From Usability to DOCTYPEs

I saw a common theme for the readings for this week. Although I didn't understand the majority of the DOCTYPE article or the XHTML article, I know that they will be an awesome source when we begin making our own websites. Same goes for the usability article, we can't put much of this info to real use yet, but I'm sure it will prove to be more that helpful now that we know a little bit more about web design and all the elements involved in making a functional and further yet a usable page. Plus, it should be a great few readings to reference.

Personally, I really thought that the usability article was cool. It's so eye-opening that so much science can go into what makes a website "usable" or appealing, and what doesn't. It's even more crazy that I agreed with almost all of the things in the article. For example, I can't imagine a label for a form that's not on the left side. It's always seemed so natural to me that it's above the form. In addition, I've always thought of links on websites as being blue. It does make sense though, as the article says, it should be in a contrasting color that isn't too eye-burning.

A few things made me really wonder how they figured all this stuff out too. Like how in the world can someone conclude that the best search box is 27 characters wide and not 30 or 24? I didn't even know that search boxes could be edited to be a certain length...ha. Yup, still feel like I have so much to learn in this class.

Overall, I know for a fact that I will be re-reading each of these article in the near future because each one seemed like they provided a lot of very useful information on making and designing websites.