Seeing the articles today put me in quite a good mood about the upcoming topics for the class - actually getting one's hands dirty in web design. The DocType article was particularly interesting to me; I had known about it, known it was important, but never actually had a clear answer regarding what it was important for. It was nice to see it as part of the readings. The W3 Standards on HTML5 were also great; it brought back some fond memories of excitedly learning about CSS3/HTML5's possibilities over the summer by scanning W3's articles. Actually getting to implement some of that in class will be a great chance for me, and I'm excited about it.
The usability article had a lot of great points that I had heard before, but are always good to freshen up on. While I don't always agree with some of the "standards" (such as above the fold), the facts and studies are there, and they're always good to see. Besides, design rules were made to broken if broken correctly; and you can't "challenge" rules like the fold in your design without a proper understanding of just how important they typically are. The tips regarding human faces and form titles were great brush-ups, and I actually thought the search bar study was really nifty. I was kind of taken aback that someone had actually taken the time to study how big a search bar "should be"; but I'm also sort of glad they did. Those are some of the little things that can separate your website; and articles on usability like the one we read today are always a good thing.
Quotes on Design always inspires me to reflect on some of the things I've read, and I really enjoy opening the page after checking the readings for the week. With the introduction to HTML and Usability being a bit of "something old, something new" and a lot of brushing up on those important basics, I thought this quote fit quite well :
“If you never venture outside the box, you will probably not be
creative. But if you never get inside the box, you will certainly be
stupid.” -Christopher Peterson
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