First, here is a demo of a fixed <header> (with a jQuery slider) that I did for the 430 course.
Topics for today are a last look at usability and navigation.Some navigation resources:
- One way to define what Usability means is to look at the Table of Contents from Jakob Nielsen’s Designing Web Usability
- A discussion of site structure from the Yale design group (Patrick Lynch)
Plus you should start thinking about your website. It can be your portfolio, or an information site about a topic you know well. Take a look and start thinking about a design. Note that you will be linking 5 or 6 pages together with local, or relative URLs, as opposed to absolute URLs (see HTML & CSS p. 79).
For the record, here are more good sites for discussion of usability:One way to put it together is in a checklist for Site Assessment
- A huge list from the U.S. government
- A homepage checklist
- Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think.
- Twenty usability tips.
- Or this list of 10 tips from Webdesigner Depot
- For those who want to add a search function as Jakob Nielsen would suggest (here's his Usability book—we used his chapter titles), here is the Google page on customized search that can display on your site.
- Another site for inspiration (notice colors, use of type) thebestdesigns and check their archives (lots of Flash, CSS).
- Finally, here is the link again to a searchable database of Cool Home Pages at CoolHome Pages.com .
Site maintained by John Beatty