1: Planning for Good Site Design in Java

Drawer Code39 in Java 1: Planning for Good Site Design

Not only does your audience determine your content, but its preferences influence your visual-design requirements as well If your audience consists of high-school students whose interests revolve mainly around the latest musical sensations, you need a far different look from what you d shoot for if it consists of retired naval officers who want to know about international events For the young music lovers, for example, you need to strike a tone that s lighthearted and exciting, both in your words and graphics Brighter colors and a more relaxed and informal tone for the text are the call here For the old salts, though, you need to take a heavier approach, with darker, duller colors and a middling-formal approach to language Whatever the group you re aiming for, ask yourself the following questions: How do they communicate with one another Roller-hockey players don t communicate quite the same way as cartographers do What are the level and style of language usage in the group Do its members have a particular jargon, slang, or regional dialect If so, can you use it comfortably and correctly What kind and color of clothes do they wear This kind of information tells you volumes about their preferences People who are willing to wear suits and ties in midsummer don t think the same way as those who prefer casual clothing The colors they wear also indicate the color ranges they re likely to feel comfortable with on your site What s their worldview For many people, the world consists of their apartment or house; the road between it and their workplace; their cubicle, office, or factory floor; and a couple of restaurants somewhere along that pathway For others, the world consists only of Wall Street and the Asian financial markets For some, the world is a series of airports, cell phones, and e-mail messages Anything that exists outside your audience s worldview is invisible to them and probably doesn t belong on your Web site Find out all that you can from what kind of cars your visitors drive to the hours they wake and sleep Any kind of information you can nail down about your visitors and their lives helps you to understand them and that understanding can t help but improve your site s appeal

If you re one of those people who keeps a perfectly clean desk where your speakers line up exactly perpendicular to the edge of your monitor, whose laundry basket is more than occasionally empty, and who always knows where to find everything you own, I probably can t tell you much about organization If you re like the rest of us, however, read on

Far too many Webmasters seem to think that the best kind of Web page is one that has everything in the world crammed into it It s like a novel that introduces 27 characters in the first two pages the overkill ruins it, and your mind is left swimming Perhaps you absolutely must put together a Web page containing a dozen frames, several JavaScript pop-ups, numerous Java applets running in the background, and a bunch of animated GIFs that move around the screen by using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) positioning If so, please, please, don t put in an image map, too The line between losing and winning is very fine if you re considering using Web gadgetry Without it, most sites seem a bit on the dull side, and Web designers exhibit a really strong keep-up-with-the-Joneses streak that usually results in a frenzy of site changes whenever some new technique becomes popular Too much of a good thing or too many good things in one place can, however, become a real problem The key is to remember your site s purpose as you re designing any page If anything you re considering adding to the page doesn t serve that purpose, don t add it If you discover some fun or glitzy gizmo that you simply must put on a page and I show you plenty in this book to tempt you first determine if you can make it fit in with what you already have on that page If you absolutely can t fit it in, but you still want to add it, maybe you can take something else out to make room for it This doesn t mean you can t have more than one unusual feature on a page just make sure that you follow a path of moderation