique or compliments as well to encourage the receiver to continue what they do best. Please make feedback easy to give. Feedback helps the internet grow, feed it often.

Citation:

Slezak, Jerry Is a blog that doesn’t allow comments really a blog?

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Color My Virtual World

June 29, 09

Jim, we need our next game to be hip and exciting. Something…how do the kids say, realistic?

Once upon a time games were an escape from reality, but it’s questionable if that is still true today. First off, there are many ways to make a game feel real. The game mechanics can work like in the real world, physics can become an essential gameplay element to draw in a, even the methods of controling a character or series of characters could entice our minds into an essence of “real”. However, the easy way to feel real seems to be the simple color reduction/contrast raising gloomy atmosphere that we’ve seen time and time again.

fallout3-028

I can’t hide my love for fallout. Everything about it was great except for the art direction. I left the Vault for the first time with the highest of expectations only to see a musky plain of brown desert stretched out before me. Don’t get me wrong I truly understand what the developers were aiming for during the production of the game. I felt alone and that was the point, I got it, but I didn’t feel captivated. It was up to the rest of the game to prove to me that it was good again because the graphic design failed me.

The article “i miss color” makes a good point.

If a game is supposed to be fun, isn’t it ok for developers to make it look fun? (1 smakus).

Smakus is trying to point out that most modern games with the “realistic” art style don’t make you feel “light-hearted” or uplifting and I totally agree.

resistance-fall-of-man-20061110064422873farcry2_04

There are quite a few games that could use a little lesson in the use of color. I easily grow bored of the graphics in some of these games because it feels like I’ve seen the same place a million times no matter the geometry of the map.

Games can be fun while performing other purposes as well. How about something that is educational, surreal, expressive, and more? You can gain much more from a game than fun as I’ve expressed in my article about the “Desensitization by Mass Media”.

ZenoClashInterview_screen1

I found the Zeno Clash (image above) to be a highly successful game with a nice color pallet. At the same time, however, I feel it could have been just as successful without the vibrant surreal colors. Left 4 Dead 2 is bringing a new collection of colors which is nice but the original Left 4 Dead did very well without it.

Some developers should choose a broader variety of colors for their color palette than they use in their games. Games such as Bioshock and Fallout 3 have a limited variety of colors consisting mainly of variants of grey and brown, which can become eye straining after long periods of play. Then there are games such as Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion which have beautiful and vibrant color palettes which provide beautiful scenery to enjoy at all periods of gameplay. Even though Fallout 3 and Bioshock have theme’s that require the darker, more ruin-like palettes, there are probably better choices for colors that could have been used. (2 Lewis).

Color in games should be treated with care because it is a big mood setter. It’s becoming uncommon that a video game finds the perfect balance of color vibrancy without missing the target audience. There’s difference between a consistent color pallet and a bad color pallet.


Citation:
Smakus i miss color
Lewis, Trevor “Some developers…”

For a more detailed comment, click here.

Desensitization by Mass Media

June 22, 09

Years ago it was an abomination to see women show too much of their naked legs on television, which is quite a difference between today’s standards. On modern television you can witness foul language, group bashing, barely clothed individuals, and many other questionable influences. This change can be seen in television, music, magazines, newspapers, and especially the internet. The issue at hand is whether improper exposure to bad influences in media can desensitize; but is being desensitized really such a bad thing in our modern times?

Surveys and other research have been discussing desensitization all over the world. It becomes obvious that the media has a strong influence on how we view our world and form our lives. Children, due to television, are less likely to be shocked when seeing or even committing crimes for example. Video games have been a recent focus for the attention of researchers trying to correlate them to reckless and even violent behavior outside of the games people play.

left-4-dead

There is a lot of debate around how media influences our decisions in life, however many fail to question whether becoming desensitized is as bad as it sounds. There are thousands of jobs in our modern world that needs a mentally strong individual to accomplish. Surgeons, police, lawyers, vets, and actors are just some of the general fields of work that require employees to be mentally strong enough to cope with the day-to-day job. When a surgeon performs their first major surgery there isn’t as large of a shock factor involved when doing the operation as if the individual was not desensitized.

firefighter-profile

In some ways it can even be argued that there is some indirect mental experience that can be gained from witnessing violence and sex performed by others through media. While some may be intrigued by seeing others perform these things it doesn’t always mean that the viewer will want to follow in their footsteps. In fact many would be satisfied simply watching crimes on television rather than wanting to commit any. The same is true for video games, which take this concept to the next level allowing you to virtually disperse any raw urges to commit a crime without harm to anyone. By using media as a way to experience improper behavior we feel less of a need to perform these behaviors in the real world.

In these modern times there are benefits and downfalls to becoming desensitized. Some place the blame for their criminal acts on the media while others credit the media for helping them through some tough situations. When used in moderation there is definitely a place for desensitization from media in our world.

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