Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Usability category.
CSS Tutorials
After being asked about how do floats work, I found a series of very good tutorials on floats and other concepts that are very important in CSS. You are recommended, no let me make that required to read if you are having problems.
I suggest you look at them in the order I have given them, so that the content builds up and you become familiar with the techniques involved.
Selectutorial at maxdesign shows the various ways to use selectors in CSS.
Listutorial investigates the use of CSS and lists.
Floatutorial is simple superb and shows you basics through to more advanced concepts.
Building a page template in CSS shows the steps in creating a web page template from the starting mock up to the finished product. Especially useful for the “personas plus” development you are undertaking.
From tables to full CSS shows a method of converting a tables based site layout to use CSS.
Basic web standards workshop shows you the basics of web standards and their use. There are seven parts to the workshop, covering content that includes: Web Standards, What are Web Standards about, and the ideal page structure. (X)HTML and the XHTML dilemma. Semantic markup. Accessibility and why we should bother with it. An introduction to CSS, including why use CSS to separate content from presentation, grouping selectors, shorthand rules, selectors, inheritance and the cascade. Floats and their use including basic float rules, is width required on floats, and floating multiple images to right edge. CSS issues and bugs including margin collapse, trapping margins and IE and the box model to name but a few
Liquid layouts, the joy, pain and tears looks at some of the troubles and pitfalls associated with creating a liquid layout in CSS.
Page source order and accessibility is a presentation that covers one of the most fundamentally important aspects of accessible semantic web design.
CSS Image text wrap shows one way of achieving uneven image wrapping.
Read and use the information here to assist you in your work on the Personas Plus page you are developing.
Aside: a comprehensive HTML tutorial is also found at tizag.com where also you can find a CSS tutorial as well. Note that the HTML tutorial is really aimed at HTML 4 and not XHTML which is what you are required to use for this course.
Navigating a site
When using web sites we encounter a large number of types of navigation methods. These include:
• Lists
• Breadcrumbs
• Tabs
• Drop downs
• Multi level tabs (usually horizontal tabs with a submenu)
• Hierarchical, and
• Pagination
This is not all the list as Ben Hunt shows on his pages about navigation models.
Problem: Identify two examples for each type of navigation and explain (in one or two sentences) why you believe they are that type of navigation model.
For example:
Could be a tabbed menu, or a horizontal top bar. This is because the menu contains a list of items across the page. The items are highlighted when the mouse rolls over. The current “area” is highlighted by an underline.
is most probably a list of contents. This is because there is a list of items that may be accessed by clicking on the links. Visited and active links are also highlighted.
Both these navigation types were displayed on the site “465 Berea Street” [visited: 07/03/2006]
What sites have you found and what navigation types?
Site design
I discovered a very good web site on site design, methods and development.
Ben Hunt, the principle consultant at scratchmedia has given me permission to use the site, and I thank him for that. The content is in the Creative Commons licensing form.
We’ll be using Web Design from Scratch as one of the places to refer to as it keeps things short and simple.
